Y'All Come - Part 2

The legislature would like everyone who wants to get into UC to get in, preferably to the campus of their choice. This desire is understandable, since legislators hear complaints from parents when kids don't get in. There is only so much capacity, however. And there is only so much capacity to increase capacity. From the Mercury News:

The University of California has proposed a new pathway for community college students across the state — one that guarantees admission into one of UC’s nine campuses for those who qualify. But the plan has been met with mixed reactions from lawmakers, with some worried it doesn’t go far enough to simplify the process for students hoping to transfer to a four-year school. The proposal, introduced earlier this week at the State Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance, comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom in January called on UCLA either to join the university system’s existing transfer guarantee program or forfeit $20 million in state funding. That’s despite the fact that last fall, UCLA enrolled more community college students than any other campus, according to university data.

With the right set of courses and GPA requirements, UC’s new program would enable California community college students to apply for the campus of their choice — and if they aren’t admitted there, they would automatically be accepted at UC Santa Cruz, Riverside or Merced. Today, just six of the nine UC campuses participate in a guaranteed admission program, with UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego — the schools with the highest demand — being the last holdouts. But in its current iteration, the UC plan would differ from the admission requirements for California State University.

“It still unnecessarily complicates the process and muddies the water,” said Assemblymember Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento). “We should just have one universal, streamlined path for individuals who want to go from community college to either a UC or CSU.”

CSU has had guaranteed admission for community college students based on another set of criteria for over a decade, utilizing their Associate Degree for Transfer pathway. During the 2019-20 academic year, more than 28,000 new transfer students enrolled at CSU through that program, representing nearly half of all community college transfer students at CSU. Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), said that having these two different processes — one for UC, another for CSU — “appears contradictory to our recent progress to streamline and ensure greater collaboration between California’s higher education systems.” A UC spokesperson later clarified that the proposal will “be further refined in consultation with the Governor and state legislative leaders as we consider a range of options to meet our shared goal of achieving a more accessible transfer pathway for prospective UC students.” ...

Full story at https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/01/uc-has-a-plan-to-make-it-easier-for-community-college-students-to-transfer-critics-say-its-still-not-enough/.

If the standards for entrance are the same for UC and CSU, then what is the difference between them? We could just have Cal State-Westwood, Cal State-Berkeley, Cal State-San Diego, etc. As this blog has noted, it's time for another Master Plan since a lot has changed since 1960 when the old one was enacted.