Community colleges in California are poised to play a crucial role in sending minority students on to four-year institutions, but many of the two-year colleges have a poor record of transferring those students to the next level, says a set of reports released on Tuesday by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles.
While about 60 percent of K-12 students in California belong to minority groups, and 65 percent to 75 percent of those minority students enroll in community colleges, only 17 percent of Latino students and 19 percent of African-American students who intend to transfer to a four-year institution actually do, according to the reports.
“It’s a dysfunctional system,” said Patricia Gándara, an author of the report and co-director of the Civil Rights Project, which conducts equal-opportunity research and is committed to renewing the civil-rights movement. “Their chances of getting BA degrees are minuscule.”
The problem isn’t just students’, but the state’s. Projections show that by 2025, California will be short a million bachelor’s degrees to fill necessary jobs, according to statistics cited in one of three reports.
A major reason for the lack of successful transfers is the poor quality of high-school resources, another report finds. Students who attend low-performing high schools—one in three Latino students and one in five black students, compared with one in 25 white students—are likely to go to low-performing, low-transfer community colleges, the report says.
Weak high schools also produce students who require more remedial coursework, which forces their colleges to focus on those needs rather than helping students get to the next step, the Civil Rights Project says.
Even the colleges with the highest transfer rates, it says, showed racial disparities. At eight community colleges, transfer rates for minority students lagged 12 to 20 percentage points behind the colleges’ overall transfer rates.
To try to overcome those challenges, the Civil Rights Project makes several recommendations. The reports propose building up dual-enrollment programs to bridge the gap between high school and college, as well as expanding college-readiness programs. They also recommend a more streamlined transfer process, with uniform credit-transfer agreements, and financial incentives for colleges that improve their transfer rates.
Some of the state’s community colleges have already taken action on those fronts, in part, following through on suggestions from the California Community Colleges Student Success Task Force, a group created by the State Legislature to help increase transfer, graduation, and certificate-attainment rates.
“We are streamlining the mechanics of the transfer,” said Jack Scott, chancellor of the California Community Colleges. Every community college will have a 60-credit transfer degree, he said, and campuses in the California State University system, where many students transfer, will help students earn 60 more credits for a bachelor’s degree.
Although there have been some steps taken to allow easier and more transfers, broad changes are in order, Ms. Gándara said.
“The lack-of-transfer problem is systemic in the entire education system in California,” she said. “This is going to require bold solutions, not just tweaking on the edges.”