Citrus College has resources available to aid students as inflation affects college costs.
Inflation has been a struggle for college students as it continues to increase.
Some students on campus expressed distress about prices going up on college costs.
“For a long time, since I was 12, I’ve been paying for my own things,” Citrus student Maya Vazquez said. “My mom would pay for the things I need but I have to pay for the things I want, then it turned into having to pay for everything. The go-to spot to buy school supplies like Target was difficult because I only got a couple of things and I use my brother’s notebooks that he would leave empty.”
A returning student expressed her disappointment of not getting grants for her school books.
“I used to come here and I had the two year program where they give you book grants,” Citrus student Maya Altamirano said. “Now returning, I don’t get that anymore, so textbooks are really expensive and it is now added costs.”
In 2021, Citrus College librarian Sarah Bosler did a survey and asked if students had decided against buying or renting textbooks because of the price.
In all, 238 students responded and results came out to 84% voted “yes” and 16% voted “no.”
“There is this website where you could rent textbooks and they would ship it to you and you could ship it back,” Altamirano said. “I would always do that because I couldn’t afford the textbooks at the bookstore that are $100 to $150. It doesn’t hurt to use granted stuff.”
Citrus College provides multiple resources that help lighten the financial load of students, as inflation affects supply costs.
All Citrus College students are eligible to apply for a Citrus College student support grant up to $500 per academic year to help with educational expenses such as educational supplies, technology or unforeseen circumstances, Vice president of Student Services said in an email.
The support grant application is available now and can be accessed online. To gain more information, students can contact the basic needs coordinator, Alexis Silva.
“The recommended strategy for students in need to access additional resources beyond financial aid or the Citrus student support grant is to become connected and engaged with various support programs and resources offered at Citrus College,” Rams said.
Here are the links to some programs that Rams provided, note that some may have specific eligibility requirements:
- EOPS/CARE and NextUp
- Veterans Success Center
- Guardian Scholars
- Rising Scholars
- Dream Resource Center
- Disabled Students Program and Services
- Promise Program
- STEM/TRiO
- Pride Center
- Black Scholars
- International Students
\Citrus has tried to create a resource for the problem of rising book prices known as Open Educational Resources/ Zero Textbook Costs.
“Those are any kinds of learning and teaching resources that can be helpful to students, ” Bosler said. “So, sometimes those are textbooks, sometimes those are entire Canvas courses, sometimes they are videos and quizzes and online homework systems that are created to be open. Which means they have a specific kind of license on them that the authors have created that allows them to be reused, reshared, redistributed, and remixed.
…“These are Creative Commons licenses that allow the resources to be used but would have to credit the person who created the resource.”
When registering for classes, students can see what classes are zero textbook costs.
Bosler said if it has an icon, it means that the class is a zero textbook cost class but there are other ZTC ways to get zero textbook costs.
If it has an icon, it means that the class is a zero textbook cost class and one kind of zero textbook class is the OER but there are other ZTC ways to get to zero textbook costs, Bosler
said. “Sometimes the library can buy an electronic version of the textbook that is available to unlimited features of one kind. They’re not OER because they don’t have that kind of license, it’s something that the college buys that we pay for but it’s free to the students.”
Bosler said she and other professors on campus are working toward their goal of getting as many degrees as possible to where all classes for the degree can be zero textbook costs.
“The whole community system has agreed to promote the use of OER. They’ve given every single college opportunities to apply for grants,” Bosler said. “The goal of the grants is to create an entire degree where every single class to take is a zero textbook cost class. At Citrus College, there are a couple grants we’ve been working on and selected some courses that will help open up degree paths. So four degrees that we’re working on would be 100% ZTC starting to offer all those classes in that sequence starting fall 2025, fall 2026 for some of them.”
Degrees in progress of becoming 100% Zero Textbook Costs
- History (Associate Degree for Transfer)
- Sociology (Associate Degree for Transfer)
- Child and Adolescent Development
- Anthropology
Bosler and other librarians are putting in effort to make sure that students have access to resources for their classes with no costs.
“In the library, we’re not here to sell anything, we want everything to be free,” Bosler said.
“We’re doing a lot of different things to try to make college affordable.”
