College Board OKs CSUCI Transfer Plan

Despite reservations by some board members, Ventura County Community College District trustees have formally approved an agreement with Cal State Channel Islands that guarantees university admission to local community college students under more rigorous standards than such agreements typically entail.

Students admitted under the agreement must complete 60 units and have a 2.6 grade-point average. So-called transfer agreements usually call for students to achieve only a 2.0 average.

Trustee John Tallman and newly elected board member Art Hernandez voiced concerns that the stricter admission requirements could potentially exclude many nontraditional college students--those with full-time jobs or children.

But they joined other board members in approving the agreement, which Chancellor Philip Westin will execute with university President Handel Evans in a signing ceremony later this month.

University officials have promised in one year to assess whether sufficient numbers of students from Oxnard, Ventura and Moorpark colleges are preparing to transfer under the agreement when the campus opens in 2002. Officials may then modify the terms if they conclude that the higher admission standard is blocking students from attending the university.

But Ted Lucas, an academic planner at the campus, said he did not expect that to be the case because transfer students from the three community colleges typically earn around a 3.0 grade-point average.

The campus has accepted another transfer agreement with the college district that permits students to transfer with a 2.0 grade-point average. But that agreement does not guarantee admission to the university.