Santiago Canyon College is one of seven community colleges in the state that have yet to get final approval for bachelor’s degrees they proposed in 2023.
Courtesy of Santiago Canyon College
Rudy Garcia was excited when he learned that his local community college, Moorpark in Ventura County, planned to offer a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity and network operations.
A father of four and the only source of income for his family, Garcia believed getting the degree would help him advance in his career in IT support. He had come to realize that more senior jobs typically required a bachelor’s degree.
Getting that degree at nearby Moorpark was appealing, especially because he had already finished an associate degree in cybersecurity at the college.
“Being able to add that to my resume, it would help me get a better job, better benefits and everything,” he said.
But in the two years since Moorpark first proposed the degree, the college has still not received final approval. It’s one of seven degrees across California that received provisional approval from the state community college chancellor’s office in 2023 but remain in limbo because California State University has flagged them as duplicative of its own programs. The two sides have yet to come to a compromise.
A 2021 law allows the state’s community college system to approve up to 30 new bachelor’s degrees annually, so long as the degrees support a local labor need and don’t duplicate what any of CSU’s 23 campuses or the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses offer.
Since the passage of that law, many community colleges have successfully launched new degrees: Thirty-two new degrees are now fully approved across the state, joining 15 that already existed as part of a pilot. Some of the most recently-approved degrees include drone and autonomous systems at Fullerton College, emergency services administration at Mission College in Santa Clara and water resource management at San Bernardino Community College.
But due to disagreements over what constitutes duplication, some degree proposals have stalled.
Resolution, however, could be coming soon. The seven degrees delayed since 2023 are currently being reviewed by WestEd, a nonprofit research organization that was selected to serve as a neutral, third-party arbitrator. Its decisions could include approval of programs, suggestions for revisions or denials.
Colleges have been told to expect a final decision from WestEd as early as this month, though it could take longer. A spokesperson for WestEd declined an interview but confirmed that it is “a project we are working on.”
Officials with the systemwide chancellor’s offices for both the community colleges and CSU also declined interview requests.
For the community colleges, getting a verdict will be welcomed as they have grown increasingly annoyed that their degrees are being delayed.
“My frustration is on behalf of the students that are missing out on this opportunity,” said Jeannie Kim, president of Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, which got preliminary approval for a degree in digital infrastructure and location services. “We talk a really loud game about student success and being student centered. But right now, preventing these kinds of degrees from going forward is not student centered.”
Although officials from CSU campuses declined to be interviewed, memos obtained by EdSource through a Public Records Act request show that those campuses cited a number of reasons for objecting to proposed degrees.
In some cases, CSU campuses objected only to a few courses where they believed there was overlap. For example, CSU San Bernardino’s objection to San Diego Mesa’s proposed physical therapy assistant degree came down to three upper-division courses focused on biomechanics, nutrition and exercise physiology that would be part of the Mesa program. San Bernardino staff argued those courses duplicate classes that they offer as part of a bachelor’s degree program in kinesiology.
San Diego Mesa officials believe they may have been able to find common ground if they had more time to negotiate. Their only live interaction with San Bernardino staff was a 30-minute Zoom meeting last year, according to Cassandra Storey, dean for health sciences at Mesa. “We never really had the discussion on those three courses,” Storey said. “I would like to think that we could have a conversation and negotiate this.”
Other proposals faced stronger objections. Moorpark faces duplication claims from seven CSU campuses over its proposed cybersecurity program. One campus, CSU San Marcos in San Diego County, wrote in a memo that the proposal “substantially overlaps” with its own cybersecurity degree. “Almost all cybersecurity issues are directly or indirectly related to network operation. The proposed program description is a typical cybersecurity degree,” San Marcos staff wrote.
In the view of Moorpark officials, however, there are fundamental differences between its degree and what San Marcos offers. Whereas degrees like the one offered at San Marcos prepare students for engineering and computer science careers, Moorpark would train students to be technicians and work in cybersecurity support, said John Forbes, the college’s vice president of academic affairs.
“We understand we need more engineers in this world across every type of engineering, and we need good computer scientists that understand coding,” Forbes said. “But our labor force also needs the people that aren’t authoring and designing and engineering. They need the technicians that are using this stuff.”
Moorpark’s program would not be a calculus-based STEM degree, he added. The San Marcos degree does require a calculus course and other math classes as prerequisites.
That itself is a positive for students like Garcia. If he were to attempt a CSU bachelor’s degree, he would essentially have to start over and take several lower-division courses to be eligible to transfer to a CSU campus and potentially pay more in tuition. At Moorpark, he would need only upper-division credits to get his bachelor’s degree and have to pay $130 per credit. On average, community college bachelor’s degrees in California cost $10,560 in tuition and fees over all four years, much less than attending a CSU or UC campus. Much of Garcia’s tuition would also get covered by financial aid, he said.
“So that’s a big plus for me,” he said.
The other major selling point for Garcia is that the Moorpark campus is just a short drive from his house. He’s hoping it will get approved soon and he can start taking classes in the fall.
“The college is like four exits from my house,” he said. “I would totally jump on that.”
Some students are place bound and can’t attend colleges outside their hometown, the community colleges emphasize. But the law does not mention location, allowing CSU campuses to bring objections even if they aren’t located in the same region as the college proposing the degree.
Moorpark, for example, has faced objections from CSU campuses other than San Marcos, including Sacramento State and three San Francisco Bay Area campuses: Cal State East Bay, Sonoma State and San Jose State.
Those campuses may be worried about losing potential students to community colleges. Sonoma State in particular has seen its enrollment plummet in recent years. Staff at San Jose State, where enrollment has flattened, wrote in a memo that they are concerned the Moorpark program would “draw from the same pool of students” as their bachelor’s degree in engineering technology.
Forbes said he understands those worries but believes they may be misguided. “We are big fans of the CSU system, and we want our students to be successful there, and we’re doing everything we can to help them on the transfer end. But for this program, these are not students who would be going to CSU,” he said.
Forbes and other community college officials around the state are eager for WestEd’s decisions. “We’re hopeful, with the smart people we have in California, that rational minds can come to the table and figure out a better path forward,” Forbes said.
