Dear Editor,

Thank you for your article of April 17, 2014 entitled “Senate bill 850 is a win.” The article clearly delineates reasons why this action would be good for all community college students: costs of 4-year schools escalating, meeting demand of employers, and limited spaces at the CSUs and UCs, among others.

What the article does not address, and nor does SB 850, is funding. The cost of providing upper division coursework at the community college is estimated to be significantly more than the level that community colleges are currently funded. Not all faculty are qualified to teach in upper division classes, so it also creates questions of equity and ability to meet demand with labor.

Finally, support services such as tutoring are commonplace at the community college, but are not so common at bachelors degree-granting institutions. Adding such advanced courses will indeed tax our support services for those courses and the courses for which we already provide services. Funding for these concerns has not been discussed.

While most faculty are in favor of the idea of CCCs offering bachelors degrees for the very reasons cited in the article, we will be constrained in our ability to offer them successfully if funding does not accompany the legislation.

For that reason, the Academic Senate of California Community Colleges (ASCCC) voted at their Spring 2014 plenary only to research the feasibility of offering bachelors degrees at the CCC, not to approve it. The ASCCC’s current position on this concept is in opposition precisely because the funding of this endeavor has not been discussed, guaranteed, or identified.