What’s keeping California’s community college students from transferring?

Transcript:

Anne:

Welcome to Education Beat. I’m Anne Vasquez, executive director of EdSource. California’s community colleges are supposed to be the big equalizer in education. They serve more than 2 million students, many of them,low income, or the first in their families to attend college. We talk about community college as a good place for students to start a path to a four year degree. But when it comes time to transfer, too few of them are successfully making the jump to the state’s public universities.

Audrey Dow:

Don’t we all say, Hey students in high school, if you’re going to the community colleges, you can transfer to CSU or UC. As if it’s some easy, magical, perfectly laid out process. And it simply is not that.

Anne:

This week we’ll discuss the challenges facing transfer students as they attempt to enroll at the university of California and California State University systems. What more can be done to help these students? Here is this week’s Education Beat with host Zaidee Stavely.

Zaidee:

When Marjorie Blen graduated from high school, she first attended Contra Costa Community College.

Marjorie Blen :

One of the many challenges that I faced was I wasn’t seen. I was one of those students who was a first generation Latina in college, and I wasn’t heard. I wasn’t seen. No one helped me. I was an 18 year old, no one retained me. No one took me under their wing. No program, no teacher, nothing.

Zaidee:

Marjorie was told she needed to take remedial math and English classes, but those didn’t give her the credits she needed to transfer into a four year college. And she had trouble passing some of them.

Marjorie Blen :

And then I decided that the system wasn’t for me, that the higher education wasn’t for people like me.

Zaidee:

So Marjorie dropped out. She started working. About 10 years later, she decided to go back to school to take some vocational classes that could help her get a better job. She wanted to learn how to use Excel spreadsheets and enhance her writing skills. She enrolled in City College of San Francisco, but she wasn’t planning on transferring to a four year college.

Marjorie Blen :

I didn’t understand. I didn’t even know what assist was. I didn’t understand the difference between CSU and UC. I didn’t understand why I needed 60 units, but they were so different from one another. And why foreign language?

Zaidee:

At City College, Marjorie thought maybe she could get a certificate in office technology or an early childhood to become a preschool teacher. And that was it, her end goal. But then something happened.

Marjorie Blen :

A counselor took me on her wing and SMAC, the Student Making a Change, decided to give me wraparound resources. And this is the most important thing they did for me in my life.

Zaidee:

The organization Students Making a Change, or SMAC, explained to Marjorie about a new law that makes it easier for students to bypass remedial classes and take transfer level courses. She enrolled directly into a transfer level statistics class. Got a B plus. And SMAC explained everything else she needed to know to transfer too.

Marjorie Blen :

And they explained to me personal insight questions, they explained to me what credits meant, they explained to me was CSU versus UC the financial differences in packages. And I must say I was accepted to three CSUs. San Francisco sSate, San Jose State, and Sacramento State. I was accepted to two UCS. UC Santa Cruz and UC Merced, thanks to them taking the time to do that.

Zaidee:

This is Education Beat, getting to the heart of California schools. I’m Zaidee Stavely. This week, stuck at community college. With the help Marjorie got, she was finally able to transfer. And she’s now a sociology student at San Francisco State. She’s grateful for the counseling she received that helped change her course, helped her transfer. But she knows many other students don’t get that help.

Marjorie Blen :

We keep acting like to transfer is just like just certain students wanna transfer. And in reality is students don’t know that they’re capable of transferring. They don’t know that they are, they could do more than just a job certificate or an AA. They don’t know that knowledge. They don’t understand it. And the bureaucracy that make us feel less and make us feel little, especially for students like myself, that don’t have the support of other in their families, in their communities to help them. Right. If I wasn’t privileged enough to be taken in by these folks, I probably don’t know where I would be right now.

Zaidee:

My colleague Ashley A. Smith recently moderated a round table discussion about the barriers to transferring from community colleges to four-year colleges and universities in California. Hi Ashley.

Ashley:

Hey Zaidee.

Zaidee:

So tell me how bad this problem is. How many students at community colleges are able to transfer?

Ashley:

So, you know, we hope that any community college student that has a desire to transfer will, but unfortunately the numbers show that very few of them actually do. You know, the campaign for college opportunity they did a really excellent report last year and found that only 4 in 10 community college students transferred within six years. And we tell community college students that transfer should happen in two years or 60 credits. But very, very few do. Only two and a half percent actually make that jump in two years.

Audrey Dow:

That’s not only detrimental to those students, but it’s really detrimental to the state’s ability to meet its demand for more baccalaureate degrees in the workforce.

Zaidee:

Audrey Dow is the senior vice president of the Campaign for College Opportunity. The report they released last year is called Chutes and Ladders.

