In abstract
Neighborhood faculties are designed to assist college students get an affiliate diploma and switch to a four-year college. Most neighborhood faculty college students by no means graduate or switch, a state audit discovered.
Many college students begin neighborhood faculty with the hope of getting an affiliate diploma after which transferring to a four-year establishment, similar to a California State College or College of California campus.
However a state audit, launched right nowdiscovered that the overwhelming majority of those college students by no means accomplish their objective. “Only about 1 in 5 students who began community college from 2017 to 2019 and intended to transfer did so within four years,” the audit states. Switch charges are even decrease for college kids in much less prosperous elements of the state and in rural areas and for college kids who’re Black or Hispanic, in response to the audit.
The state’s larger schooling techniques are designed in order that college students can spend two years at neighborhood faculty, two years at a college, after which graduate with a bachelor’s diploma. Tuition at neighborhood faculty is cheaper than at any Cal State or UC campus, so in concept, a scholar who follows this path is saving cash.
In apply, few college students in the end switch and those that do take so lengthy to do it that they lose out on any potential financial savings.
With out a bachelor’s diploma, profession prospects are sometimes dim. Many roles require a bachelor’s diplomaand on common, younger adults with a bachelor’s diploma earn $16,000 extra than these with solely an affiliate diploma. Adults with solely a highschool schooling earn the least on common.
In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom set a objective to extend the proportion of working-age adults with a postsecondary diploma or certificates from 55% to 70% by 2030. Bettering the switch course of is vital to reaching that objective, the audit states.
The neighborhood faculty switch maze
The switch system is simply too complicated, the audit says, and quite a few research have discovered that paperwork is partially responsible. College students who wish to switch face a maze of administrative hurdles and esoteric necessities — akin to a sport of chutes and ladders.
“California community college students who want to transfer to a four-year college or university are trying to make progress, but one bad roll of the dice can set them back several turns,” stated a June 2021 report by the Marketing campaign for School Alternative, a nonprofit group.
Some Cal State and UC majors don’t settle for sure neighborhood faculty programs, and a few neighborhood faculties don’t supply the lessons that college students want. The Cal State and UC techniques have totally different necessities for neighborhood faculty switch college students, and a few college students — even college students who meet the necessities — get rejected, the audit discovered.
Whereas most neighborhood faculty college students who apply to a UC or Cal State get accepted, common majors, similar to laptop science, and common colleges, similar to UCLA and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, are much more selective, the audit discovered. If rejected, these college students are imagined to undergo a “redirection” course of, the place they get accepted to a different campus. The state audit discovered that the CSU redirected greater than 25,000 neighborhood faculty candidates to different campuses over the previous couple of years.
In 2010, California lawmakers reformed the switch course of by creating a brand new form of neighborhood faculty diploma that additionally ensures admission to a Cal State campus. Often known as the Affiliate Diploma for Switch, it’s turn into more and more common and a key profit to college students, in response to the audit.
Lawmakers tried — and failed — to have the UC system assure admissions for these neighborhood faculty college students. Final yr, lawmakers made a breakthrough by passing a invoice that may require UCLA to prioritize sure neighborhood faculty college students for admission starting within the 2026-27 educational yr. Extra UC campuses will take part in later years.
The state has additionally pushed the neighborhood faculty system to standardize the way it labels programs to make it simpler for college kids to find out what they should switch. Implementing the brand new system has been gradual, nevertheless, and it gained’t be full till 2027.
The final main reform will go into impact subsequent yr. Starting within the fall semester, the neighborhood faculty system will supply a brand new set of widespread conditions that each the UC and Cal State techniques have agreed to simply accept.
However the audit discovered that these reforms alone are inadequate. Auditors really useful that neighborhood faculty campuses discover methods to extend the variety of counselors who can help transfer-bound college students and that each one three larger schooling techniques ought to work to develop profitable applications, such because the Affiliate Diploma for Switch.
When collaboration is ‘ineffective’
When California designed its present larger schooling system in 1960, it required each the Cal State and UC techniques to make room for neighborhood faculty transfers. The UC system agrees to confess one switch scholar for each two new freshmen who enroll, but it surely didn’t meet that objective final yr, stated UC spokesperson Stett Holbrook. A part of the issue, he stated, is that neighborhood faculty enrollment declined.
The Cal State system doesn’t have a selected objective, however the audit stated most campuses nonetheless enroll a excessive variety of switch college students. The most important exception is Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the place simply 18% of incoming college students got here by means of the switch system lately.
In 2017, the neighborhood faculty system set a objective to extend the annual variety of college students who switch from about 80,000 to simply over 100,000 by 2022. The system by no means achieved that objective, and the pandemic is partly responsible, the audit states.
Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the California Neighborhood School Chancellor’s Workplace, stated the following objective is contingent on whether or not the Cal State and UC campuses can increase their very own enrollment.
One problem with the switch course of is that it requires the neighborhood faculty, Cal State, and UC techniques to work collectively. Traditionally, that hasn’t been straightforward.
When the state Legislature allowed the neighborhood faculty system to start providing their very own bachelor’s levels — an answer that avoids the switch course of altogether — professors on the Cal State campuses fought again, fearing that neighborhood faculties may siphon away college students and drive the Cal State system to lose cash.
Every system has a unique set-up: The UC is constitutionally impartial, which suggests the Legislature has restricted authority over it. The Cal State system is centralized, whereas the neighborhood faculty system is extra just like the Okay-12 system, the place regional faculty districts make nearly all of selections.
There’s no official coordinating committee between the three public larger schooling techniques. Such a committee did exist over a decade in the past, however former Gov. Jerry Brown stopped funding it “because he believed it had been ineffective,” the audit wrote.
The audit didn’t name for a brand new committee but it surely did ask all three larger schooling techniques to enhance how they share knowledge and knowledge.
Adam Echelman covers California’s neighborhood faculties in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom centered on larger schooling.
