Tag: University of California

UC May Struggle to Meet Transfer Requirement

Governor Brown’s May budget proposal withholds $50 million from the University of California (UC), which must undertake a series of reforms to restore the funds. One requirement—the result of a deal made during the 2015 budget process—is that UC meet its fall 2017 target of enrolling only two new in-state freshmen for every in-state transfer student, both systemwide and at each campus (except Merced). In 2016, the system enrolled 2.3 freshmen for every transfer student. The 2:1 target is intended to increase the number of transfer students served by UC. But reaching this freshmen-to-transfer ratio while responding to growing freshmen demand could prove very difficult this year and in the future.

UC has made progress in enrolling more transfer students but has not come closer to meeting its target ratio. In the last year, UC enrolled almost 2,000 more transfer students, a 13% increase and the biggest jump in more than a decade. However, UC also enrolled more than 5,000 additional freshmen compared with the previous year (a 17% increase)—leaving the freshmen-to-transfer ratio slightly higher.

In recent years, demand to attend UC has increased much faster for freshmen than for transfers. This year, there are more than 3.5 freshmen applicants for every transfer applicant. Since 2011, freshmen applications have increased by 31%, while transfer applications have declined by 1%.

Can UC attain a 2:1 ratio while responding to growing demand for freshmen slots in 2017? To do so, the system would need to draw more transfer students from a smaller applicant pool—especially if officials also plan on increasing freshmen enrollment. Compared to last year, 1,000 fewer in-state transfer students and 6,000 more in-state freshman applied. This problem is particularly acute at Santa Cruz and Riverside, which enrolled more than 3.5 freshmen for every transfer student in 2016 and may not meet the 2:1 goal this year.

UC may also have trouble meeting its target freshmen-to-transfer ratio in the future. If the number of freshmen applicants keeps increasing while the number of transfer applicants stagnates, UC may have to turn away more in-state freshmen applicants to meet its goal. To increase the quantity and quality of future transfer pools, the system is working to expand existing transfer agreements between UC campuses and nearby community colleges. In addition, UC’s new Transfer Pathways program helps prepare community college students in the most popular majors to transfer as juniors to any UC campus. The new program could start showing results in the next couple of years.

Though transfer demand at UC is sluggish, transferring is still a popular path for students elsewhere. California State University (CSU) has seen 14% growth in transfer applications since 2011 and, in 2016, received over 106,000 transfer applications (about three times as many as UC). UC could look to a recent success at CSU, which worked with the California Community Colleges to develop the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT). Like the Transfer Pathways program, the ADT prepares community college students for junior-level entry at any CSU campus. But the ADT goes further by guaranteeing that students will only need 60 more units at CSU to graduate from their major. It also guarantees students admission to the CSU system and offers priority consideration at a local CSU campus. The ADT is quickly becoming a popular option, with 30,000 ADTs awarded in 2015–16 alone. Of course, students are considering other factors, such as cost, distance, eligibility, and availability when choosing where to apply for transfer. Guaranteed pathways to a degree and priority consideration in admission, however, are likely to entice potential transfers.

It will be difficult for UC to achieve its 2017 transfer requirement, especially at Santa Cruz and Riverside—putting into question whether the system will receive the $50 million withheld in the governor’s budget proposal. With increasing demand for freshmen slots, UC must work to increase the pool of transfer applicants to meet both the 2:1 goal and freshmen demand going forward.

Learn more

Read the report Higher Education in California: Expanding College Access
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Educational Progress Stalls in California

California is known as an engine of economic growth and innovation in the United States and across the world. A highly educated workforce has long gone hand in hand with the state’s robust economy.

California’s historically strong commitment to higher education—providing low-cost access to public colleges and universities at a time of rapid population growth—led to a large increase in college enrollment and completion. Baby boomers who were of prime college age during the 1960s and 1970s benefited from that expansion. Today, those boomers are the best-educated adults of that generation in the developed world. Older working-age adults (age 55–64) in California are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than in any of the 32 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Is California’s younger generation keeping up with other countries?

Unfortunately, generational progress in college completion has nearly stalled in California. Although more California high schoolers are completing their diploma today than 30 years ago, the share that subsequently earns a bachelor’s degree has not changed much: 33% of those age 25–34 in California today have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 31% of those age 55–64. Other countries have made much stronger progress. Indeed, the share of college attainment among young adults in California ranks 22nd of the 32 OECD countries, and the state’s generational progress is dead last.

