Community college student Kristen Grand dreams of transferring to Cal State Long Beach so she can earn a bachelor's degree in social work and become an adoption caseworker. But the process of accumulating the right course work and filling all the requirements is overwhelming, the 26-year-old says.
"It's kind of stressful," Grand said after class at Long Beach City College one afternoon this week. "Finances, for one, and whether I'm going to get the right amount of counseling to figure out what I need to do."
Grand is not alone. More than 2.7 million Californians are students in the state's sprawling network of community colleges. Some are enrolled in vocational classes or pursuing two-year degrees, while others seek a path into a four-year institution. But relatively few make the jump -- in the 2007-08 school year, 106,666 students successfully transferred to a University of California or California State University campus, or to private or out-of-state colleges.
Now, a new study finds that the obstacles California community college students face in transferring are endemic and require an overhaul of the transfer process.
Fixing the pipeline to baccalaureate degrees is vital to the state's economic future, according to the study by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento. The report, which is scheduled to be released today, notes that by 2025, there will be 1 million more jobs for college graduates in California than there are degree-holders.
"The issue is not new, but the problem is taking on increasingly large dimensions," said Nancy Shulock, the institute's executive director. "It's a pretty straight line -- you can connect the dots between the number of educated people we have and the economic future of the state."
The problem, she said, is exacerbated by the fact that community colleges often serve students who are unprepared, including those who are the first in a family to attend college, and lack enough counselors to meet their needs.
The report also found that the state's higher education system, which includes 110 community colleges, suffers from a hodgepodge of transfer policies that result in students taking too many courses or the wrong courses -- a frustrating waste of time and money that leads some to drop out.
