California State University system versus the California Community Colleges Part 2

“Community Colleges are the workhorse of employment training and access to higher education.? I am counting on the community colleges to shake up the higher education establishment.? This is a great day in the history of California – Californians now have additional higher education options.”?

California Governor Edmund Brown Jr. speaking at the Community College Board of Governors meeting where Solano College’s Baccalaureate Degree was approved -? May 2015.?

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??????????? Although I chose the title of this exploration to reflect the tone of many of the recent articles on the grand “fight” between the two systems, and I recognize that a good drama requires conflict, in Part 1 of this series I related the reality that at the faculty to faculty level, cooperation rather than competition remains the norm.? But at the higher levels, and this includes the Chancellors Offices and the Academic Senates, there has been discord – as the articles suggest.

??????????? A compromise in the legislation that allowed community colleges in California to offer Bachelors degrees stipulates that there can be no overlap.? The legislature left it to the systems to determine a mechanism for the review of proposed programs to determine overlap.? I have not be privy to these behind-the-scenes discussions, but I’ve seen the results – and they are – what’s the technical term? - Coo-Coo for CoCo Puffs.?

??????????? After California legislature passed AB 927 and Governor Gavin Newson signed it in 2022, the fifteen “pilot programs” were made permanent and the “pilot” designation was removed from their title.? Everyone sort of knew that the success of these pilots meant that California would never go back, so the removal of the “pilot” status surprised no one.? But still, it was a relief for those of us who had put in thousands of hours on these programs to see the legislature formally make the California Community College baccalaureate program permanent.???

??????????? That legislation also opened up the opportunity for new colleges to apply, and had on track a total of 45 program approvals in 2022 and 30 per year from here on out.? The parties worked out a review process that involved a committee comprising representatives from CSU, UC, and the organization that represents private universities in California, AICCU, the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities. ?The privates have no formal stake mandated by the legislature – they were included as a courtesy, but the UC and CSU are required by law to be consulted.?

So new colleges applied, but the duplication review process took so long that it meant only 10 programs were considered that year, rather than the 45 imagined.? ?And the applicants were left in the dark about the status of their application for almost a year.? ??

??????????? The privates and UC have never raised an objection – all objections have come from the California State University system.? Why?? Well, UC feels no threat – UC has the UC brand and they will always be fine.? But why would CSU object?? The reasoning behind the objection can be found in the minutes of the CSU Academic Senate:?

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AB 927 grants the California Community Colleges (CCCs) the right to offer four-year baccalaureate degrees as long as these do not conflict with programs offered by the California State University (CSU). The law leaves the determination of where a proposed program overlaps with the two system heads. There is nothing in the legislation that requires faculty involvement yet under the Higher Education Employee/Employer Relations Act (HEERA), curriculum is the purview of the faculty. It is therefore appropriate to establish a formal process for faculty consultation within the CSU when CCCs tender new program proposals for joint approval. A resolution concerning these curricula impacts is the subject of proposed Resolution AS3526-22/AA and is hereby integrated by reference. Moreover, the national trend in CCC baccalaureates is toward business, engineering, nursing, health, and computer science; hence the potential for conflicts in degree programs is likely. This suggests that in addition to the pedagogical reasons for ASCSU shared decision-making, there is an economic argument as well. California Community Colleges have experienced a 318,000 (15%) decline in enrollment year over year for 2020-21. This may already have a potential impact of 10,000 fewer transfers to the CSU. Now consider the additive impact of AB 927. If only 10% of the 1,832,000 enrolled in the CCC stay for the BA, because curriculum overlaps significantly with the CSU, that portends a minimum of more than 6,000 students not transferring to the CSU (3.3% x 10% x 1,832,000) more students not transferring to the CSU, which in total could translate into many million more in lost CSU revenues. Therefore, financial impact is a crucial variable for both the Chancellor’s Office and the ASCSU to consider in the evaluation of majors proposed by the CCC. Since no impact study has been done concerning the effect of AB 927 on CSU revenues, it is incumbent upon the Chancellor’s Office to prepare such a report so that the CSU and ASCSU can be prepared to discuss the financial impact, if any, in resolving these potential curricular conflicts. Approved Unanimously – March 17-18, 2022

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??????????? So the concern is a concern over enrollment and lost revenue for the system that would result from a enrollment decline.? (About one half of the students that graduate from CSU started their college careers at a community college and then transferred.)