Audrey Dow:

For so many students attempting to transfer at our California community colleges, that’s what it feels like to them. That transfer is about sometimes rolling the dice and either climbing up, but unbeknownst to them, a role of the dice could lead to a chute causing them to fall way behind.

Zaidee:

So Ashley it’s even worse for Latino and Black students, right?

Ashley:

Yeah. You know, California’s community colleges disproportionately enroll the majority of Latino and Black college students in the state. And if we know that few community college students actually transfer, then that means that fewer Black and Latino students are finding their way to a bachelor’s degree. So if you go back to the campaign’s report, in 2013 79% of Black and 78% of Latino students said that they wanted to transfer. But only within four years did 9% of black students and 10% of Latino students actually make the transfer jump.

Zaidee:

This really isn’t how we normally think of community college or even talk about community college. So Ashley what are some of the biggest barriers that people are facing to transfer? I mean why is this a problem?

Ashley:

So Zaidee, you mentioned the round table that we hosted last week. And our student panelists, Marjorie Blen she described this process as very overwhelming. So there are 116 community colleges in the state, 23 CSU campuses, nine undergraduate UC campuses, not to mention private universities or any out of state universities that may have transfer agreements with the community colleges. A number of historically black universities across the south notably have transfer agreements with California’s community college system. Now, if you are a student who wants to transfer, depending on the major that you want to pursue, you may need to align your community college classes with the requirements of that campus. If you don’t know which campus you want to attend, or even if you have a chance of getting in, you’re now trying to align your classes with multiple campuses. What UC says is a requirement for engineering may be different than what CSU says is a requirement. What UC Davis says can be different than what UC Berkeley says. And it’s up to students and hopefully, you know, their very knowledgeable counselors to figure that out.

Zaidee:

Yeah. Marjorie said she felt like she was doing a puzzle.

Marjorie Blen :

I felt like I was doing a puzzle because each school that I applied to had different requirements for the same major. And even that within itself was very hard, difficult, and overwhelming as a student. Because if I wanted to go to UC Berkeley while their requirements are a lot lower, their acceptance rates are a lot lower. And if I wanted to go to UC Santa Cruz, I had to do different classes then I had to do to San Francisco State. And within that bureaucracy, I was very, very, very discouraged.

Zaidee:

You know, Marjorie also mentioned the fact that just different counselors have different advice to students about what to do to transfer.

Ashley:

Yeah. And it goes back to this issue of not every campus has a perfect transfer aligned pathway.

Marjorie Blen :

One of the most significant problem we have as transfer students, like I said, besides the information is how the counselors address that. For example, like if I go to EOPS counselor, they’ll gimme one transfer pathway versus a different counselor at a different retention center versus the transfer center. So I think that counselors play in an important role at community college on helping ease the CSU and UC maze that we have. And we have to kind of think about how we can address that better.

Ashley:

You know, the community colleges have the associate degree for transfer, which guarantees entry to the CSU system. I think it’s notable that STEM majors in particular tend to fall outside of the ADT pathway.

Zaidee:

Okay. Hold up. What is ADT?

Ashley:

So the associate degree for transfer was created to basically guarantee admission into the UC and CSU systems. Think of it as the A through G requirements that guarantee entry from high school to college. This works the same way from the community colleges to the universities. But again, the ADT is not perfect. Only 27 of the 116 community colleges actually offer ADTs in all degree programs. But students do take advantage of it. I just wanna highlight that 37% of Black students with associate degrees, they earned the ADT and 54% of Latino students earned the ADT. So it’s much better stats when students, you know, choose to go the associate degree of transfer route. But again, it does not align with every major.

Zaidee:

And so what is AB 928?

Ashley:

AB 928 was passed last year, thanks to assembly member Mark Berman. That law essentially aims to put every community college student on a pathway for an associate degree for transfer. Actually 928 does a lot more than that. It created a committee of people from the UCs, the CSUs, the community colleges, all of the academic senates, all of the student leadership groups with representatives from the governor’s office, and the Department of Education to create more streamlined transfer pathways. I mentioned earlier that the associate degree for transfer doesn’t really align well with STEM majors. Well, B928 is asking this committee to come together and start developing those transfer pathways and those agreements. So it’s really all about trying to streamline this process and ease transfer and make it better for community college students.

Zaidee:

And what about at the level of California State Universities and UCs? What are they doing to try to help community college students transfer into their colleges?

