Hourann Bosci/FlickrA key California lawmaker on Tuesday endorsed creating a new admission guarantee program at the University of California for community college transfer students.
Currently, six of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses offer transfer admission guarantees to students in select majors who meet specific requirements. But unlike the 23-campus California State University, where community college students can get a guaranteed spot through the Associate Degree for Transfer program by meeting certain criteria, UC does not offer a systemwide, streamlined guarantee program. Proponents of a systemwide guarantee at UC say it’s necessary to simplify the process because currently, only a small fraction of students who intend to transfer are successful.
Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, said Tuesday that it’s “way too hard for community college students” to transfer to UC and suggested that UC follow CSU’s lead and participate in the ADT.
“We have a way to simplify it for everybody. Why would we not do that?” he added during a hearing of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education finance, which he chairs.
At CSU, students on an associate degree transfer pathway take less time to transfer and graduate at higher rates than students who transfer without an ADT.
Lawmakers could force UC to participate in the ADT by including it in the 2023-24 budget, which is negotiated with Gov. Gavin Newsom and must be passed and sent to the governor for his signature in June.
In his January budget, Newsom proposed requiring UCLA to create a transfer guarantee program, which would make it the seventh UC campus with one. Newsom also proposed requiring UCLA to participate in the ADT program. McCarty on Tuesday called that a “good idea” but questioned why UCLA was singled out.
“If we should do it for one campus, we should do it for the other eight,” McCarty said.
Newsom’s proposal was also criticized by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan office of the Legislature that provides fiscal and policy advice. In a report published last week analyzing Newsom’s budget proposals for UC, the LAO said there is “no compelling justification for singling out UCLA” with a new transfer guarantee requirement.
Currently, UCLA is one of three UC campuses — along with San Diego and Berkeley — that do not offer a transfer admissions guarantee for community college students. The other six campuses do offer them, but the guarantees are limited to certain majors, and each campus has different grade requirements.
UC leaders have previously resisted calls to adopt a more uniform and systemwide guarantee. At a board of regents meeting last month, UC President Michael Drake said that just because the ADT program works at CSU, it may not work for UC.
But UC may have no choice but to adopt the program if the Legislature and Newsom force its hand.
In its report last week, the LAO suggested lawmakers reject Newsom’s proposal to require UCLA to create a transfer admissions guarantee and instead consider “whether it would like to require all UC campuses to participate” in transfer admissions guarantee programs and the ADT.
“If the Legislature is interested in pursuing these new requirements, we encourage it to coordinate with UC on how best to navigate the associated transitions. In the case of both the TAG and ADT programs, affected UC campuses would need to make important changes to their admission requirements,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office stated in its report.
To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource’s no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.
Comments (3)
Comments Policy
We welcome your comments. All comments are moderated for civility, relevance and other considerations. Click here for EdSource's Comments Policy.
Amy VanRenselaar 2 weeks ago2 weeks ago
I’m cynical but the first thing I thought of when I heard of this scheme is payback for leaving the PAC 12 and/or a small token of condolence to Cal for being left out of the big sports payday.
SD Parent 1 month ago1 month ago
The three UCs that don't have transfer admission guarantees--Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego--are also, not coincidentally, the three UCs with the most selective admissions and lowest acceptance rate (11% to 34%) for freshman applicants. Creating an ADT for community college (CC) students to these universities essentially runs a backdoor admission process with lower admission criteria and a 100% acceptance rate. That makes no sense. Furthermore, given the lower admission criteria via … Read More
The three UCs that don’t have transfer admission guarantees–Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego–are also, not coincidentally, the three UCs with the most selective admissions and lowest acceptance rate (11% to 34%) for freshman applicants. Creating an ADT for community college (CC) students to these universities essentially runs a backdoor admission process with lower admission criteria and a 100% acceptance rate. That makes no sense. Furthermore, given the lower admission criteria via ADT, it’s likely that many more students would qualify via ADT to these UCs than there is space, so what then?
The list of “unintended consequences” from this plan are numerous and not easily solved. If ADTs are forced on UCs, many more students are likely to attend CCs instead of UCs for the first two years, causing capacity issues for CCs. Will CCs then adopt admission criteria? If so, who will be denied admission? To accommodate these additional students, CCs might need to increase fees to pay for expansion. How would higher fees impact the typical student who attends a CC? Similarly, with ADTs, UCs would have considerably more third and fourth year undergraduates than first and second year undergraduates. How would that impact the enrollment capacity of upper-division classes and the four-year graduation rate? Currently, for impacted majors, many UCs use GPAs of prerequisite courses (which are graded on a curve) to limit admission into specific majors and/or upper division courses. How do transfer students under ADT enter these majors in a way that is fair to all students?
Debra Geist 1 month ago1 month ago
Sacramento is unduly pressuring the elite UC’s to admit community college students under ADT with the risk that potentially unqualified students can attend the best public universities in California. These public universities have open doors for minority and/or disadvantaged students including transfers from community colleges. Those students need to meet the admission requirements applied to everyone. What’s at issue is virtue signaling from Sacramento, part of Newsom’s presidential 2024 campaign. Leave the schools alone!!