Removing a Few Rungs on the Ladder of Higher Education : Forcing state’s college-bound high school seniors to attend a community college first eliminates choice, and for no good reason.

At the end of George Orwell’s political fable “Animal Farm,” a new commandment appears on a barn wall, replacing the Seven Commandments that had once summed up the animals’ revolutionary credo. The new commandment reads: “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

I’m reminded of Orwell as I consider a proposal that has been bruited about in the Op-Ed columns of this paper to eliminate all freshman and sophomore courses in the UC and Cal State systems. This proposal, which was introduced four years ago in a Times piece by the then-president of Santa Monica College, is being revived by a group calling itself Californians for Community College Equity. Its idea is simple: Pass a ballot initiative that would compel the state’s public-college-bound high school graduates to attend a community college for two years before transferring to an “upper-division” university.

Now, I have no idea whether such an initiative will appear on a California ballot, and if it did I don’t know who will support it (though I expect that athletics coaches at UC and CSU campuses would not be thrilled to have players eligible for only two years). But what I do know is that the proposal itself is hanging out a giant “Not Welcome” sign for California’s high school seniors. And since one of its most ardent proponents is a CSUN colleague, I feel compelled to respond. Contrary to the group’s beliefs, there are professors in the four-year university system who do welcome high school seniors and want them to have the choice of entering a four-year university when they graduate.

Here is where Orwell comes in. Californians for Community College Equity present themselves as champions of “equity.” But they have a strange notion of what that word means. It comes from the Latin term for equality, which in turn connotes fairness, a level playing field for all. But since high school graduates already have the option of attending a community college if they so desire, it would seem that the system is already equitable. To force students to attend a community college first, no matter what their qualifications, is to make the colleges more equal in relation to UC and CSU campuses--to give them, in effect, a greater claim to dwindling state resources for higher education. Now, this may look equitable on Orwell’s animal farm, but it doesn’t look equitable to me.

So why is the movement advocating this radical change? One reason given is that 18-year-olds are too “immature” to attend a four-year college or university. This puzzles me. I wasn’t too immature to attend a four-year university at 18. Neither were the authors of this proposal. Nor were the millions of Americans who have attended institutions of higher learning ever since Harvard College set up shop in 1636. So what has changed?

The most striking recent change in California education has been demographic, and that gets me wondering. Is it simply a coincidence that at the very moment when large numbers of students from non-European backgrounds are poised to enter California’s higher education system that a proposal comes to force everyone into community colleges? Is that what the group means by “equity?”

And I wonder, too, whether California’s private universities will also eliminate their lower-division classes in order to keep “immature” 18-year-olds out--or all those public universities in other states that now actively recruit California students. I suspect not. They are much more likely to snap up the many high school graduates who won’t buy the “more equal” logic of the proposal and will seek a four-year university that will welcome them.

Because that’s the sort of university their parents and older brothers and sisters attended. It’s the sort of university that Californians expect, that was promised to them in the master plan. And if California won’t offer it, many will go elsewhere. As for those who can’t afford to go elsewhere, they will have no choice.

For more than 30 years, California’s master plan for higher education has offered high school graduates a choice of attending a UC, CSU, or community college campus. This choice has been limited only by the level of achievement of the students themselves. So here is what I have to say to this year’s graduating seniors, and to next year’s and the years after: No college system is “more equal” than another. You are California’s future, and as a professor in the California State University system, I invite you to do your best so that you may have the choice of continuing your education in the California college or university that is best suited to you.