The canceling of classes has become common in recent years, and students have been affected greatly by classes getting canceled.

“There are a lot of things that go into why classes are getting canceled, which is enrollment trends,” said Duncan Graham, the vice president of Academic Affairs. “The deans and I look at history of class enrollment and if the class has more than one section and if one class is low, then it gets canceled.”

Graham wrote that class cancellations have happened every semester for years.

“When we build a schedule we look at what our enrollment trends have been for the past three years,” Graham wrote in an email. “Is our enrollment going up, down, or flat?”

Some sections of classes were canceled this semester at SJCC.

Graham wrote that the Business, Language Arts, Humanity, Math, Dance and Sport divisions were cut this semester.

There were fewer sections cut this semester than the previous at SJCC.

“There were a total of 1058 sections originally offered in Spring 2014, 86, 8 percent were canceled for a variety of reasons,” Graham wrote.  “There were a total of 1024 sections originally offered in Fall 2014, 103, 10 percent were canceled for a variety of reasons.”

There are various reasons why some sections were canceled this semester.

“The reasons vary from not having an instructor to low enrollment,” Graham wrote.

A cut of some classes has impacted students in various ways.

“Class cancellations will affect students in different ways, depending on their individual educational plans, where they are in their education path, and whether they can enroll in another section or course,” Graham wrote.

It is difficult to increase student enrollment so faculty are left guessing on how many sections are needed.

“It is difficult to know how many sections we will need to fill the student demand. If we aim high and demand is low, then sections getting canceled,” dance faculty member Amber McCall wrote in an email.

Some students fear this could have a domino effect causing multiple classes getting cancelled.

“If I have signed up for three or four classes at City, one of which is a requirement for graduation i.e. English 1A and that class is waitlisted or cut,” Larry L. Harris, SJCC student, wrote in an email, “then I take my business to De Anza and take the other two or three classes with me to De Anza, dropping all of the classes I had signed up for at City.”