California community colleges are offering 4-year degrees. Fresno City could be next
Bachelor’s degree programs at community colleges have emerged as one of the most promising paths to boosting California students’ educational attainment — and one of these new programs may soon be coming to Fresno.
A new report released Thursday from the University of California, Los Angeles’ Civil Rights Project team looked at data across the state’s 15 community colleges that currently offer bachelor’s degrees. The study found that the programs led to as much as a $31,900 average gain in income among students who graduated from them, among other positive outcomes.
“The majority of them are getting jobs that align with the specific degrees that they got trained in,” Marcela Cuellar, a UC Davis professor and one of the lead researchers on the report, said in an interview, “and … they’re staying in California. So contributing further to the economic vitality of our state … but also the needs of their communities.”
The programs also showed promising graduation rates for students of color. That could address issues with a “leaky” pipeline for low-income students and students of color who intend to transfer to a four-year institution for their bachelor’s degree but often ultimately don’t, the report suggests.
Yet Fresno County’s community colleges don’t currently offer any of these programs — even though the San Joaquin Valley has the lowest share of bachelor’s degrees of any region in the state.
Currently, the nearest options are Bakersfield College, which is about a 100-mile drive southeast of Fresno in Kern County, or Modesto Junior College, a roughly 90 mile journey northwest to Stanislaus County.
That could soon change, however, as a program is in the works at Fresno City College, State Center Community College District Chancellor Carole Goldsmith shared in an email to the Ed Lab.
“On March 30, 2023 Fresno City College received provisional approval for our first bachelors program in Dental Hygiene,” she said.
The program now awaits review from an accrediting agency and the California State University system, as well as approval from the California Community College Board of Governors.
“It is expected that we will have approval this summer for our first bachelor’s degree program,” she added. “We are all very excited as this has been a project that has been in the works for several years.”
Mateo Vargas, Fresno City College’s Associated Student Government President, said he would welcome the availability of more degree options for the campus.
Students “build their lives and their community” at Fresno City — then struggle to rebuild “from scratch” at another university, he said.
“If there was a bachelor’s degree option for students that choose to go to community colleges, I think it would be very, very beneficial for them,” he said in an interview with the Ed Lab.
California colleges offering bachelor’s degrees
Traditionally, community colleges offer two-year associate degrees.
The state moved to pilot four-year bachelor’s degree programs at community colleges in the 2017-18 school year.
The pilot program later became permanent in 2021, when Assembly Bill 927 was signed into law. The bill allowed for expansion to a maximum of 30 new bachelor’s degrees programs each academic year.
Some of the pilot programs offered bachelor’s degrees in biomanufacturing, health information management, and automotive technology, according to the UCLA report.
New programs have to meet certain criteria, such as proving there’s an “unmet workforce need” the degree can help address and showing it’s not duplicative of a program at a nearby CSU or UC school, according to state law.
The programs are also required to get accredited by the appropriate agency and demonstrate they have faculty for it.
“There’s these various layers of ensuring the quality of these programs,” said Cuellar, “(and) ensuring that they’re going to meet their goal.”
That’s the stage Fresno City College’s proposed dental hygiene program is in. Goldsmith said she’s expecting the California State University system to complete their analysis of the program within the next 30 days.
Many program graduates report higher wages
California’s community colleges enroll a larger share of the state’s Black and Latinx students than the UC and CSU systems, according to 2020 state data included in the UCLA report. Community colleges also tend to enroll more low-income students.
Despite that, studies have found that fewer than a third of California’s transfer-intending community college students transfer to a four-year institution within six years.
So what happens when these students can complete their bachelor’s degree at a community college instead?
In self-reported data collected by community colleges between 2018 and 2020, over 94% of students reported they found employment after graduation in a field “close” or “very close” to their field of study, the report notes.
Between 92% and 98% of students reported they were employed in California after graduating as well.
Over 78% reported finding employment within three months of graduation, and students reported roughly $15,000-$32,000 increase in wages since starting the program.
At the same time, students can save thousands of dollars on tuition through a community college program. A case study noted in the report found that a dental hygiene bachelor’s degree program at West Los Angeles College cost students between $65,000-$109,000 less than other nearby colleges.
The report also highlighted the data on graduation rates from the programs among students of color: 64% for Latinx students among cohorts from 2016 and 2018.
While white students had a slightly higher rate at 67%, this is another step toward closing existing gaps, the report notes.
Will more bachelor’s degree programs come to the Valley?
There’s a need for more robust data on the outcomes for participants in the community college bachelor’s degree programs, the report says — and more support from the state in collecting that data at each community college campus.
The Civil Rights Project team at UCLA hopes to specifically learn more about student subgroups, like students who have children and the formerly incarcerated, Cuellar said.
With the state’s approval of the addition of 30 new bachelor’s degree programs each year, Goldsmith said, there’s also the hope of expansion locally.
“California Community Colleges train and educate the vast majority of first responders — police, fire, and nurses,” she said. “Now that California has lifted the restriction on the number of bachelor (degrees) offered at our institutions, the colleges of State Center Community College District will seek to expand to offer other bachelor’s degree program(s) in areas that meet the needs of our community, valley residents and our employers.”
This fall, Vargas plans to head to Fresno State, where he plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree.
He said he would’ve considered pursuing his bachelor’s at Fresno City, had the option been available to him.
“Not only because it’s affordable,” he said. “It’s very important: the community that people build in it. I have had the chance to build a very strong support group there.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
This story was originally published April 6, 2023 at 5:30 AM with the headline "California community colleges are offering 4-year degrees. Fresno City could be next."