The lack of generational progress in California is a cause for concern. College attainment not only benefits individuals’ earnings and employment prospects but also contributes to California’s economy by attracting businesses and keeping the state competitive in an increasingly globalized marketplace. Increasing the share of high school graduates eligible for the state’s public universities could help improve educational attainment among California’s young adults.

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The Growth of Cal Grants

The Cal Grant program is the primary program for providing tuition assistance and financial aid to California’s college students. It has allowed California to maintain access to college for low-income students during a time of rapid tuition increases. The program has grown significantly since its inception in 1955 and now serves more than 300,000 students at an annual cost of around $2 billion.

State law protects Cal Grant recipients from tuition increases at UC or CSU: when tuition rises, so do these students’ Cal Grants. Consequently, as tuition has increased and enrollment of low-income students has expanded, the program has grown rapidly. Next fall, tuition is scheduled to increase by $280 per year at UC and by $270 per year at CSU. In addition, UC, which has enrolled 7,400 new undergraduates in each of the last two years, plans to enroll an additional 2,500 in the fall of 2017‒18, the largest three-year increase in seventy years. CSU has added around 50,000 additional students over the past five years. The expansion of Cal Grants has drawn the attention of the governor. He noted in his May budget revision that “rising Cal Grant costs from tuition hikes will also limit the state’s ability to increase General Fund support in the future.”

Figure: Cal grant funding has increased significantly at public univerisities

Nearly all of the Cal Grant funding increases have gone to students attending public institutions. CSU has seen a 75% increase in Cal Grant funds since 2011‒12, while the community colleges and UC have received a 61% and 27% increase respectively. Private nonprofit colleges, on the other hand, have seen their Cal Grant funding stagnate. The governor’s budget revision acknowledges this by reallocating $8 million that had been targeted to UC and CSU in his January budget proposal to non-profit private Cal Grant funding. These funds will prevent a planned cut to the maximum award for students attending a nonprofit private college.

By contrast, for-profit colleges have seen their Cal Grant funding decrease substantially over the past five years. The 2012‒13 budget introduced restrictions on access to state Cal Grants which affected many for-profit colleges. To some degree, for-profit colleges satisfy an unmet need for access to higher education for non-traditional students. But investigators have found that many of these colleges engage in predatory marketing and lending practices—targeting vulnerable students, making false statements regarding job placement, and overestimating the value of the degrees they provide. To address these issues the state established new institutional eligibility standards for Cal Grants. To be eligible, a higher education institution must now have a minimum graduation rate of 30% and a loan default rate of less than 15.5%. The 2012‒13 budget also cut the maximum award for a student attending a for-profit college from $9,708 to $4,000. These regulations have saved the state nearly $100 million since 2011‒12, reduced by more than half the number of for-profit colleges eligible for Cal Grants, and ensured that low-income and first generation students were not taken advantage of by higher education institutions that did not serve their economic interest.

Cal Grants are an essential tool for improving the economic mobility of the state’s neediest residents. They also allow the state to reduce the burden of federal loans on young Californians. Maintaining Cal Grants for high performing colleges— public and private—will improve access to college for all Californians.

Learn morEVisit the PPIC Higher Education Center

More Students Completing College Prep Courses

Over the past few years more school districts have made college preparatory courses mandatory for high school graduation. These districts have aligned their graduation requirements to the CSU and UC a-g sequence in an effort to make more students college ready. Some of these districts include Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Sonoma Valley, and Vallejo City Unified; the East Side Union High School District in San Jose; and the San Diego Unified, Carlsbad Unified, and Sweetwater Union High School District in San Diego County. Most of these requirements are too new to evaluate, but as more districts make this change, it is important to understand the potential impact. A PPIC report on San Diego Unified found that about 10 percent more students would become eligible to apply to UC and CSU because of the requirement.

The a-g sequence is a set of high school courses required for admission to UC and CSU. The content is rigorous and broad, designed to provide students with a solid foundation of general knowledge. It covers seven different subject areas: (a) history/social science, (b) English, (c) mathematics, (d) laboratory science, (e) foreign language, (f) visual and performing arts, and (g) college-preparatory electives; it includes a total of 15 year-long courses or 30 semesters. These courses are viewed as more rigorous than standard high school courses, as they must meet the criteria developed by the UC’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (It is possible that a non-a-g course is equally rigorous but has simply not undergone a-g approval).

The new a-g graduation requirements have raised concern that many students would be unable to meet them—the reform designed to prepare more students for college might result in lower high school graduation rates. Given this concern, most a-g aligned districts require that students earn a D or higher, which is lower than the UC and CSU requirement of a grade of C or higher.

