On Wednesday, Sept. 29, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law Senate Bill 1440, the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act (STAR), which aims to ease the transfer of students in the California Community College (CCC) system into the California State University (CSU) system. Scheduled to take effect in Fall 2011, in time for the 2011-2012 school year, the CCC system will be required to offer students an Associate of Arts degree specifically designed for transfer, giving transfer students priority admission to their local CSU campus, according to a summary of the bill. Existing law does not require alignment between the CCC and the CSU systems.

Proponents of the bill, such as Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), who authored SB 1440, say that the passage of the STAR Act “will better align our higher education system, saving students time, money and freeing up state resources to serve more students.” The transfer process, currently made up of hundreds of “articulation contracts” that vary from campus to campus, can be confusing, frustrating and ultimately, discouraging. According to CCC Chancellor’s Office, less than 25 percent of CCC students wind up transferring to a four-year university; a far cry from the state’s 1960 Master Plan, which intended for three out of five students at four-years to have started their college careers at the CCC.

With the costs of attending four-year universities increasing seemingly indefinitely, this bill is a step in the right direction in streamlining the process of attending a CCC for the requisite lower division credits needed to transfer to a four-year. On average, according to the CCC Chancellor’s Office, transfer students complete 80 semester units of coursework, 20 more than the required 60 units for transfer eligibility. Anecdotal evidence attributes this to “run-arounds” by counselors or advisors, who often give students confusing or conflicting advice on transfer requirements, which vary by campus, major or program.

The Master Plan for Higher Education, adopted by the state in 1960, laid out an “A-G” plan for high school seniors and CCC students, which set guidelines on required coursework needed for completion. Among the courses required include physical and lab sciences, college-level English and math, as well as arts and elective requirements; in all, 60 semester units are required. However, for specific programs, such as engineering or, say, microbiology, students must obtain higher credits for requisite coursework. And there are no guarantees that a student might have to repeat coursework not accepted at CCC when that student gets to CSU. SB 1440 aims to eliminate that muddied part of the transfer process.

However, SB 1440 raises several questions of its own. If locality is the basis for granting transfer students priority admission, then what constitutes locality? Will students from Hayward be granted priority admission to only CSUEB? Are SFSU or SJSU not “local?” And if so, then is that fair to those schools’ admission requirements?

The issue of an AA designed for transfer is also unclear; the proposal to design 60-unit AA’s exclusively for transfer and acceptance into CSU sounds good, but it fails to account for coursework that may not be counted as CSU-transferable, but still necessary. In this case, such coursework would include remedial level English or math; the CCC requires applicants to take placement tests into both subjects. If a student does not test into college-level English or math, then he or she must take remedial coursework as prerequisites for the appropriate subject. In semester-based CCC’s, such courses range from three to five semester units, which can account for the 20 excess units (and extra time) that, on average, transfer students accumulate through their time at junior college.

And what about the CCC students currently operating under the “A-G” system? Will they be grandfathered in? Their time and money has already been and is currently being spent. How will their work be considered for transfer now?

Money, too, is always an issue. The state eliminated $305 million for the CSU from the budget in the 2009-2010 school year. The CSU is optimistic that those funds will be restored, and with them, an additional $60 million to expand enrollment. Statewide, CSU campuses have tightened up on enrollment; Cal State East Bay is one of the few that have not seen reductions. There have been no guarantees for more funds, although presumably, the legislature is addressing this.

According to CSUEB’s Planning and Enrollment Management, the school may see a record number of freshmen entering the campus for the 2010-2011 school year; an increase over last year’s record number of 1,444. In addition to that, over 1,000 transfer students have been accepted for the fall. With the passage of SB 1440, an increase is sure to follow.

However, according to a release by the office of Planning and Enrollment Management, in Fall 2011—when SB 1440 is scheduled to take effect—the transfer program will be officially declared impacted. “Under impaction, only upper division transfers meeting all requirements and deadlines will be considered for admission, and some categories of transfer applicants may have to meet standards higher than minimum CSU eligibility,” the release states.

If that is the case, then how exactly does SB 1440 aim to grant priority admission to qualified students who have earned a transfer AA degree, when campuses like CSUEB are making it harder to get here?

SB 1440 was designed with good intentions for students who are struggling to find a clear path to transfer and education betterment. However, deciphering the bill and its implications has proven to be as muddled as the current process.