‘Parallel’ Academic Programs Pledged : Crowded UCLA Directing Some to 2-Year Colleges

Faced with applications from nearly 4,000 more students than it can handle next fall, UCLA is urging many of them to take an option of enrolling in one of eight Los Angeles-area community colleges with a promise that they will be able to transfer to the university as juniors.

In turn, UCLA officials said, they have worked with the community colleges to assure that the academic programs “closely parallel” those of UCLA during the freshmen and sophomore years.

The students who are being encouraged to explore a community college education are those who have received “redirection” letters from UCLA. Those letters are sent to lower-ranking students in a potential freshmen class when there is an excess of applications.

The idea is designed not only to help UCLA with its flood of freshman applications, but to revive the community college transfer notion set forth in the 1960 California Master Plan of Higher Education. That plan called for many students to start at community colleges and transfer to the University of California for their junior and senior years.

“We wanted to certify to the students that their lower division program will be equal (at the two-year colleges) to what they would receive here, both the quality of instruction and the peers in their classes,” said Juan Francisco Lara, dean of UCLA’s office of interinstitutional programs, which set up the new program.

University and college officials say they have no idea how many students may elect to attend a community college under the new option.

The community colleges listed by UCLA are Santa Monica, El Camino, Pasadena City College, the College of the Canyons and four in the Los Angeles Community College District: Harbor, Pierce, Valley and West Los Angeles.

Tried in Bay Area

A similar program involving four Bay Area community colleges was announced by the University of California, Berkeley, in December.

The new programs are coming at a time when concern is growing that relatively few students are transferring from the community colleges to the nine-campus UC system. Last year, with 1.1 million students enrolled statewide in the two-year colleges, only about 5,300 transferred to the university.

Meanwhile, both UCLA and UC Berkeley have had more qualified applications to their freshman classes than they can admit.

This year, however, the other universities in the system have also filled up early, leaving only the campuses at Riverside and Santa Cruz to take a large number of redirected students. Officials said the campuses at Irvine and Davis are also accepting students, but only in a few majors.

Choices Offered

When UCLA sent out its redirection letters to about 3,800 applicants in late January, the students were told that they could choose to appeal the university’s decision, go elsewhere to a four-year college, or accept one of the options such as attending a community college participating in the new program.

UCLA officials said that the colleges they selected have agreed to offer a sequence of high-quality courses, even if their enrollment is low.

“If you have only seven students sign up for calculus, the college might normally cancel the class. We have an agreement that these classes will be offered regardless of the enrollment,” Lara said.

Class Sizes Smaller

He also noted that the community colleges typically have far smaller classes than UCLA offers to its freshmen and sophomores.

“We think everyone stands to win with this,” Lara said. “The students will get a course of study that parallels UCLA’s. This should help reshape the image of the community college transfer program. And we hope to get these students back as juniors.”