Legislation Gives Boost to 2-Year Colleges and Vocational Education

Community colleges face a brighter future as a result of recent legislation that more clearly defines the mission of the state’s 106 2-year institutions--particularly in vocational education, officials say.

And for the three community colleges in the South Bay, a stronger emphasis on vocational education is likely to mean a larger emphasis on high-technology training to serve the area’s thousands of aerospace workers.

The new measure, AB 1725, authored by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose) and signed recently by Gov. George Deukmejian, is “the single most important legislation related to community colleges to come forth in 20 to 30 years,” said Nathaniel Jackson, dean of vocational education at El Camino College.

He said the bill, among other things, raises vocational education to the same standing and importance as academic education in community colleges. “The legislation tells us that we are not to be only a junior college that prepares students for 4-year universities, nor will we be just a super trade school preparing workers for the job market,” Jackson said. “We are to fulfill both missions on an equal basis.”

Jackson said the college offers courses in about 40 vocations, ranging from business office administration and fashion design to automotive repair and electronics.

But the largest single area of vocational education at El Camino is computer technology, which covers everything from simple circuit design to 16-bit microprocessors.

And to satisfy the needs of South Bay high-tech firms, the electronics field is expected to remain in first place as vocational education assumes greater importance, Jackson said. “We recognize that in our community a major share of future jobs will be found in electronics,” he said.

By virtue of its size (27,000 students) and central location in the South Bay, El Camino outstrips other community colleges in training high-tech students for local industry. But Harbor College (8,700 enrollment) and Los Angeles Southwest (5,500)--both branches of the Los Angeles Community College District--have the same mandate under AB 1725. As a result, officials there said they expect to increase their participation on that front while pushing ahead with vocational education in other fields.

Industry officials said they welcome the stronger emphasis on vocational training in community colleges, seeing it as an expansion of a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship.

“We have had a tremendous interaction with community colleges for many years and we expect that relationship to expand with our training needs,” said John Booth, a spokesman for TRW in Redondo Beach.

Booth said TRW has worked with El Camino in developing a number of courses, such as training in the operation of personal computers and in computer programming. In some courses, El Camino instructors go to the plant to teach employees after their regular shifts. In others, workers attend classes on the campus, he said.

Growing Needs

“Increasingly complex and changing technology is driving the need for more education,” said Everett Wells, head of college training programs at Hughes Radar Systems Group in El Segundo. High-tech workers, he said, “can no longer say they don’t need more education.”

To help keep curricula in tune with changing needs for training, Hughes and other firms participate in regular committee meetings with college representatives in developing new courses, Wells said.

“Quality control, for example, is becoming more important in our operations and requires highly technical skills,” he said. “We want to be sure that training keeps pace with the demand.”

About 1,700 Hughes Radar employees participate annually in college training programs, mostly at El Camino, group spokesman Lee Levitt said, at a cost to the company of more than $1 million. Hughes, like most other major firms, reimburses employees for tuition, books and other training expenses.

While community colleges and 4-year universities provide a major share of the education, most of the larger firms also have in-house training programs to meet specific needs.

Linda Holloway, who directs in-house programs at Hughes Radar, said the choice between public and company education often hinges on “whether we’re looking at specific or generic training.” Community colleges can best provide training that applies to work in a number of related industries and often involves some theoretical background, she said.

Own Program Considered

“But if we need specific, hands-on training with Hughes equipment and procedures, then it may make more sense to set up our own program,” she said. Holloway said that 35 to 50 Hughes Radar employees are taking company training at any time in any of about 20 courses, such as the fabrication of hybrids for microelectronics, structural bonding and wire wrapping.

Roxanne Arian, director of training programs for AiResearch in Torrance, said rapid technology changes sometimes dictate in-house training. “The time allowed for acquiring new skills may be too short to go the community college route,” she said. “But when the skills can be phased in over a period of time, we use the public school system.”

AiResearch, once a part of the Garrett Corp., is now a division of Allied-Signal Aerospace Co.

Harbor College does not have enough electronics courses to qualify students for a certificate or associate in arts degree in that field, said Irene Goolsby-Pinkard, dean of vocational education on the Wilmington campus until her reassignment last week to Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley.

“It’s been mainly a funding problem,” she said. “But with the advent of AB 1725, I’m sure Harbor will be developing a broader range of aerospace courses in the future,” she said.

In the meantime, she said, Harbor offers many other vocational courses, such as nursing, architecture, early childhood development and retraining for workers displaced by shifts in the job market.

A rapid expansion of high-tech courses at Los Angeles Southwest College has helped boost enrollment to 5,500--an increase of 75% since the fall of 1986--said Irving Weinstein, vice president for academic affairs.

He said Southwest works with Hughes, Northrop, Lockheed and other aerospace firms in training workers on the campus, which is on Imperial Highway east of Hawthorne. The college doesn’t provide instructors for on-site teaching yet, but plans to move in that direction soon, he said.

Weinstein said the largely minority college intends to become a major high-tech training center as more permanent facilities are added to the campus in the next few years. Southwest serves the South-Central area of Los Angeles in addition to the northern part of the South Bay.

Community college officials said they are optimistic about getting more state aid to fund the increase in vocational education without taking anything away from their academic programs.

Under AB 1725, the old funding formula based on average daily attendance will be replaced by allocations based on actual program costs. About $7 million was appropriated to get the changes started in January, but full implementation of the new plan will require at least another $140 million.

The legislation also will restructure community colleges more on the 4-year university model, making them less like the high school systems from which they evolved. The colleges’ Board of Governors in Sacramento will be given powers similar to those exercised by the university Board of Regents. Faculty members, like their counterparts at universities, will no longer be required to have teaching credentials, but they must have recognized expertise in their subject. Teachers are supposed to gain a larger share of the authority and duties now reserved to administrators.