Why are new laws shrinking our community colleges?

Photo of people entering the student services building.
Credit: Alan Hancock College / Flickr

Assembly Bill 928, legislation from the 2021 legislative year, was one of several recent bills developed by corporate-funded advocacy organizations that mandated oversimplified solutions to complex issues. The results often have unintended consequences that manifest themselves in the months and years after the law is implemented.

In the case of AB 928, the consequences are shrinking colleges.

The overarching aims of this particular bill were to reduce the time of transferring and obtaining a degree, as well as to improve course transferability and efficiency. In theory, this intention seemed sensible. In practice, however, it created new barriers and amplified existing challenges.

The bill had three objectives:

  • Rebooting the California Postsecondary Education Commission with a new oversight committee to streamline and improve coordination in California’s higher education systems.
  • Calling for a single general education transfer pattern from the community colleges to both the Cal State and University of California systems.
  • Mandating the automatic placement of students in the Associate Degree for Transfer programs, which provide students with guaranteed admission to a CSU (but not necessarily their CSU of choice).

While students, faculty, administrators and the community college chancellor’s office expressed concerns about AB 928 at various points in the legislative process, the bill moved forward without substantive amendments, and the governor ultimately signed it.

After a year of implementing this legislation, community college stakeholders already see the unintended consequences of a single general education transfer pattern known as Cal-GETC. The legislation limits this pattern to requiring a maximum of 34 units, reducing the number of units currently needed to transfer to the CSU by five.

This change is initiated by the University of California system, which holds all the power to create the Cal-GETC, has constitutional autonomy and is not subject to legislative mandates. The rigid reduction in units will create a double whammy of enrollment decline and a loss of educational offerings for community colleges already wrestling with a 16-20% statewide drop in enrollment. At a time when community colleges need to be expanding their appeal, new laws are forcing them to narrow their reach.

Cal-GETC is not the only unintended consequence of this legislation. The automatic placement of students into the Associate Degree for Transfer, or ADT, pathway might be even worse. The sponsors of the ADT pathway sold community college students a degree with a transfer guarantee to their preferred CSU.

Unfortunately, after years of investing in ADTs, the guarantee has never been truly honored.

Students are granted admission into the California State University system but not necessarily the college or program of their choice. In 2019-20 the most efficient and frequent path students took from the community colleges to the CSUs did not include a degree; students simply completed the transfer requirements. In addition, students who complete a local degree aligned with a specific CSU are more likely to be admitted to that campus than one who completes an ADT. To simplify this point: The ADT pathway is the least effective way for a student to transfer from community college into the CSU of their choice, yet AB 928 mandates all students be placed on this pathway.

All of these concerns were raised during the legislative process, but they did not resonate with well-intended policymakers seeking immediate solutions to difficult and complex challenges in our transfer system.

In reality, foundational and systemic shifts are required to fundamentally improve transfer rates. Even if we could drastically improve our transfer numbers overnight, there needs to be more space at CSUs and UCs to admit more community college transfer students and expanded bachelor’s degree programs at the community colleges for place-bound students that must stay in their local area.

If we are serious about improving our transfer rates, community college students should be at the top of the applications for our CSUs and UCs. Community colleges offer a world-class education in our students’ communities; why should we force them to go far from home to continue their educational journey?

To help our students reach their educational dreams, we must move away from overly simplified and politically expedient legislation and toward comprehensive, sustainable and equitable solutions.

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Wendy Brill-Wynkoop is president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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