Ashley:

So speaking of changes at the state level, about a year or so ago, Governor Newsom put money into the budget so that CSU and UC could work together and create a dual admission program. Essentially, this would be really interesting, students will simultaneously be able to enroll in a community college, say that they are interested in transfer, and also enroll in the CSU or UC campus. Now, CSU and UC and the community colleges have to actually work together to exactly develop what that program looks like. But it’s expected to launch in 2023. The other thing that I thought was interesting is that the CSUs in particular are going into high schools and they’re trying to educate counselors on the transfer degree pathway. Because again, so many of California’s students particularly from high school are going to go straight into the community college and not directly into a university. And so they’re trying to raise some of the awareness for all of the many different types of transfer pathways early. So students have more information and are better prepared for the best way to get to a bachelor’s degree.

Zaidee:

Audrey Dow says California colleges have to come up with new solutions because right now students are having to do most of the work.

Audrey Dow:

They’re doing everything we ask of them. They’re showing up, are working hard. They’re trying to meet with counselors. They are trying to get their degree. They’re spending their resources, their money, their time. And because we allow a broken system to persist, we’re failing them. And that’s on us as an institution. That’s on us as a state. And so we’ve gotta come up with the solutions. This is not about more tutoring for our students. This is not about more grit from our students. Our students are showing grit and really for those that make it to the graduation line from a CSU or UC, they’ve gone through a Herculean task and we should all be giving them a standing ovation.

Zaidee:

Ashley, is there anything that you think that California or the community colleges or the CSUs and UCs that anyone should be doing more? It sounds like there are a lot of solutions. And is there something else that needs to happen?

Ashley:

Yeah, I think that focusing, and this is something that they’re currently doing, but focusing on the line general education pathway so that students can get the base courses, whether they’re a first time freshman or they’re at the community college, that they’re all getting that same general education, whether they go to a community college, whether they go to a UC or a CSU. I think that that can happen without taking away the distinctiveness of attending a UC or a CSU campus or a community college. But ultimately, you know, what makes these campuses special is the majors. And what they offer once a student transfers. And it seems like there’s something happening, some disagreement, some disconnect that’s happening before that actual transfer takes place. So uniformity perhaps is the way forward. And I think that’s what we’re seeing with legislation. And we’re seeing with the agreements and the discussions that’s happening between the three systems. I should also include the private universities as well.

Zaidee:

What about the problem of capacity at the CSUs and UCs? You know, how does that play into all of this?

Ashley:

Yeah, it’s a very significant problem. It doesn’t just affect transfer students. It affects first time freshman as well. I just go back to California, has more qualified students than seats to fit them at the universities. And we do tell students that if you do everything that you should be doing at the transfer level, you’re achieving high grades, you’ve reached the credits that are required for transfer, then, Hey, you’re guaranteed admission to this system. The problem is students are often especially transfer students place bound. They have family obligations, they have workout obligations. That means they can’t just pick up and move to a different campus. Now in the Cal State system, you do get points for being local to the campus that you apply to. But there are certain majors that are impacted. Nursing is a really good example where there’s just not a lot of seats available and there’s high demand for first time freshmen who wanna enter nursing and for transfers. It’s very difficult to get into for a number of reasons that go beyond what the universities can do. But take for example, the UC system, they don’t offer any additional points if you are local to that campus.

Ashley:

So if you are a transfer student and you apply and you get admission to UC Merced, but you live in the Sacramento area and it’s actually better for you to go to UC Davis. Well, what do you do? Do you sort of pick up your family and your life and you move, or do you decide, okay, I just don’t go to a UC campus. I don’t pursue my bachelor’s degree. I mean, these are very real decisions that students are contemplating.

Zaidee:

Is there anything that stood out to you from the round table in addition to what we’ve talked about so far.

Ashley:

There is a lot of work that needs to go into this, and there’s a lot of work that is already happening. But I think it is incredibly frustrating to current transfer students, to current students in the community colleges. I know that they see this work happening, but it’s going to take a lot of time. A lot of the legislation and a lot of the pathways that are being developed, we’re talking about solutions for the future. And so I hope that there are better solutions that are more immediate. Speaking of which the CSU has a statewide transfer planner that they’re developing, which would be a quick tool for students to identify how their majors and classes align from out of the community colleges into those campuses. That’s a quick tool that I think will help students right now. And I think we just need more of that.

Zaidee:

Thank you so much for talking with me today.

Ashley:

Thanks Zaidee.

Zaidee:

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Education Beat, getting to the heart of California schools. A production of EdSource. Our producer is Coby McDonald. Special thanks this week to Marjorie Blen, Audrey Dow, Ashley A. Smith, Michael Burke, and our director Ann Vasquez. Our theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions. This episode was brought to you by the Lumina Foundation. I’m Zadie Stavely. Join me next week and don’t forget to subscribe.