How would you feel if, after going thousands of dollars into debt and spending several years working towards your higher education, someone told you that your degree was now worthless? Well, for roughly 85,000 people who attend the various branches of the City College of San Francisco, that's exactly what's happening.

The City College of San Francisco learned on Wednesday that it will lose its accreditation a year from now, in addition to their Board of Trustees losing their governing power. The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges found that the college had addressed hardly any of the guidelines set forth for them by the commission.

"While many college personnel have worked hard to correct deficiencies, CCSF would need more time and [a] more cohesive institutional-wide effort to fully comply with accreditation requirements," commission Chairwoman Sherrill Amador said in a statement.

The commission is overseen by the U.S. Department of Education, and its approval is a voluntary process. Still, without official accreditation the school will have a hard time attracting any new students to its campus.

"We will be filing a request for review and will do everything in our power to have this decision reversed," City College Interim Chancellor Thelma Scott-Skillman said. "We are disappointed in the commission's decision."

Disappointed might be an understatement for many at the college. Officials there claim that they've done everything the commission asked of them when the college was first reviewed and are shocked by these findings. As the school's supporters point out, this decision isn't just bad for the college, but for the city of San Francisco as a whole.

"It's shocking and outrageous, given the massive changes we've made," said John Rizzo, president of the college trustees. "We've reorganized every level of the management structure, in every department. We've cut pay. We've funded the reserve for nine years. ... This is really bad for San Francisco."

The commission heavily sanctioned the City College of San Francisco a year ago, citing a fragile system of governance and poor financial planning. They had given the college eight months to clean up its act, but found that by this past March, substantial changes were still lacking at the school.