This article first appeared in EdSource.
A new analysis appears likely to bolster the attempts of some California community colleges to start offering bachelor’s degrees, despite protests from state universities that claim their own programs would be harmed.
For more than two years, proposed degrees from seven community colleges have been effectively blocked by California State University campuses, citing a state law that allows them to object to programs they believe duplicate their own degrees. The degrees would add to more than 50 others that are already offered at community colleges across the state.
While officials emphasize that no final decisions have been made to approve the blocked degrees, a recently issued state-commissioned report sides with the community colleges on a pivotal point. The report by the nonprofit organization WestEd suggests that the location of a community college is a relevant factor and that bachelor’s degrees should not necessarily be considered duplicative if the objecting CSU campus is not geographically close to the community college.
The WestEd report emphasizes that part of the legislative intent of Assembly Bill 927, the 2021 law allowing community colleges to create bachelor’s degrees, was to serve students who are place-bound and can’t leave their hometowns to attend college.
“A review of CSU objections revealed that many campuses relied primarily on a course-to-course comparison methodology. This approach overlooks the broader legislative intent, which calls for a comprehensive evaluation of program-level relevance, alignment with regional workforce needs, accessibility for place-bound students and veterans, and the advancement of socioeconomic equity,” states the report, which is dated July 2025 but was only recently shared with the colleges.
Community colleges, which primarily offer two-year associate degrees, are permitted to create bachelor’s degrees under the law, so long as they fill a local workforce need and don’t duplicate what’s offered at CSU or University of California campuses.
Dozens of new bachelor’s degrees have been approved around California without incident over the past few years. But for the blocked degrees, WestEd was contracted last year to conduct a neutral third-party report.
That main report is an overarching analysis of the bachelor’s degrees and the approval process for them. Separately, WestEd also produced college-specific reports for each of the proposed degrees in question. WestEd declined comment for this story.
The reports are informational and do not render final decisions. A community college system chancellor’s office spokesperson said discussions with CSU’s chancellor’s office are ongoing, and both systems declined to comment on the nature of those conversations.
But officials from at least two community colleges say they have been told to expect favorable news as soon as mid-January, when the board of governors for the community college system next meets.
“Our understanding is that we will have our degree approved in January,” said John Forbes, vice president of academic affairs at Moorpark College, referring to his conversations with the state chancellor’s office. The college’s proposed degree in cybersecurity and network operations has been on hold since April 2023.
The other degrees that have been blocked by CSU are: physical therapy assistant at San Diego Mesa College, cloud computing at Santa Monica College, stem cell and gene technologies at Pasadena City College, cybersecurity technology at Cerro Coso College, digital infrastructure and location services at Santiago Canyon College and land stewardship and sustainability at West Valley College.
It’s not clear whether all the degrees will be approved. Officials did not respond or declined comment at four of the colleges: Cerro Coso, Pasadena City, Santiago Canyon and West Valley.
Cassandra Storey, the acting dean for public health sciences at San Diego Mesa, said the college was contacted last week by the chancellor’s office. “There does appear to be some movement,” she said, though she added that she did not have further information.
The report for Santa Monica College “is overall very supportive of our proposal,” said Jason Beardsley, the vice president of academic affairs. But he did not say whether the chancellor’s office has indicated when or if it will be approved.
Chris Ferguson, the community college system’s executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives, said in an email that it “would be premature to comment” on whether the degrees are likely to be approved. He added, however, that the chancellor’s office is “confident that the information reflected in the report provides a helpful independent perspective that furthers our ongoing conversations.”
AB 927 allows the community colleges to create up to 60 bachelor’s degrees annually. The degrees must prepare students for jobs in fields with unmet workforce needs in the region where the college is located.
Some of the most recently approved programs include paralegal studies at East Los Angeles College, library and information science at Long Beach City College and emergency services administration at Mission College.
The WestEd reports do not definitively state whether the blocked degrees are duplicative. Instead, they offer so-called similarity scores, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0, with 0.0 indicating no duplication and 1.0 suggesting complete duplication. For example, for the nine CSU campuses claiming duplication with Moorpark’s proposed degree, the scores range from 0.23 to 0.49, less than half of the full duplication.
Perhaps more importantly and most beneficial to the community colleges, the WestEd reports make repeated references to the location of the colleges being relevant.
CSU officials have argued that the location of the campuses shouldn’t be considered when determining whether there is duplication. Key lawmakers agreed in 2023, when the chairs of the Senate’s education committee and Assembly’s higher education committee wrote in a letter to community college leaders that the bachelor’s degree programs should not duplicate a CSU or UC degree “regardless of location.”
But the statute does say the degrees are intended to address “unmet workforce needs in the local community or region of the district,” which some community college officials interpret as suggesting that location is a relevant factor.
The WestEd analysis seemingly sides with the community colleges.
In the case of San Diego Mesa’s physical therapy program, the one objecting campus was CSU San Bernardino, which offers a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. Looking strictly at the curriculum of the two programs, WestEd determined that there was some duplication, with a similarity score of 0.56. But the report separately notes that the two campuses are separated by 95 miles and that very few students from Mesa transfer to CSU San Bernardino, suggesting that the campuses aren’t competing for enrollment.
For Moorpark College and its proposed cybersecurity degree, the closest objecting campus was CSU Channel Islands, which is launching its own cybersecurity program next year. Its main campus is 20 miles from Moorpark College.
Forbes, the vice president at Moorpark, said officials from his campus and CSU Channel Islands met last month and successfully hashed out the objection. They gathered for lunch in an administrative building on the Channel Islands campus and realized that the two programs have meaningful differences. Whereas Moorpark’s program would train students to become technicians and work in cybersecurity support, the Channel Islands program will be housed in the college’s business school and prepare students for management careers.
Channel Islands has since dropped its objection, paving the way for the Moorpark degree to get final approval, Forbes said. He added, though, that he hopes for a “better process” in the future in getting degrees approved. The college is currently not proposing any new degrees until it can be assured that future programs won’t face similar delays.
“We would like the two systems to not be as antagonistic,” he said. “We just want to know what the rules are for applying for these. These are by law allowable degrees, so tell us what the path is for that, and then it’ll be easier.”
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