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In an OpEd piece in the education journal Inside Higher Ed, Dean Matt Reed (who writes a column called “Confessions of a Community College Dean” wrote about this resolution as an outsider.? He pointed out that other segments of the CSU system, like their Chancellors Office, tried to distance themselves from the actions of the Academic Senate statement and wrote him to say that the Academic Senate has their opinion but that it does not necessarily reflect the thinking of the system as a whole.

??????????? So, how does this work?? What if CSU thinks that there is a conflict?? Does the CSU have veto power?? Or can the Community College Chancellors office say, “thank you for your input but we have to agree to disagree” and just go ahead with the approval??

??????????? Dean Matt Reed, looking at this from the outside, wrote:?

“Last week, Sara Goldrick-Rab amplified a tweet from Ricky Shabazz that caught my eye. Apparently, the California State University Academic Senate recently passed a resolution imploring the state Legislature to block community colleges from offering bachelor’s degrees. The line of the resolution that jumped out at me was:

“The community colleges shall not proceed to offer the proposed program(s) in regard to which objections have been advanced unless or until the objecting segment’s concerns have been addressed to the satisfaction of the objecting segment” (emphasis added).

As I interpret it, the “segment” that is objecting is the California State Universities.

It’s a remarkable and revealing ask. They aren’t simply objecting to community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees; the universities want to be granted a unilateral and uncontested veto power over them.

That’s ... Wow. Just wow.”

“The CSU resolution is absurd in its own right, but its real significance is as a sign of just how desperate the moral conflicts are becoming. That’s because we pit public institutions against each other, with taxpayers picking up the tab for the combatants. A much better solution would involve supporting public institutions sufficiently to fulfill their missions without turning to internecine warfare. Make it possible for them to work together to serve the public. Do that, and nobody has to ask for unilateral veto power.”

??????????? OK, so how does this work?? I’ll use my experience as an example.?

??????????? In December 2014 my college President came to me and said that he would like to apply to become one of the first fifteen colleges.? I told him that I didn’t think that it was a good idea.? He said, “go home and think about it.”? So I went home and made a list of pros and cons, and by the time that I got to the affordability advantage – poor students could get a Bachelors degree and exit college without debt – I not only thought that it was a good idea, I wanted it bad.?

??????????? OK, so the challenge was to design a program that wouldn’t get flagged by the CSU.? I reasoned that the title would be 90% of the considering – design a title that won’t sound like it would be offered by CSU.? So it couldn’t include biotechnology, since a few campuses (not many) – so let’s call it Life Sciences.? And I’ll include the word “technician,” since training technicians is considered to be the purview of community colleges.? And I’ll add “production,” since they hate that.? OK, here’s the program: “Life Science Production Technician.”? I designed the program with upper division genetics courses, immunology, and biochemistry.? Let’s put it out there in email to see what our CSU colleagues think.? It was vetoed within the hour by CSU San Marcos.?

??????????? OK, back to the drawing board.?

??????????? I called my friend Mike Fino who was teaching biotechnology at MiraCosta College in Northern San Diego County.

??????????? “Mike, you’re next to San Marcos.? They vetoed us.”

??????????? “They didn’t veto us.”

??????????? “Can you send me your curriculum?”

??????????? “Sure.”

??????????? Wow, I am still astounded by the generosity of that act, and of the close collaboration of our teaching community.?

??????????? OK, so we are in business.? My reasoning was that if you copy a program that had already been determined to not duplicate, then your copied program cannot be considered to duplicate.? And I thought that it was a fair argument, and I’m still convinced that it’s a fair argument, that the biomanufacturing program that we teach IS fundamentally different than the research-based “biotechnology” taught at universities.? So we applied to offer a Bachelors of Science in Biomanufacturing.?

??????????? We didn’t make it.? Our proposal wasn’t chosen.?

??????????? OK, that’s just as well.? That would have been a lot of work.?

??????????? But wait, one of the fifteen colleges got into accreditation trouble and had to drop out.? So there was an open spot and the Chancellors Office extended an invitation to apply.? Fifteen new colleges applied, and we got the open spot; we made the argument that there would be power in offering a North and South version of the same biomanufacturing program.? We got the new spot!

??????????? So our proposal went to the Board of Governors for approval; the BOG is the governing body that determines policy for the 116 campus system.? The Chancellors Office asked me to attend the meeting in the state capital in case the Board had any questions.? So I drove to Sacramento for their May 2015 meeting.?

