SAN FRANCISCO — Fifteen California community colleges received preliminary approval Tuesday to start offering career-oriented bachelor’s degrees, a step that represents a first for the nation’s largest college system and that supporters said is needed to ensure residents are prepared for jobs that in the past may have required only two years of training.
The colleges recommended by system Chancellor Brice Harris and endorsed by the system’s Board of Governors were selected from a pool of 34 applicants. They are located throughout the state, from Crafton Hills College near San Bernardino and Mesa College in San Diego to Feather River College in Quincy and Shasta College in Redding.
Until now, the state’s 112 community colleges have offered only two-year associate degrees. But a bill authored by Democratic State Sen. Marty Block and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last year established a seven-year pilot program that allows a maximum of 15 college districts to offer a single four-year degree each in subjects not currently offered by the University of California or California State University systems.
Emergency services, dental hygiene, automotive technology, respiratory care and mortuary science are some of the degrees the participating colleges plan to offer.
“This is about jobs. It’s about preparing students for our workforce, the requirements of which have changed,” San Diego Community College District Chancellor Constance M. Carroll told the board. “Students seeking jobs will now have a competitive opportunity which did they did not have before.”
The schools were picked on the basis of location, their capacity to create a high-quality program in a short amount of time and local labor market demand, Harris said.
The programs need to be up and running by the 2017-18 school year, although several schools said Tuesday they expect to be ready before then.
