Closed Doors?
Community college transfer students face
tightened admissions policies at Cal State and UC

By William Doyle and William Trombley
The California State University has tightened admissions requirements for community college transfer students, prompting protests from leaders of the two-year public colleges.

"Some of our CEOs (campus chief executive officers) are very concerned," said Grace Mitchell, president of Cuesta College, in San Luis Obispo, and president of the statewide community college CEOs' organization.

"The CEOs want to know if this is a new systemwide policy or if this is being decided college by college," said David Viar, executive director of the Community College League of California, which represents trustees and top administrators in the state's 106 community colleges.

"There is a need to provide assurance that transfer students...will be able to access in a timely manner upper division opportunities at UC and Cal State," President Peter R. MacDougall of Santa Barbara City College wrote to statewide Community College Chancellor Tom Nussbaum recently.

At least half a dozen Cal State campuses have closed admissions for upper-division transfer students for the spring semester. At least five are closed for next fall as well.

In addition, many campuses are implementing transfer requirements that have been on the books since 1988 but have not been rigidly enforced until now.

"I don't see how the system can work effectively if we're going to have this kind of blockage," MacDougall said in an interview.

MacDougall urged Chancellor Nussbaum to raise this issue at the California Higher Education Round Table, which includes all of the state's higher education leaders as well as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The Round Table met January 23, but Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz, who chairs the group, said the matter was not discussed.

If the problem cannot be resolved within higher education circles, MacDougall warned, it might be necessary for the Legislature to take action to make sure qualified community college graduates are able to transfer to Cal State and UC.

"I don't want to start an intersegmental war," Nussbaum said, "but if they're going to start revising the rules, then we're going to need a little bit of lag time" to adjust to the new procedures.

Nussbaum said there is a belief among community college officials that "CSU wants transfers when enrollment is down but not when it's up. That might be fine for CSU, but it's not fine for the California Community Colleges, nor for California higher education generally."

Cal State officials insist there has been no policy change.

"There is no concerted, planned effort to limit enrollment" by cutting back on community college transfer students, said Chuck Lindahl, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs. "Since 1974, state law has said we have to give the highest attention to fully qualified upper-division transfers, and we have done so."

He said the number of transfers has increased steadily and that upper-division students now account for 68 percent of all Cal State undergraduates, exceeding the 60 percent goal set by the state's Master Plan for Higher Education.

Campuses may limit the number of lower-division (freshman and sophomore) transfers because those students have the option of attending community college, Lindahl said, but he was adamant that qualified upper-division applicants have not been turned away.

However, in telephone interviews with admissions personnel on half a dozen Cal State campuses, none mentioned a distinction between lower-division and upper-division applicants.

Lindahl acknowledged that not all of Cal State's 22 campuses have been vigilant about enforcing the system's transfer rules.

A 1988 Board of Trustees policy states that a prospective transfer student must have achieved at least a 2.0 grade-point average in 56 units of transferable work. These must include 30 units of general education courses, including English, mathematics, speech and composition.

"Our campuses were not consistently implementing this policy, so in 1996 the trustees said, 'do it!,'" Lindahl said. He suggested that this tightening-up has led to the community college complaints.

In response to the complaints, Cal State presidents have been meeting with community college leaders in their service areas to assure them that transfer policies remain unchanged. In addition, Lindahl and Donald Gerth, president of Cal State Sacramento and chairman of the systemwide admissions advisory council, met with representatives of the statewide community college presidents organization in late January.

In all these meetings, "our main message is that nothing has changed," Lindahl said.

Despite these assurances, many community college leaders remain convinced that prospective transfer students are being turned away. They also believe that if qualified community college students are not allowed to move on to four-year institutions, then one of the basic tenets of the higher education master plan has been abandoned.

At least six Cal State campuses have announced that they will accept no more undergraduate applications-from either transfers or first-time students-for this spring's semester. They are San Diego State, Cal State Northridge, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Sonoma State, Humboldt State and Cal State Monterey Bay. With the exception of Northridge, all of these are closed for next fall as well.

The University of California also has revised its admissions standards for transfer students, effective next year, but apparently has received fewer complaints.

A transfer student still needs a 2.4 grade-point average, but the number of required transferable quarter units has been increased from 84 to 90, according to Carla Ferri, UC dean of undergraduate admissions. For the first time, students must have taken specific courses, including English, mathematics, social science, humanities and biological science.

"We have been discussing this for a long time with the community colleges and we feel they are quite satisfied with the changes," Ferri said.

In the 1994-95 academic year, the last complete year for which information is available, 57,841 community college students transferred to Cal State, 10,929 to UC, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission.