Are we shutting her out? Dual degree and transfer agreements between state four-year and community colleges were once an open door to universal access. Now, for many, those doors may be closing.

Community college students in Seattle are angry and confused, and it's officials at the University of Washington's Seattle campus that are the target of their ire. The success of the Washington community college system, combined with demographic growth and a shortage of state funding, recently forced UW Seattle to announce plans to limit enrollment by changing the terms of its community college transfer agreement. The old one was clearly defined and based on GPA; the new one is a fuzzier, yet-to-be-defined "comprehensive review" of a student's application and record.

But, "the University of Washington forgot this was a 'joint agreement' when they announced the changes to the press," protests Loretta Seppanen, assistant director of Education Services at the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. "For at least four months, there was huge negative fallout and just plain anger, and there is considerable student angst that has not yet been addressed."

Over-Enrollment Woes

The new transfer changes will not be the only factors thwarting access in Washington State. In fact, quantifying just how much access is currently being denied by the state's funding problems alone, is difficult. For years, Washington state colleges have accepted more students than they receive funding for; Washington state universities combined with the state community college system may be over-enrolled by as much as 16,000 FTEs, says Tim Washburn, assistant vice president for Enrollment Services at UW Seattle.

"Over-enrollment is a significant issue for Washington," he says. "The state has not been able to provide enough funding for the students presently enrolled, much less provide funding for the students in the K-12 pipeline."

Yet it's the size of the bulge coming through that pipeline that most worries higher education supporters in the state. Most states will see a population crest around the end of the decade, followed by a gradual decline, but Washington will experience another crest in 2017, says Seppanen. The current over-enrollment situation has already caused three public universities in Washington to change their transfer policies or more strictly enforce the application deadlines and other requirements.

"The University of Washington Seattle, Western Washington--and probably pretty soon Washington State University in Pullman--are now unable to accept everyone who comes with a Washington state community college degree and a good GPA," Seppanen says. "They now have to engage in selective admission of transfers."

UW's selective admission process has become a necessity, say supporters of the move, because the school had been delaying admission for one or more quarters to those students who had been "guaranteed" seats based on their community college degree and GPA. This has created a backlog of hundreds of state transfer students waiting for admission.

"You could no Longer call it a guarantee if the person was going to have to wait three quarters to get in," Seppanen says. So after years of a GPA-based admission policy, in the winter of 2004 Washington will shift to one that Looks at many aspects of a student's record and will include requirements that students select a major and complete all the prerequisites for that degree. The hope is that they'll be able to graduate two years later instead of staying on for extra semesters. The new review process may also require a personal statement, and oblige students with fewer than 40 credits to submit high school transcripts.

"It's a lot of work, and definitely more expensive than the previous plan," Washburn says.

While the new admissions review process moves into overdrive, the Washington Legislature recently approved a budget that would give an additional $10 million to higher education to pay for new seats, or compensate schools for the over-enrollment. Admissions will remain proportional, however, as the university has opted to maintain its agreement calling for transfer students from Washington community colleges to make up 30 percent of all incoming students each year. In addition, the legislature approved a one-year experiment that creates something of a voucher system in higher ed. Under the plan, private colleges in the state can compete for funding of 324 seats at $11,000 per seat, in high-need fields such as nursing and engineering. This grant would bring Seattle-area private IHEs into the same tuition range as the public schools.

Seppanen believes there's only one true way for Washington to fix its higher ed capacity problems. "More money--it has to be solved that way. Our population growth is way too big not to have it happen this way."

'Terminating' Enrollment

But Washington is not the only state where the relationship between the community college system and senior institutions is under pressure. In fact, nationally, though these relationships had been characterized by increasing cooperation and articulation agreements in recent years, in many places the cooperation between community colleges and four-year IHEs is falling into jeopardy as capacity in both becomes constrained.

Of course, here again, state budget shortfalls are a primary catalyst for restricting enrollment and transfers; close behind is the baby boom echo--shorthand for the 20 percent surge in the college enrollment expected in the U.S. between 1998 and 2010. These factors, combined with underlying changes in the education landscape in the U.S., has meant that students are being shut out of both community cortege and senior cortege classrooms. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (www.highereducation.org) estimates that some 250,000 students were unable to enroll in college this fall because of rising tuition or restricted enrollments. And because community colleges enroll 46 percent of all African-American undergraduate students and 55 percent of art Hispanic students, there is also the question of whether poor and minority students will suffer most from the situation.

"The combination of the down economy and the baby boom echo has created the perfect storm in higher education," says Mark David Milliron, president and CEO of the League for Innovation in the Community College (www.league.org). "We're at a time when the role of community colleges and transfer education has never been as valued.... The challenge, of course, has been the money."

