Resistance greets pumped-up effort to streamline community college, CSU transfer

Foothill College biology majors Hiba Dada, left, and Jannah Bashar. Credit: Kathryn Businesswoman, EdSource Today.

When a long-awaited and much-needed bill to streamline transfer from community colleges to California State University passed the Legislature iii years ago, information technology had sweeping support: unanimous approval amid lawmakers and a list of backers more than than eighty deep. All is not so harmonious for its younger sibling, Senate Bill 440, which would compel campuses to motion faster to develop transfer degrees.

Despite a spate of amendments in contempo weeks, including several just released Monday, prominent community college and CSU officials and organizations accept voted to oppose the bill by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Van Nuys, when it comes up for a hearing Tuesday in the Assembly College Education Committee.

"In its electric current form, SB 440 will undermine the extensive progress in establishing transfer pathways from California Community Colleges to the CSU," wrote the Cal State Bookish Senate in its May 2022 resolution confronting the bill.

Sen. Padilla introduced SB 440 equally a follow-upward to his earlier bill, SB 1440, after a 2022 report by the Legislative Analyst's Office institute that although there has been progress in developing the transfer degrees, implementation is uneven from campus to campus.

SB 1440,called the Pupil Transfer Achievement Reform Act, passed in 2010 and seeks to reach what California'due south Master Plan for Higher Education recommended half a century ago: a clear and smooth pathway for community college graduates to transfer into CSU and receive full credit for all of their undergraduatecourses. Nether the bill, community colleges and CSU have to collaborate on developing 60-unit transferable associate degrees that guarantee students who consummate them will exist admitted to California State University as juniors and will need only another sixty credits to graduate with a bachelor'southward degree.

For each transferable major, faculties from both systems take to develop a model curriculum and corroborate the content of each class. In that location are currently associatedegrees of transfer in 23 majors, including anthropology, computer science, physics, English language and psychology. But some campuses have been slower than others to implement them. That'due south where SB 440 comes in.

Stagnant or stymied

Using figures from March 2012, the LAO found that "sixty percentage of community colleges have four or fewer acquaintance degrees for transfer" out of a possible 16 approved for transfer at that time. Information technology didn't seem likely that the colleges would meet the goal set by the Community College Chancellor's Office for 80 percent participation this autumn, and 100 percentage a year from now.

"Nosotros've had some customs colleges really encompass the spirit of the neb and not limit themselves to two (majors)," Sen. Padilla told the Fresno Bee final week. "But some are still more resistant and slower to come along, and so nosotros needed to put more teeth in the bill."

A year after the LAO report, yet, implementation had picked up considerably. Every bit of the end of June, just 11 percent of community colleges had four or fewer associate degrees for transfer, according to the monthly update on SB 1440. Deputy Chancellor Erik Skinner said they've canonical 805 transfer degrees at the land's 112 campuses and another 850 are in progress.

"We're actually quite pleased at the rate of implementation," said Skinner, acknowledging that there was a backlog at the chancellor'south office early on when they were

inundated with applications from the colleges seeking approval of the transferable degrees. Even so, at the fourth dimension, the community college system was just offset to recover from more than than $800 million in cuts. "There are aspects of implementation that have been slowed because of lack of resource," Skinner said.

It as well takes time to write new curricula, said Kimberlee Messina, vice president of instruction at Foothill College, just north of San Jose. Foothill is one of the colleges cited for existence slow to comply.  It had just two transfer degrees, psychology and sociology, in place by the finish of June, according to the monthly update. What that report doesn't prove, Messina said, is that Foothill has 11 degrees in the pipeline and four others awaiting approval by the state chancellor's office.

Messina said there's a "lack of understanding" of the lengthy process required to approve a new or revised curriculum. Faculty develops a program and brings it to a curriculum committee. If the committee signs off, then it goes to the chancellor's function. At whatsoever point in the process at that place is likely to be some back and forth before it'due south approved.

"For us, a yr is not dragging our feet; it takes that long," Messina said.

Is broader ameliorate?

I of the biggest problems with the bill is effectually what are called areas of emphasis. SB 440 would require transfer degrees in more than general subjects such every bit natural sciences, humanities or social sciences. Kinesthesia said those topics were too wide and wouldn't adequately ready students for upper partition piece of work at CSU or a job if they decided not to continue on after earning an associate degree.

"The broad categories do not serve united states very well with these particular pathways to CSU," said Beth Smith, president of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges.

Smith said these degrees would undermine the purpose of SB 1440. "The indicate of 1440 was the students knew exactly what they had to do at community colleges and they knew exactly what they had to practice at CSUs," she said.

In the latest version of SB 440, Sen. Padilla has removed the specific areas of emphasis included in the before neb and leaves it up to the colleges to determine on the subjects instead of the Legislature. The measure does still contain timelines for those degrees, giving colleges until fall 2022 to implement two areas of accent and until fall 2022 for another two.

Those changes aren't enough to convince opponents to change their positions.

The language in the bill on this issue is still problematic, said Lizette Navarette, a legislative advocate for the Community College League of California. "Areas of emphasis volition exist difficult to align to the pathways and articulate parameters created by SB 1440."

"I think we fundamentally disagree with that argument," countered Audrey Dow, community affairs managing director for the Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit organization that seeks to brand higher affordable and accessible. The Campaign was a fundamental sponsor of SB 1440 and has been corralling support for SB 440. Dow added that community colleges and CSU already agreed to develop expanse-of-emphasis degrees because they were included in the original pecker.

Getting students on lath

Some 50,000 students a year transfer from California customs colleges to Cal State. Since SB 1440 took effect in the 2011-12 bookish year, about one,300 of them have taken the transfer degree path. Some officials say the depression number may just be a gene of how new the program is, but Dow said marketing is not what it should exist.

"Y'all always want to look at your options," said Foothill College student Gurjeet Ghuman. Credit: Kathryn Businesswoman, EdSource Today

Another provision of SB 440 calls for colleges to mount an advertizing entrada to inform students of the transfer degrees, although the bill doesn't provide whatsoever funding to help schools pull that together.

The Entrada for College Opportunity interviewed well-nigh 200 community college students across the state and found that 90 percent of them had never heard of the program.

"These are students who are actively engaged in their campuses," Dow said. "Whether they're in student government or they're in some sort of leadership group, they have no idea that the degree is available."

A casual sampling of students studying in the grassy courtyard of the math and science buildings at Foothill College came upward with like results.

"I never heard about the transfer AA degree. I visit my advisor often and never heard virtually it," said 20-year-old Jannah Bashar, a biology major who'due south headed to the University of Toronto this fall.  "I'yard not sure if information technology would have been helpful because I don't accept enough data."

A young man biology major sitting next to her, Hiba Dada, 19, said she remembers hearing about the program at the offset of the year. "I think I saw it once on the school website," Dada said. It wouldn't have interested her anyway, said Dada, because she planned on transferring to the University of California. She's on her style to UC Davis, which is accepting her biology units.

At a nearby table, 21-year-quondam Gurjeet Ghuman initially demurred, saying he wouldn't take considered the program because he never intended to earn an associate degree. Ghuman, also a biological science major, is transferring to San Francisco State in the fall and eventually wants to become a veterinarian.

"There's not really a specific degree for my major," he said. But after a moment's consideration he added, "I definitely would take considered it; you e'er want to await at your options."

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Source: https://edsource.org/2013/36879/36879