Degrees of Disagreement

The three-hour meeting about SB1440 began at 8:30 this morning and ended early, at 12:15. At issue: How to adjust curricular requirements to conform to the newly-enacted legislation, which mandates that community colleges design degrees that will allow students to transfer easily to 4-year state colleges and that state colleges automatically accept these students as juniors. The legislation itself poses no insurmountable challenges for either the community or state college system; indeed, in the end, it will likely simplify things for community-college students.

Problems arise, however, when individual colleges must choose between keeping their traditional degree requirements and conforming to the new legislation. The question is not whether they WILL comply. That's, y'know, the LAW. The main question under discussion today revolved around whether colleges could continue offering, in addition to the transfer degrees, degrees with DIFFERENT requirements than those mandated by the law.

What gets us crazy is when meetings turn into marathon discussions around what are fundamentally simple questions. Take the above question, for example (please!): CAN colleges continue offering alternative paths to an associates degree? Of course they can! WILL those alternative degrees prove acceptable to four-year colleges? Of course they won't! Why, then, would a student choose to TAKE pursue one of those degrees? Aha!

In fairness, there ARE legitimate reasons for students to pursue those non-transferable degrees (for example, vocationally oriented majors that train students for the workplace as opposed to more "academic" majors). The sad fact is, though, that this reform, like so many others, may flounder on the shoals of departmental self-interest.

The politics work like this: When a course is no longer required for a degree, the department offering that course worries (not unjustifiably) that students will no longer enroll in that course. If the department loses enrollment, it may lose institutional support. Thus, departments will fight to keep as many courses as possible "in the loop" for transferability. If and when it becomes apparent that the state legislation leaves no room for a particular course in its list of requirements, these departments will then advocate for maintaining the course as a LOCAL requirement for an ALTERNATIVE associates degree (one that will not actually serve a transferring student). No problem, really, if a student has no interest in transferring. Until they DO have an interest in transferring and find out that their locally designed associates is only slightly more valuable than Enron stock.

We realize this discussion may prove opaque to those not affiliated with the California Community College system, and we apologize. You'll just have to take our word for it when we assure you that we have provided a perfect example of how bureaucracy and inertia continue to trump common sense.