Taft College uses $50-per-semester gas vouchers and free book rentals as incentives for students to enroll. The increased price of gas brings up the question of how long this program will last.
In order for continuing Taft College students to quality for gas vouchers, they must maintain a 2.0 grade point average, have a current Associate Student Body card, live five miles or farther from the campus and be a full-time student with 12 units and 9 of those units on campus. The gas vouchers are given out in $5 increments.
Eduardo Aguirre, a recent graduate of Taft College who majored in biology and made use of the voucher program, said, “It wasn’t a big help, but it did help out.” Even though vouchers are only given out to the first 100 people who apply for them, there were cases where they would have some of the vouchers left over, said Aguirre.
According to Aguirre, the book rental program was the most help because Taft would rent him the books at the beginning of the semester at 20 percent of the actual price of the book, and then he would just return the book at the end of the semester.
Why doesn’t Bakersfield College offer similar incentives or have a program that encourages students to attend school?
Both schools have foundations that are supported by people who want to help the college.
According to Mike Stepanovich, executive director of the BC Foundation, which has been in existence since 1975, the funds are used to support the educational mission of the college. Stepanovich said, “The foundation is an auxiliary organization of the college with IRS gifts that are tax deductible.”
Mildred Lovato, vice president of student learning, said that Taft College is in a remote location. She said BC has excellent mass transit and a good relationship with Golden Empire Transit. Lovato went on to say, “BC has approximately 15,000 students while Taft has much fewer students.”
According to Marketing and Public Relations Director Amber Chiang, there has been a “significant” enrollment increase at BC over the last two years.
“The BC foundation is funded exclusively from private donations, and things like the BC archives are supported from gifts to the foundation,” said Stepanovich. While Taft College chooses to use its foundation funds to lure students, BC uses its foundation funds to provide approximately 450 scholarships to different disciplines.
Also, according to Stepanovich, the BC foundation has a lot of scholarships that go unclaimed because students don’t apply, or students don’t know about them.
Stepanovich said, “The reason for supporting the college is as varied as the people who support the college.”