By admin 
With the twin goals of meeting local workforce needs and boosting access to higher education, community colleges across California advocated for legislation this year that would allow them to offer more bachelor’s degree programs. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the package of bills Friday — but community colleges are not celebrating.
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Following significant amendments in the final days of the legislative session, community college leaders are concerned the new laws will end up creating more barriers than support for the system’s growing baccalaureate program.
“So many of those amendments don’t seem to align with the original issue that we were trying to address, which is the California Community College’s position to offer workforce-oriented degree programs to meet local industry need in a way that the California State University system may not be best suited to do,” said San Diego Community College District Chancellor Greg Smith. “I expect that we will see some unintended consequences.”
What do the bills say?
Historically, the community colleges offered certificate programs and two-year associate degrees. Over the last decade, the system built a baccalaureate program to make it easier for its students to obtain four-year degrees and get better jobs.
But, in order to preserve the original mission of each public higher education segment in California and ensure efficient use of state resources, community colleges were only permitted to offer bachelor’s degrees if they did not duplicate programs offered by the University of California and CSU systems.
Senate Bill 960 and Assembly Bill 2694, now signed into law, aimed to ease that restriction. In their current form, they allow community colleges to duplicate programs offered by traditional four-year public universities if they are not within the same geographic region. Duplication is also permitted if a CSU program in the community college’s region has had a transfer acceptance rate of less than 75% for three consecutive years.
As the bills moved through the Legislature, the CSU and UC systems registered their opposition. The UC called for a complete review of the state’s higher education master plan that was adopted in 1960 and set in stone different functions for the UC, CSU and community colleges. And the CSU drew attention to the impact on its “fiscal stability and institutional sustainability.” This follows years of tension between CSU and community colleges over what constitutes duplication of programs — a conflict that has left several proposed programs in limbo.
Newsom too has weighed in. Since 2024, he has vetoed three bills to expand the community college baccalaureate program.
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What changed?
In a bid to get the bills through the finish line, the authors made significant amendments at the end of August. This included a new tiered system to establish caps on the total number of baccalaureate programs a community college district can offer. A district’s tier is determined by its rate of students who earned an award or transferred within three years of entering the cohort, measured against the performance of districts statewide.
Per this system, a Tier 1 district can offer up to 10 bachelor’s degree programs at any given time. The cap goes up to 11 for districts with more than one campus and to 12 for those with more than 75,000 full-time students. Tier 5 districts, meanwhile, whose graduation and transfer rates are the lowest in the state, will only be able to offer up to two programs. A program approved before Jan. 1, 2028 — when the laws take effect — will not be counted towards the district’s cap.
“This could be particularly harmful to rural, single-college, and historically underserved communities,” said California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian in an opposition letter on Aug. 29. “A college could have a clear workforce need, students who need a local and affordable bachelor’s degree option, and the capacity to offer a strong program, but still be limited because of where its district falls in the statewide ranking.”
The CSU, meanwhile, commended the laws for striking an “appropriate balance between expanding access where needed, responding to workforce demands and preserving the critical coordination that has long strengthened California’s higher education system and economy.”
A news release from Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-West Sacramento, who authored SB 960, said the new legislation “fixes the review process” so that “strong proposed degree programs justified by independently validated workforce needs data” can secure “quick approval.” While the community college system currently offers 66 bachelor’s degree programs, the new legislation authorizes nearly 700, the release said.
“Community colleges that are most successful at meeting the needs of their current students will each be authorized to launch as many as a dozen specialized bachelor’s degrees,” Cabaldon said in a statement. “On the other hand, the legislation makes clear that a college with a 5% graduation/transfer rate should not be undertaking an entirely new mission and launching multiple new bachelor’s degrees.”
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