As students prepare to wrap up the spring semester, the summer and fall semesters loom.

Many students opt to take summer courses to quicken the transfer process and lighten their course load for the fall and spring. However, with the budget cuts seeming inevitable, administrators are forced to assess and determine the least essential of course offerings.

As a result, summer courses are facing a 20 percent reduction.

“Although the state budget is far from finalized, the college still needed to plan for summer and fall classes,” said Whitney

Yamamura, vice president of Instruction and Student Learning at Cosumnes River College in an e-mail. “Summer offerings are smaller than the fall and spring semesters, so the deeper percentage reductions in summer account for half of our planned reductions.”

Yamamura expressed the need for the cuts to take place.

“The state has reduced our funding. Even after the reduction in course offerings, we still serve more students than the state will fund,” Yamamura said. “We face unpleasant choices.”

In addition, not cutting into the summer term would mean harsher cuts in the fall 2011, and spring 2012 semesters, times when the majority of students take their classes, said Yamamura. The cuts will have a direct impact on students that take summer courses, but for those that do not, the cuts aren’t as critical.

“I’d rather see summer cuts, than deep cuts in the fall,” said Chris Gallenstein, a 21-year-old game design major. “I’d rather see summer cuts because they don’t affect me as much, as I don’t take many of my classes then.”

However, some students aren’t as happy with the cuts.

“The cuts will eventually create a bottleneck for certain key classes,” said Jonathan Phillips, a 20-year-old biology major. “They’ll slow everyone down, and keep me personally, as well as other students, from reaching their goals in a timely manner.”

Yamamura said that courses are being cut as evenly as possible across the board, but core classes are trying to be kept.

“We have essentially cut classes from every department, but we are doing what we can to keep as many of the classes that students need to fill-core transfer, career and technical education,” Yamamura said.

Whatever the reason, the cuts are not an ideal and pleasant scenario for students, faculty or administration, Philips said.