As it turns out, more students are meeting the a-g requirements with a C or higher. Over the last 10 years there has been an increase of 48% in those meeting the requirements—or 60,000 more high school graduates—with 43% of the class of 2015 doing so.

As more students complete the a-g sequence, the UC and CSU systems receive more applications and admit more students. Between 2011 and 2016, 23% (or 54,383) more Californians applied to UC and CSU, and the systems admitted 20% (or 33,557) more California applicants. However, both systems still limit or deny access to some qualified students. In the 2014‒15 school year, UC redirected 10,688 eligible California students to UC Merced―they had been denied admission to other campuses―but only 195 actually enrolled. The following year, the CSU denied over 17,000 eligible California students, which amounts to almost 55% of denied applicants.

Improvements in college preparation among California’s high school graduates is great news. The challenge is to ensure that our colleges and universities are able to accommodate the increase in demand that comes with it.

Learn more

Read the report College Readiness in California: A Look at Rigorous High School Course-Taking
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Video: Top Goals of Higher Education Leaders

California’s higher education system is not keeping up with the economy’s changing needs, PPIC research has shown. Falling behind in creating a skilled workforce could curtail economic growth, limit economic mobility, and increase inequality in the state. The leaders of the California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU), and University of California (UC) are essential in the effort to increase the number of educated workers, because the vast majority of the state’s college students attend public colleges and universities.

Hans Johnson, director of the PPIC Higher Education Center, summarized this research, and the three leaders of the higher education system sat down last week with Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO, to talk about their goals before a large Sacramento audience.

The first question: What are your top goals in the next decade?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, CCC chancellor, said it is a critical time for the 113-campus system. “We connect with so many Californians at a time when the economy is changing before our eyes, and the default to get into the workforce is no longer a high school diploma. Some sort of post-secondary credential is essential. That is our focus.”

He said he is working with the other higher education branches and the K–12 system to integrate them into “one public system of education, not four separate systems.”

Timothy White, CSU chancellor, had a similar focus on results. “Our number -one priority in the years ahead is to improve the success rates of our students,” he said, adding that just 20 percent of CSU students earn their degrees in four years. He said he wants to make sure CSU students have access to courses when they need to take them, as well as sufficient faculty and academic support.

Janet Napolitano, UC president, said, “My vision is that the University of California remain the top public university in the world.” Citing the recent growth in enrollment of in-state students, she said that sustaining academic excellence, increasing diversity, and producing students who will be the next generation of California’s leaders are all key parts of this vision.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Californians Favor Higher Taxes over Higher Tuition

After six years without tuition increases, California’s public universities are considering proposals to modestly raise tuition for California residents. The University of California (UC) has proposed increasing systemwide tuition and fees for undergraduates by $336 to a total of $12,630 for the academic year. The California State University (CSU) has proposed increasing in-state student undergraduate tuition by $270 to a total of $5,742 for full-time students. Campuses at each system charge additional fees, which currently average about $1,200 at UC and $1,400 at CSU.

A recent PPIC Statewide Survey on Californians and higher education indicates that these proposals are likely to be unpopular with the public. The survey found that Californians are concerned about the cost of college: 57% said that the overall affordability of California’s public colleges and universities is a big problem. Only 23% of Californians would be willing to increase student fees in order to increase funding for California’s public higher education system.

This is not the first time Californians have voiced disapproval of tuition increases. Before UC and CSU raised tuition in 2011, PPIC’s 2010 higher education survey found that only 35% of Californians favored increasing student fees as a way to maintain higher education funding levels in the face of state budget cuts. In 2011, our survey found that 65% of Californians were very concerned about increasing student tuition and fees as a way to deal with decreased funding.

Today, when many policy preferences are often divided along party lines, there is partisan consensus on this issue: at least 70% of Californians across parties say they would be unwilling to increase student fees to fund higher education. Indeed, less than a third of Californians across all regions and demographic groups say they would be willing to increase student fees.

At the same time, a majority of Californians (67%) believe that the current level of state funding for public colleges and universities is inadequate. So what are Californians willing to do to increase funding for public higher education? Overall, they are twice as likely to say they are willing to pay higher taxes as to say they are willing to increase student fees (48% to 23%). However, and perhaps unsurprisingly, we see notable partisan differences when it comes to willingness to pay higher taxes. While 68% of Democrats say they would be willing to pay higher taxes to increase funding for public colleges and universities, only 20% of Republicans say the same.

