As the average time for a two-year degree approaches 3.5 years, state legislators and community college leaders are pushing back with Senate Bill 1440, a plan to streamline the community college and transfer experiences. Students at Southwestern College may soon be able to earn an Associate’s degree with guaranteed admission to a California State University as the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act (STAR) continues to gain traction in California.

State Senator Alex Padilla’s 2010 bill was signed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and is now in the hands of the community colleges.

Local colleges were directed to create 60-unit Associate degrees for the most common transfer majors and implement them when they are ready, but no later than 2014. All the state’s 112 community colleges are to design transfer model curriculum degrees or “degrees with a guarantee,” that serve their student communities. By 2014 the chancellor’s office would like all community colleges to offer 100 percent of the 25 STAR Act degrees.

“The intent was that students would move through their first two years in a much more streamlined, faster pace,” said Randy Beach, SWC Academic Senate president.

These degrees guarantee admission to a CSU as a junior upon completion.

“It’s not just an articulation agreement with one community college to another CSU,” said former California Community College Chancellor Dr. Jack Scott. “It means a system-wide transfer.”

SWC has two approved STAR act degrees, Math and Communications, said Beach. Another five are in the pipeline.

Student enrollment into the programs so far has been low, said Transfer Center Coordinator Cecilia Cabico, but he said the program is still new and many students are not aware of it.

“Right now it’s in its infancy,” she said. “But we are doing a couple of different measures to inform students about SB 1440. The first thing that we will be doing is a mass e-mail to every declared student in math and communications letting them know we have this new Associate degree program.”

These special degrees have been designed to directly mirror the pre-requisite classes needed for eligible CSU majors, Cabico said.

“For it to be deemed a similar major, the Cal State system and the community college system have both agreed and said, yes, this matches our curriculum,” she said. “So truly what you’re doing here at the community college level is the same as what native freshmen and sophomore students would be doing at the university level.”

These degrees guarantee that it will be easier to transfer to SB 1440 universities.

“The guarantee is you’ll complete your Bachelor’s degree in 60 units,” Cabico said. “But the other benefit is that you actually receive priority admission consideration to a CSU.”

Transfer students from outside a university’s local admission can receive a GPA advantage when applying to impacted CSU campuses or majors. Currently, these students receive an additional 0.2 GPA “bump” to make them more competitive with regular students for admission. Anyone actually within the local area is guaranteed admission regardless of their GPA as long as it meets the 2.0 minimum standard.

SB 1440 also mandates that CSUs cannot make students repeat courses they have already taken that are similar to the community college degree. As a result, students only need to take 60 more units as part of their major to receive a Bachelor’s degree.

An SWC statement praised the legislation.

“Transfer students accumulate extra units because they are often forced to meet multiple and conflicting transfer course requirements depending on the four-year institution to which they plan to transfer,” it read. “This bill will help alleviate those problems, saving you time and money, and letting you focus on your education.”