California (which, for the first time in the state's history recalled a sitting governor, Gray Davis, and voted in actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger to rescue the state from its colossal budget woes) is now the prime example of precisely how dramatically a troubled economy can overtly restrict access to higher education. Schwarzenegger's recently proposed state budget effectively freezes enrollment numbers in the University of California and California State University systems. It requires each to divert (in an as yet unspecified manner) 10 percent of incoming freshmen into dual admissions programs at community colleges, where the state would pick up the tuition tab for the first two years (a markedly tower tab than the one they'd pick up at the four-year publics) before the students complete their undergrad degrees at UC or CSU. [The proposal was still in debate at press time.] The community colleges would be given funds to increase enrollment slightly, but their students would face a 40 percent fee increase, from $18 to $26 per unit. Analysts say the tack of growth in the UC and CSU systems--along with the diversion of an estimated 8,000 freshmen to community colleges--would mean that, art told, more than 22,000 students who would be eligible to enter the senior corteges could be shut out due to a trickle-down effect.

"We have a genuine policy problem because, without question, those students from UC and CSU will take seats from the traditional community college students," confesses Scott Lay, budget director for the Community College League of California (www.ccleague.org). "Those who were going to be at UC are generally more ready to tackle their higher education, it's going to be a kind of survival of the fittest."

What's more, say detractors of the governor's proposal who recognize the impending shortage of community college seats, the plan also institutes a built-in bias against students who already have a bachelor's degree. Those students Looking to continue their education would be charged $50 per unit (versus $26 per, for those who haven't already graduated). This facet alone of Schwarzenegger's proposal has drawn severe criticism, for it undermines a most vital aspect of any community college mission (and, ironically, fellow Republican George Bush's prime community college support initiative): worker retraining. Opponents say that in the end it may make community college just too costly for those who are unemployed and looking for retraining opportunities. Advocates, however, counter that because of financial need all tees are waived for more than one-third of community college students in California.

Solutions

New Jersey, too, is looking for innovative ways to deal with a capacity problem that caused Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, to pull back overall enrollment by several hundred students in 2003. Two years ago, Rutgers created a dual-degree program that would offer qualified students (who might otherwise be rejected because of capacity shortages) the opportunity to spend their first two years at a New Jersey community college, with guaranteed transfer to Rutgers after that, if they maintained a 3.0 GPA. But the fledgling dual-degree program, which enrolled nearly 1,000 students in the fall of 2002, limited its enrollment to 325 in the fall of 2003. The cutback was based (or blamed) on the "academic promise" of the students who applied, along with capacity problems at both the upper divisions of Rutgers and at community colleges, according to Sandra Lanman, associate director of Media Relations at Rutgers.

"This is a brand-new program," Lanman explains, "thus there are no benchmarks against which to measure it. Undoubtedly, it Will continue to evolve in order to meet the university's, county colleges' and, most importantly, the students' needs."

And though Rutgers' version of the program is new, similar attempts at other baccalaureate institutions have not been successful. For years, the University of California at Berkeley has offered a dual-admission plan to qualified students it doesn't have room for. But few choose to go that route.

"We turn away a Lot of incredible students because we don't have the space, [but we find they're not looking for two years at a community cortege; they're] looking for another four-year experience," says Christina Maslach, vice provost for Undergraduate Education at Berkeley. Still, dual admission programs are quite successful in many places where students aren't necessarily intent on a four-year residential setting, says League's Milliron, pointing to Arizona State's agreement with Maricopa Community Colleges (AZ) as a prime example.

"For people who are Looking for the residential university experience, (dual admission) might not be the choice," Milliron says. "They think the door might be shut for them at the end, and we have to do a Lot of work around changing that perception."

Yet, Patrick Murphy, associate professor and director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco, points out that while dual admission programs may help relieve capacity at baccalaureate colleges, "Guess what? It all rolls down hill." In other words, as in the case of those Rutgers hopefuls, the community colleges that would supply the first two years of the college education may be underfunded or over capacity, throwing a glitch into the best of intentions.

Still, Murphy says, dual admission programs are without a doubt "quite a bargain" for parents--and states, too. "It's wise to start thinking along these lines much more strategically." The trick lies in keeping the programs intact.

Four Years or Bust

Another approach to the domino effect of capacity problems is to help students to complete their undergraduate degrees in four years, rather than take up seats for extra semesters white they finish requirements. One way to do this is to simply improve the transfer process between the community colleges and senior institutions--a feat that can often be accomplished electronically. Leading the way is a Web site created by the New Jersey Statewide Transfer Initiative (www.njtransfer.org) that allows students to match up their community college, desired major, and the four-year university they intend to transfer to. The Web site indicates which courses should be taken at the community college and lists transfer contacts at the senior school. More than 25 baccalaureate corteges are part of the system, as are all of the state's community colleges.

