California Community Colleges may begin offering bachelor’s degrees in certain fields, such as health and biotechnology, as part of an eight-year-long pilot program, according to Senate Bill 850.
Authored by Sen. Marty Block (D-San Diego), SB 850 aims to bridge the gap between the number of bachelor’s degrees being produced in California and the number needed for California to remain “economically competitive.”
“There are hundreds of thousands of jobs … that are open but they can’t be filled because students haven’t gotten the right training,” Block said. “I think that this bill could help fill that need.”
During Cal State University Chancellor Timothy P. White’s State of the CSU address, he said California needs to produce one million more bachelor’s degrees in the next decade to keep up with the state’s growing workforce needs.
The CCC pilot program, Block said, would give students the opportunity to finish the last two years of their bachelor’s degrees at a community college.
Currently, 21 states, including Texas and Florida, allow community colleges to grant bachelor’s degrees.
Block, who is also former president of the San Diego Community College District, said many students who graduated from the SDCCD were not accepted to a Cal State University campus because of overcrowding or their desired degree was not offered.
Long Beach City College Superintendant-President Eloy Oakley said that although he is hesitant to take a stance on SB 850, he supports anything that will allow students to graduate with a valuable degree.
“At this point, we’re not taking a position on the bill,” Oakley said. “Surely, any idea that increases the opportunity for students to gain valuable credential degrees I support, but until we see the actual details emerge from the bill, it’s hard for me to say this particular bill is a good idea.”
CSU Spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp said he agrees with Oakley.
“We take our time analyzing the bills,” Uhlenkamp said. “We have to examine the potential impacts of all these things. There’s much more study that needs to go into this.”
Uhlenkamp said that in recent years, the CSU’s lack of funding has limited the number of students accepted into the system.
“If you look at the demand to attend a [CSU] campus, we’re unable to meet that demand, and we’re not able to necessarily serve our students as best we could if the funding was available,” Uhlenkamp said. “But we are doing what we can with the resources that [we have].”
As producer of half of the degrees in the state, the CSU received a record number of 760,000 applications for the fall 2014 semester, a 10 percent increase from two years ago.
Block said the goal of the CCC pilot program is not to duplicate degrees offered by the CSU and University of California systems. Instead, it is to grant unique degrees in areas not covered by those systems.
“The whole purpose of this is to offer degrees where there are gaps, things that employers say they need, but the CSU does not offer,” Block said. “I think just as CSU and UC work together to produce candidates for the workforce, community colleges will now be part of that as well.”
Some students, like sophomore art major Lauren Rodriguez, said she thinks that students should not be able to earn bachelor’s degrees at a community college.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said. “You’d be degrading the prestige of bachelor’s degrees. Next, [most] employers might start requiring master’s [degrees], and that’d be a problem.”
Other students, such as sophomore computer engineering major Chris Toledanes, said they have mixed feelings toward SB 850.
“I think it’s good that it can create multiple fields … but it’s also bad because skills can overlap and create competition for more general degrees,” Toledanes said.
SB 850 was introduced on Jan. 9 and referred to the Committee on Education on Jan. 23. More updates on the bill will be available in April when it is sent to the Senate Education Committee for review, Block said.
