2-Year Colleges Become a Haven : Education: As fees go up at UC and Cal State, ‘reverse transfers’ re-enroll. The trend squeezes out some students and burdens the community campuses.

With visions of university life dancing in his head, David Gonzalez graduated from Santa Monica College last year and headed off to Cal State Long Beach to complete his bachelor’s degree in art.

But to his dismay, the 21-year-old Inglewood resident found himself back at his alma mater this spring, jostling for space in the community college registration lines he thought he had left behind.

The reason: Gonzalez could not get into three of the four classes he needed at Cal State Long Beach. Some courses were canceled at the last minute, he said. Others had closed their enrollment.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Gonzalez, who is shuttling back and forth between the two campuses. “I thought I was done with SMC, that I had seen the last of it. But here I am again.”

Educators and students say Gonzalez’s plight is increasingly common these days as the Cal State and University of California systems raise fees and slash their course offerings. That belt-tightening is having a ripple effect on community colleges, which are seeing more Cal State and UC students scurrying back to them as a college of last resort.

The “reverse transfers” are straining the overburdened community college system, educators say, creating bottlenecks that make it harder for students to get the classes they need.

“It puts a strain on the entire campus community and the squeeze continues right on down,” said Gordon Newman, dean of admissions at Santa Monica College. “Incoming freshmen can get their beginning math and English, but as soon as they start looking at other courses they’re being taken by (reverse transfer) students or students who are staying here longer.”

Statewide, community college officials estimate they turn away 100,000 students each year who cannot get the classes they need. The reverse transfers will only exacerbate the problem.

“We’re getting absolutely inundated,” said Maryann C. Mayer, a counselor at Pasadena City College. “It definitely takes spaces away from people.”

The number of reverse transfer students varies depending on the community college and concrete figures are hard to come by. Pasadena City College says reverse transfers account for 8% of the student body, although that includes some out-of-state students and those returning to college after a long absence.

However, “we’re finding the majority of them are coming back to us because of the increase in fees,” said Karla Henderson, assistant dean of financial aid and scholarships at Pasadena City College. “Reverse enrollment is on a pretty steady increase, inching up about 2% each year.”

Concern about reverse enrollment is so high in Pasadena that Henderson has undertaken a study of reverse transfer students through the National Institute for Leadership Development, which promotes professional development and research.

“Our concern is that reverse transfers are taking resources that would normally go to our traditional students, who represent a greater proportion of minority and poorer backgrounds,” said Henderson, who is doing her doctoral dissertation on the topic.

At Santa Monica College, reverse transfers account for up to 10% of the student body. The figure is only 3% at Long Beach Community College District, although officials concede that their numbers do not include concurrently enrolled students.

Those figures also exclude students who have accumulated the 60 credits for an associate of arts degree but opt to remain in the community college system instead of making the jump into a four-year institution.

May Chen, who analyzes statistics for the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District, says the percentage of reverse transfer students has jumped from 7.7% to 10.7% in two years.

There are no statewide figures on reverse enrollment, but “anecdotally, our college presidents tell us they are seeing more students who are UC- or CSU-prepared,” said Ann Reed, a vice chancellor for the California Community Colleges in Sacramento.

Educators say they first noticed the trend several years ago when CSU and UC fees started creeping upward. Even though community college fees have also gone up--to $13 a unit for California residents pursuing their first bachelor’s degree--that is still a pittance compared to CSU and UC fees.

Cal State schools charge $834 annually for students who take up to six units per term and $1,440 for students who take more than six units per term. UC schools do not break fees down by unit, but charge about $3,674 annually, a spokesman said.

The influx of refugees from four-year colleges is also changing the learning curve inside some classrooms, teachers say, because UC and CSU students tend to have better study skills and a higher level of academic sophistication.

Conversely, it can also stack the deck against lower-achieving students, making it “a little harder at times to give students who need it a little more attention,” said Patrick McCallum, executive director of the Faculty Assn. of California Community Colleges.

State educators say the reverse transfer crunch is creating enormous pressures on community colleges grappling with how to juggle vocational, remedial and English-as-a-second-language classes. McCallum said he expects that some vocational and remedial classes will be cut.

McCallum believes the price increases and class cuts at four-year colleges will drive more students into the community colleges. Educators are also seeing growing numbers of students eligible for UC and Cal State schools but discouraged by their higher fees who are enrolling into community colleges.

Some, including McCallum, say it is time to re-evaluate the California master plan for higher education, a blueprint drafted in 1960 that defines the missions and eligibility standards for the state’s three public college systems. Meanwhile, some Cal State and UC officials are advising students to look into offerings at community colleges.

“Some of the four-year colleges are telling students they can take some of their requirements at a city college and the kids know it’s cheaper to come here,” said Luther Hayes, a counselor at Los Angeles City College.

“But it’s kind of a dichotomy,” Hayes said. “At the same time we’re having to cut programs, we have more students competing for fewer classes.”