Athletics, Abortion, the Admissions Scandal — New Calif. Laws Take Aim at Higher-Ed Policy. Why?

You can find a CliffsNotes on hot-button campus issues in a perhaps unexpected package: California’s newest laws.

Landmark higher-education laws enacted by the state this year ran the gamut. Pay for athletes’ images. Admissions advantages. Work-force development. So many bills came through the higher-education committee that Assemblyman Jose Medina said he had to ask, for the first time in roughly five years as chair, for more staff.

The Democrats who dominate state government also touched on wider social issues through higher-education policy. They required student health centers to offer abortion by medication — a bill that had been vetoed by Jerry Brown, the previous governor — and colleges to distribute information on elections widely.

State politicians said the flurry of bills reflected that lawmakers are keeping a close eye on campuses, prompted in part by recent troubling fiscal audits and the Operation Varsity Blues admissions scandal. Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, a Democrat representing a district southeast of Los Angeles, sponsored legislation in response to the admissions scandal. She said she recognizes that campuses have bristled over the scrutiny and red tape: “They do feel like it’s a group of legislators poking their nose in their business.”

California’s movement has wide implications for students, as colleges there enroll millions of people. Some elements that shaped the push may emerge in other states, too, said Donald E. Heller, provost of the University of San Francisco and a scholar of educational economics, public policy, and finance. For example, student activists are increasingly protesting at statehouses, he said, not just on the campus quad.

Lawmakers need to adapt to seeing campuses as “small cities,” an identity colleges have absorbed amid student homelessness and hunger, said Assemblyman Phil Ting, a Democrat representing parts of San Francisco, who sponsored a different bill on the admissions scandal. Ting pledged that legislators would stay involved in campus affairs.

California lawmakers are no strangers to higher-education policy, in recent years enacting laws on collective bargaining and sexual assault on campuses. And some of the increased activity comes as the state’s 1960 landmark higher-education master plan is aging, Heller said. Still, the number of bills this session stood out to Heller and to David Tandberg, vice president for policy research and strategic initiatives at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

“Any individual one would not be unprecedented,” said Tandberg. “The sheer number, the speed, makes it pretty important.”

The session in California mirrored efforts in Republican-dominated states to pass laws on free speech and “campus carry,” social issues that animate a conservative base and add new requirements for campus leaders.

In California, some of the higher-education bills touched on concerns held beyond college campuses, such as housing costs and equity. Lande Ajose, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior policy adviser for higher education, said that while the governor’s office did not intentionally use higher-education policy to get at those societal issues, “what we see within higher ed is a manifestation of a broader set of social issues that are rising for students, and institutions as well.”

‘You Can’t Go Both Ways’

One of the clearest examples of that was Senate Bill 24, which would require colleges to provide medications that induce abortion. One April day, throngs of people came to California’s Senate education committee to state their names and opinions about the bill for the record. Some wore gray T-shirts, with “trust students” in purples, pinks, and yellows. Others wore blue, with “I am the Pro-Life Generation” splashed across the front.

But two people expressed a third position — that is, no position at all. They were there to represent the California State University and University of California systems.

The bill would require a big effort from campuses. Health centers may need to buy equipment, upgrade facilities, train staff members, and add security. They would need to regularly report how many abortions they had provided and at what cost. Each system may need to provide backup support by telephone. Campuses would get $200,000 to comply with the law — provided by private funders, who raised more than $10 million.

Students had long pushed for such a policy. In the 2015-16 academic year, student activists at the University of California at Berkeley unsuccessfully urged the health-services center to carry medication abortion for students. A bill later made its way to Governor Brown. He vetoed it in 2018, calling the procedure “widely available off campus.”

This time, Newsom signed the bill into law. “As other states and the federal government go backward, restricting reproductive freedom, in California we are moving forward, expanding access and reaffirming a woman’s right” to choose, he said in a statement. Neither the CSU nor the UC system ever formally took a position on the measure.

Now, campus health directors are considering next steps. At the University of California at Riverside, Denise Woods-Bevly, assistant vice chancellor for health, counseling, and wellness, said campus employees across systems are discussing group purchases of ultrasound machines, and how to make the health centers spacious and comfortable for students seeking abortions. They must offer the medication by 2023.

“Whether the bill is being pushed from up high, or if it’s organic and coming from the students — I know the students did have a lot of impact on this — we just want to provide the best care,” she said.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Newsom, in his first year as governor, would lean into higher-education issues. As lieutenant governor for eight years, he was a trustee of the California State University system and a regent of the University of California system.

Policy advisers for Newsom said the experience shaped his opinions about college accessibility and completion. He heard “countless hours” of testimony from students about their needs — hunger, mental-health issues, help with immigration status, Ajose said. “He comes to the office with sincere interest and appetite for higher-ed issues. That was not lost on a lot of our legislators.”

As a whole, lawmakers in deep-blue California support funding higher education with state dollars, unlike in red states, said Heller, the San Francisco provost. In Newsom’s first stab at the budget this year, he proposed adding more than $1.4 billion for colleges and universities, expecting that tuition would remain flat.

California State University’s chancellor, Timothy P. White, roared his approval for the proposal. “This marks the single largest proposed investment by any governor in the history of the university, and we are extremely appreciative of Governor Newsom’s bold investment in us,” he said in a written statement.

Still, given that investment, finding the right level of involvement on campus issues is a hard balance to strike.

“All the colleges want autonomy,” said Ting, who sponsored a bill requiring colleges to report to lawmakers whether their campuses favor applicants connected to donors or alumni. But, he added, “they want significant resources from government to solve many of these problems, like many of our cities do. You can’t go both ways.”

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.