California Community College Bachelor's Degree Bills Head to Newsom

California Community College Bachelor's Degree Bills Head to Newsom

Two bills that would reshape how California community colleges add bachelor's degrees passed the Legislature by wide margins this week and now sit on Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk, according to CalMatters. The catch: the state's community college system opposes the final versions, after lawmakers added last-minute growth limits that changed the deal, CalMatters reported.

That opposition can sound confusing at first, since community colleges have spent years pushing for broader authority to create bachelor's degrees, CalMatters notes. The system's objection targets the new growth caps added late in the process, not the underlying goal of offering more four-year degrees.

Strip away the politics and the two bills, SB 960 and AB 2694, change two things: who can formally object when a community college proposes a bachelor's degree, and how many degrees a district can pursue once new limits kick in starting in 2028, per CalMatters. For anyone weighing a community college bachelor's degree, especially in a region without an easy commute to a four-year campus, the practical question is what's actually settled right now and what still depends on a signature that hasn't happened yet.

Why CSU objections have stalled community college bachelor's degrees for years

A 2021 law, AB 927, lets community colleges add up to 30 bachelor's degrees a year, but only if the programs don't duplicate what's already offered at CSU or UC campuses, KVPR reported. Defining "duplicate" has been the fight ever since.

San Diego Mesa College's proposed physical therapist assistant degree got local approval in 2023, then stalled for years after CSU San Bernardino, a campus roughly 95 miles away, objected over its own kinesiology program, EdSource reported. In some contested cases, community colleges pushed ahead and launched degrees anyway rather than wait out a CSU objection, CalMatters reported.

Moorpark College's cybersecurity degree ran into a bigger wall: duplication objections from seven CSU campuses, including Sacramento State and three Bay Area schools hundreds of miles from the Ventura County campus, KVPR found. Those objections weren't purely procedural. Staff at San Jose State wrote in a memo that Moorpark's program could draw from the same pool of students as their own engineering technology degree, KVPR reported.

That history is the backdrop for SB 960 and AB 2694: a new process built around geography and evidence, aimed at cases like Mesa's and Moorpark's, without pretending CSU's enrollment worries simply vanish.

What SB 960 and AB 2694 change about objecting to a new degree

If signed, a CSU campus generally would need to be located near the community college proposing a new bachelor's degree before it could formally object, according to CalMatters. Even a nearby CSU's objection could be overridden if that CSU program has admitted fewer than 75% of applicants transferring from the community college for three straight years, per the same reporting.

When CSU does object, the state's labor secretary would step in to decide the dispute based on regional workforce need, CalMatters reports. If the labor secretary sides with CSU, the district would be barred from reapplying with a similar program for five years, per the same reporting.

UC objections would stay harder to clear. Community colleges would still generally need a UC campus's written consent before offering a duplicate degree, a higher bar than the new CSU rules, CalMatters notes. That's one half of the trade-off community colleges have been asking for: a defined, geography-based path around the kind of distant objections that tied up Mesa's and Moorpark's programs for years.

New community college bachelor's degree program limits set to start in 2028

The other half is where the disagreement lives. Starting in 2028, districts could add anywhere from two to 12 new bachelor's degrees, depending on their students' certificate, degree, and transfer completion rates, with no more than three new proposals allowed per district each year, according to CalMatters.

California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian raised a specific concern about that formula in a letter opposing the bills: eligibility would depend partly on how a district's completion rates compare with the statewide average, which means a district could improve its own outcomes and still lose ground if the average shifts, CalMatters reported. "A district could improve its own student outcomes" but still see its cap unchanged, or "even see its eligibility change simply because the statewide average changed," Christian wrote, according to CalMatters.

Community college leaders have argued that colleges with lower completion rates often serve more low-income students, the same students local bachelor's programs are meant to help most, per CalMatters. Access makes that argument concrete: 29 of California's 116 community colleges sit at least 25 miles from a public university, serving roughly 157,000 students the research describes as place-bound, according to CalMatters. Those degrees also tend to be cheap by comparison, averaging $10,560 in tuition and fees over four years, KVPR reported last year.

How the completion-rate scale translates into an exact number for a given district isn't fully spelled out yet. One college leader told CalMatters he expects to be permitted six to eight new degrees starting in 2028, based on his college's current completion rates, but framed it as an estimate rather than a locked-in figure.

What happens next, and what to check before enrolling

The bills now sit with Newsom, who has vetoed community college bachelor's-degree expansion bills before, according to CalMatters. This round looked different behind the scenes. Bill author Sen. Christopher Cabaldon said Newsom's office was involved in revising the legislation, calling that level of engagement new for these negotiations, CalMatters reported. "This will give us peace," Cabaldon said, according to CalMatters, adding that disagreements would continue but the years of escalating legislation over the issue would end.

Not everyone is convinced the process was handled well. Larry Galizio, president and CEO of the Community College League of California, told CalMatters that colleges are "being asked to ... support a process that is not completely understood or vetted at the last minute," calling that "just not great policymaking."

If Newsom signs both bills, the new rules would apply to new degrees offered after 2028. The roughly 66 bachelor's degrees already offered or planned at 49 community colleges would keep operating under current rules no matter what happens next, per CalMatters.

For a student weighing a specific program right now, the safest move is skipping the guesswork and going straight to the source. Contact the college's academic affairs office and ask whether the degree is already approved or still proposed, when it expects to enroll its first cohort, what admission and prerequisite requirements apply, and whether the program falls under current rules or would count as a future proposal shaped by the 2028 changes. Those four questions cover the parts of this story that a governor's signature and an unfinished growth formula can't yet answer.