Law eases transfers to CSUs: Students guaranteed spot after junior college work
- September 30, 2010
A new law will guarantee a spot at a California State University campus for students who complete their lower-division work at a community college.
The law, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday, requires the state's 112 community colleges to offer an associate degree that ensures a CSU seat. Supporters said the degrees will help students avoid mistakenly taking unnecessary classes, which sometimes add a year or more to their education.
About 55,000 more community college students per year could transfer to the 23-campus CSU system because of the change, said Jack Scott, chancellor of the 2.75 million-student community college system.
"It will be a giant step forward," Scott said. "The average community college transfer will graduate with 24 or 25 units fewer than they did before."
Students who take advantage of the new law will be able to fall back on their associate degree if they don't finish a bachelor's program, he said, noting that half the students who transfer to four-year schools do not have an associate degree.
The law, created by Senate Bill 1440, will help smooth what has long been a rough road from the community colleges to California's public universities. Students often find, belatedly, that they have not completed courses required for CSU transfers, or that they have taken the wrong classes.
Part of the problem has been a lack of widespread communication between the school systems, such as community colleges offering biology or history classes that do not meet CSU standards. Starting next fall, community colleges will be required to tell students exactly what they need to do to transfer within two years.
"It's not unusual for a student to come here with three or four years at a community college, only to find they have three years to go," said Susan Opp, associate vice president for academic programs and graduate studies at CSU East Bay in Hayward.
Faculty leaders have already started discussing how to implement the change, said Jane Patton, a professor at San Jose's Mission College and president of the statewide faculty senate. Colleges probably will start by offering the transferrable associate degrees for the 25 most popular majors, she said.
Community colleges originally were intended to provide the first two years of an undergraduate education and to allow students to transfer easily to universities. But budget cuts and the expansion of colleges' responsibilities have hampered students' abilities to transfer.
Next year's changes are "something that needs to be done anyway," said Wise Allen, chancellor of the Oakland-based Peralta Community College District. "Originally, the plan was it would be a seamless path, and that has not been true."
Community colleges have not reached a similar agreement with the University of California system, mostly because the university's constitutional independence precludes a mandate from the Legislature. But the two systems have been working on an agreement in the past year.
"I'm very optimistic that UC will follow suit in the next couple of years," said Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, who proposed the new law.
The UC system is trying to find its own way to ease transfers, said Susan Wilbur, the university's undergraduate-admissions director. It is not yet clear how or when that will happen, she said, but top administrators have vowed to help transfer students.
"We are taking that charge very seriously," Wilbur said. But "guarantees are very difficult for the University of California, because it's a capacity issue and we can't enroll more students without the funding."
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