Luis Rodriguez, 20, works on math problems in the computer lab at Napa Valley College. Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice

A new law offers community college students more degree options to transfer into Cal State campuses. Credit: Deanne Fitzmaurice, Napa Valley College

Community college students will have more than opportunities to transfer into California State University with a caste that'southward guaranteed to help them graduate faster nether a controversial bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown days before the borderline to take action on this session's legislation.

Senate Bill 440, by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, puts more teeth and more than choices into a nib he sponsored three years ago, SB 1440, which created the Associate Caste for Transfer Program. Yet faculty leaders at both community colleges and Cal Country take issue with the latest bill, which they say adds more complication to the difficult and lengthy process of creating transferrable grade units and represents a legislative intrusion into bookish policy.

The earlier legislation required customs colleges and the university to agree on courses and associate degrees in about ii dozen majors that, once completed at the community college level, would be accepted for full credit by Cal State. Students who complete the lower-division transfer degrees are guaranteed a spot at one of the CSU campuses as juniors. In all but a scattering of majors, they'll but need to earn another 60 credits, the equivalent of nearly 2 years as full-fourth dimension students, to graduate with a available'south caste.

Merely progress was deadening. Padilla introduced SB 440 after the state Legislative Analyst'southward Part reported uneven progress by the state's 112 community colleges and 23 Cal Country campuses in implementing the transfer degrees. Padilla said the degrees were needed to streamline the transfer from community college into 4-twelvemonth universities, which has not been highly coordinated between the systems and has been complex and difficult for students to navigate.

"While both the California Community Colleges and the California State Academy have made progress in implementing (SB 1440), they accept fallen short," said Padilla in a statement Oct. ten when Dark-brown signed the follow-upwards legislation. "Community college students deserve a clear and certain pathway to admission to California Country University and a college degree."

'Areas of emphasis'

Community College and Cal Land officials said they were moving every bit fast as they could given the time and effort required to become both systems to concur on curricula for upwards of two dozen transfer degrees.

But what really concerns them about SB 440 is that information technology adds new categories of community higher majors to the transfer program that Cal Land officials say are so wide they're not sure it's possible to make them fit into the guarantee. The new categories are chosen "areas of emphasis." Instead of a major in biochemistry or anthropology, an surface area of accent degree could be in the broader category of general sciences, or social and behavioral sciences, for instance.

That'south inconsistent with the goal of SB 1440, argues Diana Guerin, chair of the CSU Academic Senate. She said the new categories require community colleges and CSU to create majors that are both comprehensive plenty to fit a multifariousness of concentrations within a subject however narrow enough to fulfill the course prerequisites for specific majors.

"Request us to set up a pupil for all of those areas when they are taking two years of a transfer curriculum is the opposite of what we're trying to get them to do. We're trying to get them to focus in so they're gear up for upper-sectionalization work," Guerin said. "The question is, tin we put together a meaningful gear up of courses at the lower-division level that volition assist students transfer and complete a caste? Our initial research is that it will be very tough."

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima

Supporters say that'southward a mischaracterization of Padilla'southward bill. The original intent of SB 1440 was to provide flexibility for students, said Jessie Ryan, associate director of the nonprofit Campaign for College Opportunity, which co-sponsored the nib.

"The hope had always been to create a pathway that would be the preferred pathway for customs college transfer students statewide, and in lodge to do that you lot have to have flexible caste options and acknowledge that students don't always know day ane every bit they enter a customs college what major they want to transfer into," Ryan said.

Since the bulk of coursework toward a major occurs in one case a student has transferred into a university, a lower-division associate caste in an expanse of emphasis allows students to focus on rigorous full general teaching coursework while too doing "some exploration in those disquisitional first couple of years of their higher journey," she said.

Padilla's urgency on this issue stems from the abysmal completion and transfer rates at the state's community colleges, and what that means for the students and the economy. A 2010 study by the Institute for Higher Pedagogy Leadership and Policy at Sacramento State University, called Divided We Neglect, found that half-dozen years after enrolling, seventy percent of "caste-seeking" community college students had non transferred to a university, nor had they completed a certificate or degree.

"For California to compete in the 21st century economy, we must dramatically better the charge per unit at which students transfer from customs colleges and graduate from four-year universities," Padilla said in the Oct. 10 argument.

Mission command

To some extent, Padilla'southward bills put in a place a key component of the state's Master Plan for College Education – more than than half a century afterwards information technology was adopted. The master program, a pattern mapping out how the public colleges and universities should piece of work in California, identified "the transfer function" from customs colleges "as a central institutional priority of all segments of higher pedagogy."

Credit: Legislative Analyst Office

Credit: Legislative Analyst's Office

But as the Legislative Annotator's Office ended in its status report, "Despite this emphasis by the state, however, (community college) students often must navigate a complex maze of transfer course requirements which can make accessing and completing a baccalaureate plan difficult."

Neither SB 1440 nor SB 440 specifies how many transfer degrees must be established, only does require them for the well-nigh in-need subjects, such as psychology, math, physics and business administration. And then far, 25 transfer degrees have been approved, notwithstanding not every community campus offers all the programs.

A recent survey by the Campaign for College Opportunity institute a wide range of admission to the transfer degrees at the state's community college campuses. According to the survey, only 18 community colleges had at least 80 percent of the degrees in place, while 34 were only halfway at that place. In some cases entire community college districts are lagging. Out of 9 colleges in the Los Angeles Customs Higher District, all but two were far behind schedule in developing the transfer degrees required nether Padilla's original nib.

"That, to us, is an effect of equity," said Michele Siqueiros, executive managing director of the Campaign. Where students alive shouldn't decide whether they accept access to all the transfer degrees available, she said.

In that location were some late amendments to SB 440 that made it more palatable to faculty at CSU and community colleges. Initially, the bill included the specific areas of accent that colleges had to establish. Padilla agreed to withdraw that subsequently the faculty senates of both systems voted to oppose the bill. The Cal State Bookish Senate switched to a neutral position afterward.

But faculty are still irked that advocacy groups and lawmakers keep trying to prepare bookish policy.

"It'southward possible that good people accept what they think are good ideas, but when you implement them you might have to get in a different management," said Beth Smith, president of the Bookish Senate for California Community Colleges. "Kinesthesia should make the determination of whether that'south the best path for students and we're not sure that it is and that's our business organization with the legislation."

That legislation is at present law, still, and a bigger challenge for the colleges is whether there's plenty room at CSU for the transfer students. Many campuses had closed their doors to leap transfers during the recession, but accepted students with transfer degrees under SB 1440. Nevertheless, the transfer guarantee doesn't extend to a specific campus. Under SB 440, Cal State has to offer transfer students a place at some other campus if their first choice has run out of room.

The plan is all the same new and the numbers of students taking advantage of it reflect that. The statewide Community College Chancellor'southward Office is however waiting for the fall demography figures that will tell how many of their students are enrolled in the transfer degree programme. Just nether a thousand students were participating as of terminal spring. When numbers for the electric current semester are in, the chancellor's office expects that to double.

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