4-Year Plan for Cal State Stuns Local Colleges’ Chief

When cash-strapped Cal State officials recently revealed plans to open their Ventura County campus with only junior- and senior-level classes, community college Chancellor Philip Westin was shocked.

It was not because Cal State officials were willing to jettison their first two years of instruction, but because they said the plan was only temporary: Freshman and sophomore classes would be added as soon as they had the money.

Westin said he thought he and J. Handel Evans, acting president of the yet-to-be-built Cal State campus, were headed in totally different directions.

The two men had been discussing a new plan that would permanently change the face of higher education and possibly act as a model for the state, Westin said.

In a seamless transition for students between the two, the new Cal State school would teach upper division courses and leave the first years of instruction to the community colleges.

Not just for a few years. Forever.

The partnership would offer more bang for the buck by minimizing duplication of classes and maximizing tax dollars, Westin said.

After months of discussion, Westin thought Evans shared his vision.

Far from it.

Evans’ response when told community officials had hoped the plan would become permanent was, “Good for them.”

Although admitting that the plan made good sense “at first blush,” Evans said this month that Westin’s vision was “premature” and that he never intended for the arrangement to become permanent.

The disagreement comes after more than a year of discussions steeped in goodwill and talk of sharing students, classrooms, libraries and even faculty.

“It is a shift,” said Westin, referring to Evans’ announcement. “It is not what he and I had been talking about. . . . I was surprised [to learn] that that wasn’t what he had in mind.”

Westin bases his vision on the increasingly popular belief among educators that the so-called junior colleges are just as good as--or better than--the state’s four-year universities at teaching freshman- and sophomore-level classes.

“It doesn’t make sense for [Cal State] to do the freshman and sophomore years,” he said. “Because we do it better.”

That, he said, is primarily because of smaller classes taught by instructors not distracted by the pressure to publish--and never taught by inexperienced graduate students, otherwise known as teaching assistants or TAs.

“We have very few classes over 50 people and we have no teaching assistants,” agreed John Tallman, Ventura County Community College trustee. “I know we already have a better quality education than they.”

But Cal State officials say they also offer small classes, usually taught by full-fledged faculty members. They warn community college officials not to mistake Cal State for other schools--namely UC branches--whose classes are larger and are often taught by teaching assistants.

“That is a fallacy that a lot of people have,” said Colleen Bentley-Adler, a Cal State spokeswoman. “We don’t grant PhDs and most TAs are PhD candidates, so we don’t have a lot of them.”

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Out of about 17,000 Cal State instructors, only 1,700 are TAs, she said.

As for class size, the average lecture at Cal State includes 35 students, she said.

But try telling that to community college students, many of whom say they don’t think they could have gotten as much attention at a Cal State or UC campus.

“The classes are smaller and the teachers are more apt to care about you,” said 18-year-old Andi Baehne, a first-year Ventura College student who plans to transfer to a four-year university.

That leads to better grades, instructors said.

“Faculty get to know students better,” said Lisa Raufman, chairwoman of Moorpark College’s counseling department. “That one-on-one encounter really turns a lot of people on to school.”

Statistics from Cal State University seem to back her point, showing that students who complete their basic requirements at community colleges and then transfer to four-year universities often graduate in the same amount of time and with slightly higher grade point averages than those coming straight from high school.

Cal State statistics from the 1992-’93 academic year also show that community college students, on average, graduate from four-year universities with slightly higher grade point averages than those students who spent their entire college time at four-year schools.

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To top it off, community colleges get such results at half the cost to the state, Westin said.

Cal State receives about $6,000 from the state for each of its students; community colleges get about $3,300.

Students also pay less. An average Cal State course load of about 12 units--or about four classes--costs California residents about $1,884, Bentley-Adler said. The same course load for a California resident at a community college costs about $166.

Evans agrees that the argument is compelling, but said that permanently splitting instruction between Cal State and the community colleges would threaten the continuity crucial to some areas of study such as the sciences, engineering and architecture.

“I am a great believer in the community colleges,” he said.

But, he added, “I think there is a strong relationship between the lower division and the upper division that would be very unhealthy to break.”

And more important, he said, all students should have a choice between starting their undergraduate work at a four-year university or a community college.

“Some students do extremely well leaving high school,” he said. “And there are some who need some soaking time . . . in a community college.”

To Westin’s surprise, some local community college counselors and instructors agree that choice should prevail.

“I would rather have it be a four-year school,” said Gil Ramirez, an academic counselor at Oxnard College. “Almost every county in the state has a four-year university. Don’t our students deserve one? Then they can have a choice to go to a community college or a university.”

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Although she said Westin’s plan makes economic sense, Raufman, the Moorpark College counselor, agrees. “It would maximize dollars put into the university,” she said. “But if I was a parent talking about what I want for my kids, I would say every eligible kid should have the opportunity to spend four years at a four-year college if they want.”

Raufman said permanently maintaining the two-year split would rob students of the opportunity to leave home and become totally immersed in the student life of a four-college.

But Westin disagrees.

“People looking at a four-year college away from home can already go away. They can go to Cal Lutheran or USC or UCLA,” he said.

The point, he said, is to offer the best possible education to Ventura County students for the least cost.

“This is a real opportunity for the community colleges and new Cal State campus to link arms and develop a model for the state that benefits the students and maximizes taxpayers’ dollars,” he said.

But, at least for now, that opportunity seems to be dead in the water.

“We have no formal relationship [with the community colleges] yet,” Evans said. “And I think that would be premature.”