SDSU’s North County Extension Is No Threat to Community Colleges

Some people might regard the recently announced North County extension campus of San Diego State University to be as welcomed by the local community colleges as a giant McDonald’s restaurant would be to the local hamburger joints. The analogy falls short on more than one account.

To start with, MiraCosta College, Palomar College and San Diego State University all have a common owner--the public. Actually, the State of California supports three systems of public higher education. The University of California, with its nine campuses, represents one of the world’s premier research universities. The California State University system, of which San Diego State University is a part, supports 19 campuses and is the major baccalaureate-degree-granting system. The California Community Colleges, with 106 campuses, enroll most of the college students in the state, but they are limited to offering the first two years of college course work (lower-division classes).

Of course, community colleges, being the most local of the systems, also offer important vocational programs and provide other educational and cultural activities for their local communities. All three systems have been recognized for their excellence.

Extension campuses are not new to the CSU system. In fact, at least two of the universities (Stanislaus and Northridge) began as extensions.

The North County extension of San Diego State will be just a few miles from the Palomar College campus. The close proximity of the two colleges will make cooperation between the institutions especially important.

Fortunately, the two institutions have a history of cooperation. SDSU currently offers a limited upper-division and graduate program in San Marcos. Palomar College prints the North Campus class offerings in its class schedule to encourage students to enroll in upper-division classes. In fact, SDSU is the major transfer university for Palomar graduates. Between 400 and 500 students transfer from Palomar College to SDSU each year. Reports sent back to Palomar indicate that these transfer students do as well at SDSU as the students who started there.

The two institutions have approached the new campus with a similar spirit of cooperation. Last spring, a liaison committee composed of staff members from each campus began meeting, with the objective of guiding the implementation of the North Campus curriculum. Officials at SDSU expect to be able to begin teaching with 4,000 students on the new San Marcos campus in 1992. Most of those students are likely to be graduates of Palomar and MiraCosta colleges.

The plan calls for a review in 1995 by the California Postsecondary Education Commission to determine whether the university should continue to provide upper-division and graduate-level classes only, or should duplicate the lower-division offerings of the local community colleges. The commission’s recommendation will probably be influenced by enrollments at all three institutions.

Although enrollments have fallen dramatically at the local community colleges over the last four years, recent data indicate that they have stabilized, and the colleges are planning for future growth. More than 40,000 new residents, 84% from immigration, are added to the North County service area each year. A report submitted in March by Tadlock & Associates projected an enrollment of upper-division and graduate students at the North County Campus of SDSU of 15,278 by the year 2010. The report indicated that, if the campus also offered lower-division course work, the enrollment could reach 21,400 students then.

Although universities that offer only upper-division and postgraduate studies have worked well in some other states, there will no doubt be pressure to add the lower-division segment. Generally, universities need the volume of lower-division students to support their upper-division and graduate programs. Lower-division education, being less costly, can provide the resources to pay for the upper-division and graduate offerings. Local civic leaders will likely add to the support for a “full-fledged” university, even though there is no logical reason why the lower-division offerings could not be provided just as well by the local community colleges.

A decision to add lower-division offerings to the university’s curriculum would probably not hurt either community college very much if it is done gradually and if the courses are in areas where the community colleges’ offerings are not sufficient to meet the need.

The addition of lower-division courses would, however, very likely change the nature of the university students. Systemwide, CSU campuses draw about 42% of their students from outside the local service areas. In contrast, an upper-division and graduate university would probably serve mostly local residents. Adding the first two years would probably draw more non-local students into North County. Presumably, some of these non-local students would take some of their course work at local community colleges to offset the loss of local students at those institutions.

The California State Universities admit almost twice as many community college transfer students each year as they do first-time freshmen from California high schools. Despite rumors to the contrary, the transfer function of the community colleges is alive and well. The residents of North San Diego County are fortunate to have two excellent community colleges. Let us welcome an excellent upper-division and graduate university.