??????????? There hadn’t been any reports or papers published before the meeting.? So when I walked into the room, I grabbed some handouts from the table, and one of them was “from the desk of the Chancellor of the California State University system: “we have received objections from faculty and administrators from multiple campuses to the proposal by Solano College to offer a Bachelors in Biomanufacturing.” ?But wait, the campuses listed don’t have biotech programs.? So I went to the back of the room to prepare a rebuttal.

??????????? All of a sudden there was a flurry of activity and three camera crews started to set up video cameras.? I walked up to one of the cameramen and asked, “what’s going on?”

??????????? “The governor is coming to this meeting.”

??????????? “Jerry Brown is coming to this meeting?? What agenda item?”?

??????????? “the Bachelors degree.”

??????????? Us!

??????????? So one of the most prominent governors in California history flowed into the room with an entire entourage, and said, “Mr. Chairman, it you wouldn’t mind I would like to say a few words.”? And then in his familiar gravelly voice he gave the speech that included the statement that I quoted above.?

??????????? Then the hearing on the item began.?

??????????? ?The CSU Academic Senate President (a Philosophy professor from CSU Stanislaus) stood up to object to our community college baccalaureate program.

Governor Brown said, “come here and sit down and let’s talk about this. What’s so bad about overlap? My neighbor has an Engineering degree from CSU and I asked him what’s the difference between a degree from CSU and UC... anyway, there’s overlap. What’s so bad about this overlap?”

Academic Senate President: “Well, it’s not allowed by the legislation.”

Governor Brown: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He made a dismissive gesture. “But what’s so wrong with it?”

Academic Senate President: “I don’t think that they can pull it off. I don’t think that they have the equipment or the faculty or...”

One of the Board members, offended that the system that she represented was being demeaned and denigrated, said, “Let me stop you right there. I’d like to call the question.”

We received a unanimous approval vote.? OK, that settles the question:? biomanufacturing doesn’t duplicate.? Not so fast.?

So AB 927 passed and opened up the applications to new colleges in 2022.? In my mind the most logical next college was Moorpark College in Ventura County.? They’ve had a lower division biomanufacturing program for decades, they are located next to Amgen (the biggest independent biotech company in the world), and they had the right faculty and the right facilities.? And they applied.?

CSU objected to their proposal and charged duplication.?

What?? Huh?? If you clone a program that had been determined to not duplicate in 2015, how can it duplicate?? And the CSU system does not have a degree program that even wanders in the direction of biomanufacturing.?

So I looked at the details of their objection and claim of duplication. ?I’ll confess, my first reaction was “this was written by an administrator with no subject matter expertise.”

The CSU duplication analysis made the claim that there were five CSU programs with overlap: a bachelors in manufacturing systems engineering, a bachelors in mechanical engineering that had a emphasis in bioengineering, a bachelors in biomedical engineering, a biology degree that had a minor in biomedical engineering, and a bachelors degree in biotechnology.?

Moorpark had to point out that the Biomanufacturing Bachelors isn’t an engineering degree – it doesn’t have the prerequisites or the coursework of an engineering program. ?And there was no evidence that any of these programs even mentioned pharmaceutical manufacturing, covered laws and regulations, or covered quality control and quality assurance.?

In the end negotiations resolved this and Moorpark College could begin preparing to offer the program.

OK, so far so good.

So in the next round Los Angeles Mission College in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles applied to offer a Biomanufacturing baccalaureate.? We settled this issue, right?? Apparently not since that proposed program is hung up in the duplication review process.? Didn’t we just do this?? Isn’t there any institutional memory in that committee?? OK, what are the programs where there’s a suggestion that there’s duplication?

In this case there was one repeat with the previous complaint.? Once again the claims of duplication mainly included engineering programs that again did not, as far as I can tell from the course descriptions, mention pharmaceutical manufacturing.? There was also one program included as a proposed duplication that appears to be aspirational – it isn’t offered yet but the college is considering it.? Also, there was a duplication objections based on a program that was over six hundred miles away; it doesn’t seem to me that a campus that is a ten to eleven hour drive away presents much of a threat for competition.? ????

There are two more biomanufacturing proposals in the queue, and other proposals coming down the pipeline.

The negotiation system will be refined, but in the end I suspect that it is going to collapse under its own weight. ?Most of the objections have made no sense to be so far.?

And in the end everyone will recognize that we are all on the same team; in the end we will put the welfare of the students first.?