TRANSFERRING TO UNIVERSITIES CAN BE ROUGH REQUIREMENTS INCONSISTENT.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard and Lisa M. Sodders Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - Transferring community college credits to universities remains difficult and confusing for students and should be made more consistent, state Legislative Analyst's Office officials said Tuesday.

For example, students who take a particular set of math classes to meet the transfer admission requirements for the University of California, Los Angeles, might find they need a different set to get into UC at Berkeley.

The difficulty in determining what will be accepted at different University of California and California State University campuses leads to confusion and often forces community college students to spend more time and money on classes than necessary, according to a report from Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill's office.

``At the student level, it's difficult to determine: Does this course meet this requirement, or which requirement does this course meet?'' said Anthony Simbol, an analyst in the office. ``If you streamlined it, a student takes a course and he'll know this course meets the UC requirement for introductory physics.

``They won't have to worry about: Well, does it meet Berkeley's physics requirement? It makes the process a lot easier.''

State officials have recently tried to improve the process for CSU campuses, enacting a 2004 bill from Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, that required the CSU system and community colleges to develop a uniform set of requirements.

But Simbol noted the bill allowed a few loopholes for a small number of courses that continue to vary across campuses. The LAO report recommends closing those loopholes, as well as applying the same process to the UC system.

Scott has a pending bill now to do that, but the process is seen as more complicated for UC than it was for CSU.

Keith Boyum, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs for the CSU system, said its 23 campuses were already pretty much ``one size fits all'' in terms of transfer requirements, with some variations for impacted programs. For example, students who want to transfer to the impacted campuses at CSU Long Beach and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo need to declare a major when they apply.

Boyum said students can get help by accessing CSU Mentor for an online transfer planner. ``For the student who knows what she wants to do and where she wants to go, (it) is going to (give) a very direct route for doing that.''

Students who don't know where they want to transfer to or what they want to study would be directed to take general-education classes, with the hope that they would find their chosen major in one of those classes, Boyum said.

``We always believe we can do a better job,'' remarked Brad Hayward, spokesman for the UC system, although he said he had not yet had a chance to review the LAO report in detail. ``We have been working with the community colleges around the state to make sure every UC has an agreement with every community college specifying how students can prepare for a UC major and have a smooth path to a UC degree.''

Some students at Los Angeles Valley College and Pierce College said it's fairly easy to figure out what courses are required to transfer - if the student has selected the transfer destination and major.

``It's not rocket science,'' said LAVC student Ashley Dickerson, 18, of Toluca Lake, who said she found most of the information she needed online.

Harrison Sheppard, [phone]

harrison.sheppard(at)dailynews.com