Walters: Community College Report Ignores Reality
dan_walters
By Dan Walters, CalMatters Commentary
Published 4 years ago on
January 29, 2020
Photo of smiling college graduates holding their degrees
(Shutterstock)

Share

The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises state lawmakers on budgetary matters, prides itself on taking an independent, nonpartisan and even nonpolitical approach to important policy issues.
That well-established tradition continues in a new LAO report on a pilot program that allows a few community college districts to offer four-year degrees in a few obscure subjects.


Dan Walters
Opinion
However, by divorcing itself from the program’s political aspects in this case, it’s also separating itself from reality.
The reality is that California’s economy needs more well-trained and well-educated workers, but obtaining a four-year college degree these days is very difficult given the inability of the state’s public universities to handle the demand.
That’s especially true for low-income students from the state’s less-populated regions because they must also cope with high living costs as they are forced to leave home to attend college.
Community colleges, which offer close-to-home, low-cost educations, do provide lower-division courses, but students still must transfer to four-year universities to complete their degrees.
Other states, facing the same dilemma, have responded by broadly authorizing community colleges to offer baccalaureate programs and California’s pilot program has been an effort to replicate that rational approach.

Competition for Money

However, political reality has made that expansion difficult. The state university system guards its place in the academic pecking order jealously and as a result, the pilot program was very limited, allowing the community colleges to offer degrees just in a few relatively obscure subjects that the universities ignored.
Ironically, the state universities’ resistance to what it regarded as competition for money and students mirrors the resistance that the University of California displayed when the state universities wanted to begin offering some doctorate programs.
The LAO report ignored these three-way turf struggles, which have bubbled up for decades, in its lukewarm report on the community college pilot program.
“We found little evidence that graduates from these pilot programs were better prepared to fill these positions compared to those with other bachelor’s degrees or that pilot program graduates were helping employers fill hard-to-staff positions,” the LAO said. “The most common benefit of the pilot cited by students was the relatively low cost of attending the community college bachelor’s degree programs.”

We Don’t Have a Well-Integrated System of Public Higher Education in California

Having four-year programs in the community colleges would be unnecessary, the report suggests, if the two- and four-year systems would simply cooperate more on developing targeted training programs and better aligning course offerings to make transfers from community colleges to four-year schools easier.

“These programs are serving many students who might not otherwise have a path to a bachelor’s degree. The programs are of high quality and lead to meaningful jobs for graduates.” — California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley
Well, that’s stating the obvious — but only if, as the LAO does, one ignores the fact that we don’t have a well-integrated system of public higher education in California, despite the existence of a so-called “master plan” for the last half-century that assumes we do.
We have three separate, often competitive systems and as long as we do, we should embrace allowing community colleges to offer as many baccalaureate programs as they are financially and institutionally capable of doing, thereby giving students more options and the state more of the well-educated workers it needs.
California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley said it well in a statement responding to the LAO report:
“These programs are serving many students who might not otherwise have a path to a bachelor’s degree. The programs are of high quality and lead to meaningful jobs for graduates.”
CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.
[activecampaign form=31]

DON'T MISS

How California’s Prized Solution for Methane Gas Is Backfiring on Farmers

DON'T MISS

Many Californians Rely on This Farmers Market Program. Newsom Wants to Cut It

DON'T MISS

Carbon Capture Storage Is Key to California’s Economy & Energy Future

DON'T MISS

CA Leaders Must Address Falling Enrollment & Rising Absenteeism in Public Schools

DON'T MISS

Shady Business Owners Can Hide Behind LLCs. CA Should Make Their Identities Public.

DON'T MISS

Sunshine Week: Growing Secrecy Limits Government Accountability

DON'T MISS

SLO Moves to End Gerrymandering, Yet Much of California Still Lets Politicians Draw Voting Maps

DON'T MISS

Sunshine Week: A Healthy Democracy Requires Your Support of Local Journalism

DON'T MISS

SoCal’s Huge Logistics Industry Faces Backlash Over Wages and Pollution

DON'T MISS

No Politician Alive Can ‘Save Democracy.’ That Job Is Exclusively for ‘We the People.’

No data was found

The 49ers Have Been Docked a 2025 Fifth-Round Draft Pick for an Accounting Error

7 hours ago

Fresno Bank Sued. It Allegedly Helped Bitwise Commit Fraud.

bitwise /

7 hours ago

How California’s Prized Solution for Methane Gas Is Backfiring on Farmers

environment /

10 hours ago

Supreme Court Seems Favorable to Biden Administration Over Efforts to Combat Social Media Posts

11 hours ago

Putin Extends Rule in Preordained Russian Election After Harshest Crackdown Since Soviet Era

11 hours ago

Ohtani to Begin Throwing Program Soon. Roberts Hints Dodgers Star Might Play in the Field

11 hours ago

Trump: Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’, There’ll Be a ‘Bloodbath’ if I Lose

11 hours ago

Tech Lawyer and Philanthropist Nicole Shanahan Rumored as RFK Jr.’s VP Pick

news /

11 hours ago

March Madness is Here. UConn, Purdue, Houston and North Carolina Get Top Seeding in NCAA Tournament

12 hours ago

Crafts Retailer Joann Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy as Consumers Cut Back on Pandemic-Era Hobbies

12 hours ago

Records Show That Valley Children’s Leader Suntrapak’s Pay Exceeds $5 Million

■Valley Children’s paid CEO Todd Suntrapak $5.2 million in 2021. The hospital also gave him a $5 million forgivable home loan. ■The Va...
Healthcare /

6 hours ago

3 days ago

Realtor Association Settles Lawsuit on Commission Rules. Fresno Broker Fears the End of Market Transparency

3 days ago

Prosecutor Leaves Georgia Election Case Against Trump After Relationship With District Attorney

3 days ago

Rory McIlroy’s 65: 10 Birdies, 2 Tee Shots in the Water, 1 Testy Dispute

3 days ago

Aaron Donald Announces His Retirement After a Standout 10-Year Career With the Rams

4 days ago

New Book Explores the Myths, Truths and Legacy of the Macho Man

4 days ago

Baseball Superstar Ohtani and His Wife Arrive in South Korea for Dodgers-Padres MLB Opener

4 days ago

India’s New Citizenship Law Excludes Muslims. Here’s What to Know

4 days ago

US, G-7 Allies Warn Iran to Back Off Deal to Provide Russia Ballistic Missiles or Face New Sanctions

Photo of San Francisco 49ers' Arik Armstead

4 days ago

Former 49ers DT Arik Armstead Agrees to a 3-Year, $51 Million Deal with the Jaguars, AP Source Says

4 days ago

Supreme Court Rules Public Officials Can Sometimes Be Sued for Blocking Critics on Social Media

Search