$100-Million Revamping of 2-Year College System Gains

Just two weeks after the California community colleges’ chancellor resigned in frustration because the state had not “reformed” the two-year schools, a key Senate committee Wednesday unanimously endorsed the concept of a $100-million plan to restructure the 106-campus system.

The bill’s author, Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), told the Senate Appropriations Committee that his proposals represent “historic legislation” that would “put the colleges back on the map.” The committee then voted, 7 to 0, to place the measure in its so-called suspense file, thereby approving it in principle but requiring it to compete with other major spending bills next week for final action.

Former Chancellor’s Lament

Critics have charged that the two-year colleges, once considered an effective part of California’s elaborate system of public higher education, have fallen into disarray in recent years. They point to declining enrollments in the early 1980s and contend that more community college graduates should be successfully transferring to four-year schools.

The community colleges’ outspoken chancellor, Joshua L. Smith, resigned Aug. 13 after just two years on the job. Smith, who will become president of a community college in New Jersey, left with embittered words, lamenting that he had not persuaded legislators to place greater authority for the system in the hands of the state Board of Governors, a move he called the “key ingredient to making reform work.”

The Vasconcellos bill would reorder the hierarchy of the community colleges, whose 106 campuses are operated by 70 independent districts, each governed by an elected board of trustees. Under the measure, a statewide “common core curriculum” of lower-division course work would be established by the community colleges and the California State University and University of California systems to assure that community college students could meet requirements to transfer to the four-year schools.

Each two-year campus also would be required to maintain a job placement office and to expand remedial education programs, while another provision would seek to increase the proportion of full-time faculty members over part-time instructors employed by the colleges. Part-time instructors cost less to hire, as they do not receive the same benefits that full-time employees do, but often are considered to be academically inferior to full-time instructors.

At the statewide level, the colleges’ 15-member Board of Governors would be given greater prestige with the addition to it of the governor and six other high officials as ex officio members. These officials already serve in a similar capacity on the UC Board of Regents and the CSU Board of Trustees.

The expanded Board of Governors, whose members are appointed by the governor, would be given greater oversight responsibility for the 70 college districts, conducting evaluations of their financial condition and educational accomplishments and issuing guidelines for the roles of academic senates and student representatives in local college governance.

Vasconcellos conceded that his was “an expensive bill,” which the legislative analyst estimates would cost the state as much as $100 million a year for the foreseeable future. The high cost of the reforms also caught the attention of the Deukmejian Administration’s Finance Department, whose representative told the committee that “we are very much concerned with the cost.”

Nonetheless, the representative, Carl Rogers, said his department supports the concepts contained in the bill, and Vasconcellos later said he believes that the measure will be approved.

“We are trying to find out where the governor is on this bill. Obviously, he is the key player,” Vasconcellos said.

A spokeswoman for Deukmejian said the governor has not taken a position on the bill.