Classes at De Anza College are overcrowded last spring quarter opens despite a slight drop in the total number of students enrolled from previous years. The current enrollment statistics for spring quarter stand at 21,413 enrolled and 4,646 waitlisted as of the second week.

By comparison, there were around 22,000 enrolled and 2,090 on the waitlist in spring 2009. The slight drop in enrollment has been attributed to students leaving the college or transferring to other community colleges due to difficulty in getting classes. Though there are fewer students and classes cut, nearly 100 classes at the beginning of fall quarter have increased waitlist numbers.

Since registration at De Anza is arranged according to units, newer students say they find it nearly impossible to get into popular classes.

“I had trouble getting into all of my classes last quarter, including Chemistry 1A,” said first year De Anza student Joshua Kurniawan.

“This quarter, I’m number nine on the waitlist for Chemistry 1B again. I probably won’t get in.”

With as many as 50 students on the waitlists of some classes, it is not possible to enroll everyone into the class.

For many students, completing certain courses in a given time period is crucial to transfer after two years. Overcrowded classes make this difficult, and many transferring students find that they must extend their original two year plans to three or four years in order to get in all their required coursework. “This is why the idea that community colleges take two years is a myth,” Patricia Gibson, a transfer counselor at the De Anza Transfer Center said.

“It usually takes around three years to transfer, especially if it’s a high course load major,” Gibson said.

California’s community colleges have announced a loss of nearly 21,000 students in 2009-10 from the previous year, due to a failure to find open classes. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that the state will experience a shortage of college graduates by 2025 if this trend continues. De Anza alone has decreased nearly 2,300 in enrollment from last year because of a lack of resources.