Community college bachelor’s degrees stall for years amid Cal State objections

EdSource

Michael Burke

January 17, 2025

Rudy Garcia was excited when he learned that his local community college, Moorpark in Ventura County, planned to offer a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity and network operations.

A father of four and the only source of income for his family, Garcia believed getting the degree would help him advance in his career in IT support. He had come to realize that more senior jobs typically required a bachelor’s degree.

Getting that degree at nearby Moorpark was appealing, especially because he had already finished an associate degree in cybersecurity at the college.

“Being able to add that to my resume, it would help me get a better job, better benefits and everything,” he said.

But in the two years since Moorpark first proposed the degree, the college has still not received final approval. It’s one of seven degrees across California that received provisional approval from the state community college chancellor’s office in 2023 but remain in limbo because California State University has flagged them as duplicative of its own programs. The two sides have yet to come to a compromise.

A 2021 law allows the state’s community college system to approve up to 30 new bachelor’s degrees annually, so long as the degrees support a local labor need and don’t duplicate what any of CSU’s 23 campuses or the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses offer.

Since the passage of that law, many community colleges have successfully launched new degrees: Thirty-two new degrees are now fully approved across the state, joining 15 that already existed as part of a pilot. Some of the most recently-approved degrees include drone and autonomous systems at Fullerton College, emergency services administration at Mission College in Santa Clara and water resource management at San Bernardino Community College.

But due to disagreements over what constitutes duplication, some degree proposals have stalled.

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