Baccalaureate institutions in Washington and California are also tackling this issue. The Cal State University system recently ruled that students be required to complete at least 60 credits at the community college level before transferring with a declared major. The University of Washington's proposal would all but require a student to apply to a particular department rather than transfer to a school.

Community College Baccalaureates

On the periphery of the transfer-agreement tumult is the growing community college baccalaureate (CCB) movement. In the 2000 Carnegie Foundation classification (www.carnegiefoundation.org/classification), 57 institutions were categorized as baccalaureate/associate degree colleges primarily awarding associate degrees and certificates, but conferring at least 10 percent baccalaureate degrees. Some 14 among these were public institutions such as four two-year public-university branch campuses of Ohio State University. In many cases, these schools are offering workforce-related bachelor degrees in technical areas that traditional and research universities are not willing or able to penetrate. In some cases, the senior institutions have opposed the community corteges' petitions to confer baccalaureate degrees.

"Fear and territorialism are two of the reasons why these programs are opposed," says Deborah L. Floyd, professor of Higher Education at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Typically, the opposition is behind the scenes, but it became public in Florida, for instance, when first St. Petersburg Junior College and then others sought to grant baccalaureate degrees. In the St. Petersburg case, the University of South Florida first opposed the junior college's plan to offer a BS degree in nursing, and four-year degrees in information technology and teaching. Eventually the two institutions reached a compromise in which both would receive state funding to grow.

"The community and both institutions supported this agreement and we now work closely together as planned," says Tom Furlong, senior institutions VP for Baccalaureate Program and University Partnerships at St. Petersburg College (which dropped the "junior" from its name).

From Pipeline to 'Swirl'

Optimists see the tension brewing between community and senior colleges, and the CCB movement (not to mention the rise of for-profit institutions), as the natural fallout of a fundamental shift underway in the American higher education landscape.

"You can't use the pipeline metaphor anymore," says Milliron. "The context of higher education is no longer about the full-time residential student--they comprise less than 20 percent of higher ed students. We're really moving from a 'pipeline' model to a learning 'swirl' that fully enables people to team for a lifetime. That's a new thing for our country; we didn't develop our system to do that."

But this shifting sand doesn't make today's access issues--created by fiscal and capacity constraints coupled with population surges--any less urgent. And failure to ensure funding and seats for all who would apply to both community and senior colleges will probably have the net effect of restricting minority access to higher education, say the pundits.

"The vast majority of students in higher education are going to be able to survive this crisis, whether it be fee increases or whatever," says Lay of California's Community College League. "But 10 years from now, we'll probably be able to say it was the most under-prepared and economically disadvantaged students who were the casualties."

If this eventuality is unacceptable, say the prognosticators, now is the time for traditional publics and privates, along with community colleges, to re-examine their programs, students, and funding sources.

"I really think this can be a positive thing," says Floyd. "Universities can sharpen their mission, and community colleges can also sharpen their commitment to access. Higher education needs to wake up and see the opportunity before us, to sharpen our focus."

RELATED ARTICLE: Reauthorization debate on transfer.

In Congress, the debate surrounding the reauthorization of the higher education act has included the issue of transferring credits, with Rep. Howard (Buck) McKeon (R-CA) and eight co-sponsors proposing that the federal government intervene in the transfer process that has until now been governed by individual institutions. The issue has been introduced in several formats, but the key component of the proposals would require that institutions accept credits as tong as they coordinate content with a class offered by the accepting university, and as long as the student has achieved the requisite performance level. This would prevent universities from basing their acceptance decisions solely on the accrediting body of the transferring university.

The argument in favor of this credit transfer proposal posits that since federal funds are used to pay for student education, when students have to repeat coursework because credits were not accepted at a second school those Federal funds are wasted.

According to Mark David Milliron, president and CEO of the League for Innovation in the Community College (www.league.org), "The question becomes, 'Are we wasting money by funding people to take classes twice, because institutions aren't accredited by the same body?'"

Yet, the American Association of Community Colleges (www.aacc.nche.edu) strongly opposes any federal government intervention in the issue of credit transfer.

"Our people think that the acceptance of credit is really a very fundamental aspect of an institution's mission and activity," says David Baime, vice president for Government Relations at the AACC. "If they're forced to take credits from students, they can no longer positively affirm" (that is, put their stamp of approval on) "a student whom they confer a degree upon graduation."

Baime notes that for-profit institutions are lobbying strongly in favor of the credit-transfer legislation and traditional schools are lobbying against it, preferring to handle the issue within academia. However, the for-profits are proving a powerful force in this area, perhaps to the detriment of the traditional system.--RS

Rebecca Sausner is a New York City-based freelance education and technology writer.