San Francisco
This state, which boasts the nation's largest two-year college system and one of the best community college student transfer rates, thinks it can do even better.
California has been a leader in encouraging students to start their college careers at two-year schools and finish up at four-year ones, largely because of overcrowding at senior institutions.
But even though its transfer record has been the envy of other states, California relies largely on a complicated patchwork of individual pacts and agreements.
The state community college system office has been working for some time to streamline the system. Late last year, it began to see a return on its negotiating investment.
The University of California (UC) considered the state's top-tier system, in November agreed to try and increase community college transfers to 14,500 by 2005. That would represent a 38 percent jump over the number of transfers the college system accepted last year, statistics from the California community colleges state chancellor's office show.
"This agreement provides significantly increased access to the UC system for our students," says California Community Colleges Chancellor Thomas J. Nussbaum.
The Space Crunch
The university system already gives community college students top priority among all transfer applications -- ahead of transfers from other institutions, whether in-state, out-of-state, or international. Nearly 10,500 students transferred from California community colleges to the system's nine campuses last year, community college system statistics show.
But that's still far less than transferred to California State University (CSU), the state's secondary university system. More than 48,000 transferred to its twenty-two campuses last year.
An estimated 10,000 community college students transferred to private or out-of-state universities.
Not only are community college transfer students given high admission priority, but both UC and CSU have instituted a number of transfer guarantee programs to help students prepare.
