This story was originally published by EdSource.
As Rudy Garcia neared completion of his associate’s degree in cybersecurity at Moorpark College, he was excited to learn of the Ventura County community college’s plans to offer a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity and network operations.
The father of four and sole provider for his family knew a bachelor’s degree would help advance his career in IT support. But Moorpark’s plans for the degree stalled for years over objections from the California State University system. While he waited, Garcia considered a similar program at a CSU campus, but decided to wait because of sticker shock.
“When I looked at tuition, it was very expensive. It was a lot more expensive than the community college,” he said. “So I’ll be honest, that’s kind of held me back a little bit.”
The state should be focused on meeting the needs of students, like Garcia, who want to earn a bachelor’s degree but may prefer a community college or don’t live near a traditional four-year university, said Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, professor and chair of the Department of Education at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies.
She and other participants during a roundtable hosted by EdSource discussed the importance of the state’s higher education systems — community colleges, CSU and the University of California — working together to ensure that students’ needs are being met.
“We’re all in this together,” she said. “We have a master higher education plan that delineates, but rarely (do) we work together.”
California has taken a more restrictive approach to expanding baccalaureate programs at community colleges compared to states such as Washington and Florida, according to Rios-Aguilar. The burden, she said, has been on community colleges to show that a proposed bachelor’s degree program is necessary and doesn’t duplicate what is offered through the CSU, UC or the state’s private four-year colleges.
The question of what counts as duplication has become a thorny one.
Four-year degrees have been the purview of CSU and UC since the creation of the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education in the 1960s. Mark Sanchez, superintendent and president of Southwestern College in San Diego County, said it’s time to update the plan.
“In the context of today’s communities, it’s definitely time for a refresh,” he said.
Lawmakers are considering legislation that would make it easier for California community colleges to create new bachelor’s degree programs for students like Garcia who prefer, for a variety of reasons, to receive their degree at a community college.
Moorpark faced objections to its cybersecurity program from Sonoma State, where enrollment has plummeted, and San Jose State, where enrollment is flat.
California should be careful about the lessons that it takes from states that have less restrictive policies for community college degrees, cautioned Junius J. Gonzales, CSU’s vice chancellor for academic affairs.
In Texas, some community college baccalaureate programs are not enrolling well, Gonzales said. Though Florida public universities haven’t been negatively affected by a more expansive rollout of community college baccalaureate degrees, it might not be an apt comparison, since it is not facing the “demographic cliff” of declining birth rates and slow growth that California is.
But some objections from the CSU system have not been reasonable, Sanchez said. Southwestern College in Chula Vista is interested in creating a bachelor’s degree program for forensic science. The only other bachelor’s program in forensics in the state is at San Jose State University, nearly 500 miles away. Southwestern student Marilynn Palomino testified before the California Assembly that Southwestern’s proposed program should not be considered a duplicate because it’s in a different region of the state.
The rise of artificial intelligence and the rapidly changing nature of work presents an opportunity for colleges and universities to collaborate, Gonzalez said.
“You put two powerful colleges and universities together, and you may end up with a better, as well as more agile, program,” Gonzales said.
San Diego State University and UC San Diego both have a presence on Southwestern College’s campus to try to meet a gap that they can’t on their own campuses, he said.
Demand for bachelor’s degrees at community colleges is high, said Rios-Aguilar. Even if the state offered 30 new degrees at community colleges every year as current legislation allows, “the increase would be a drop in the bucket of what the state needs,” she said.
Rios-Aguilar cited research outside of California that showed the rise of community college degrees impacted the enrollment of one type of school: for-profit universities.
“If we’re not having our students get in debt and pay for very expensive four-year degrees, to me, that’s a win,” she said.
Sharing data with community partners to understand demand at the regional level is key, Gonzales said. He pointed to the Los Angeles County Nursing 2035 Initiative partnership between Los Angeles’ community colleges, the CSU system and other community partners, such as the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.
Rios-Aguilar said she hopes that the conversation about community college bachelor’s degrees doesn’t only center on duplication concerns, but that it also addresses the fundamental question of which students are not being served right now.
“The labor market is changing so much,” she said. “It is going to ask us to work together more and more to provide the education and the training that our students and Californians need for the future.”
EdSource is California’s largest independent newsroom focused on education.