Another way to increase funding for California’s public colleges and universities would be to admit more out-of-state students, who pay higher tuition. Californians are somewhat divided on this issue, with half saying they would not be willing to admit more out-of-state students, while 46% say they would be willing to do so. However, only 21% of Californians support admitting more out-of-state students if this would mean admitting fewer in-state students. This view holds across party lines: only one in four Republicans (25%), and even fewer independents (21%) and Democrats (16%), are willing to admit more out-of-state students if this would mean admitting fewer in-state students. UC has proposed increasing systemwide out-of-state tuition and fees by over $1,600 to almost $40,000.

Our survey findings suggest that the proposed UC and CSU tuition and fee increases may be unpopular among Californians of all political persuasions—and that Californians’ reluctance to increase the financial burden on the state’s students may be driven by concerns about access and affordability.

Learn more

Read the PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Higher Education
Find out more about the PPIC Statewide Survey
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

College Costs Could Rise for Some Students

The governor’s budget proposal includes increased funding for UC and CSU but likely not enough to keep the systems from raising tuition—which the governor said he expects. The proposed tuition increases (about 5% at CSU and 3% at UC) are modest compared to the large increases from 2006 to 2011 (104% at CSU and 92% at UC). PPIC has shown that while financial aid increases protect most students from low income families from tuition hikes, students from middle- and upper-class families see their costs increase.

The governor’s proposed budget also phases out the Middle Class Scholarship program. Created by the legislature in 2013—after CSU and UC costs climbed rapidly—this program aimed to help students from families too wealthy to receive Cal Grants (state grants that cover tuition for low-income students). The scholarships cover 10% to 40% of tuition (depending on family income and assets) for eligible students from families with incomes up to $156,000. About 37,000 students benefitted from the scholarship this year.

How much do middle-class students pay?
To characterize what a student pays to attend college, we often use the term “net price”—a comprehensive accounting of student costs and assistance. To determine the net price, we add books, room and board, and other expenses to tuition, and subtract federal, state, institutional, and local grants and scholarships (money that a student doesn’t have to pay back).

Students who receive some form of federal financial aid (grants, loans, work study, etc.) generally pay much less than the full cost of college. For students from families making less than $80,000, federal, state and local grants usually cover at least the full tuition at both CSU and UC—but these students pay a net price that could be as high as $11,000 a year at CSU and $13,000 at UC in order to cover expenses other than tuition. Students from families making $75,000 to $110,000 are generally too wealthy for federal and state grants; they pay a much higher average net price of about $16,000 at CSU and $21,000 at UC. (Also, many students pay close to the full cost because they do not apply for and/or are ineligible for federal aid.)

The most recent cost data is from 2013‒14—this was the first year of the Middle Class Scholarship program. Average awards that year were $1,100 or less, and once the program was fully implemented awards were slated to range from $1,300 and $5,400 at UC and $700 and $2,700 at CSU, depending on the income and assets of eligible students and on the number of applicants.

Not surprisingly, the phasing out of the Middle Class Scholarship and the impending tuition increase are expected to have a disproportionate impact on middle- and upper-class students. As a result, those students will probably pay more for their degrees.

Learn more

Read “Higher Education in California: Student Costs”
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Improving College Placement Policies

Assessment and placement policies govern where students begin their college trajectory. This is a high-stakes issue for students, affecting how quickly they achieve their educational goals. Too often, it affects their likelihood of reaching these goals at all. Students who are placed in developmental, or remedial, courses end up spending significant portions of their limited financial aid packages—and sometimes take on debt—to pay for courses that don’t usually count toward a degree.

Findings from a PPIC survey on assessment and placement policies show that California’s community colleges vary in how they identify college-ready students. First, colleges use different assessment tests. Second, even those that use the same test apply different cut-off scores, which are the minimum scores that a student must get to be designated college ready. While over half of colleges reported using the Accuplacer test to assess college readiness in math, cut-off scores ranged from 25 to 96 out of 120. Students with the median score of 58 would be deemed college ready at only half of these colleges, while at the other half, they would be placed into developmental math. This lack of consistency means that access to transfer-level courses is determined not only by students’ performance on the test, but also by placement policies at the institution where they enroll.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy fix to this problem, as opposing forces are at play. On one hand, the current approach of setting local assessment and placement policies allows for considerable academic freedom and institutional autonomy, giving colleges flexibility to respond to the local needs of the population they serve. This is particularly important for placement into developmental coursework, the structure of which varies significantly across colleges. On the other hand, locally determined cut-off scores into transfer-level courses lead to inconsistent standards and can send a confusing message to high schools around the state about what it means to be college ready.

Accordingly, placement into transfer-level courses should be uniform across the community college system. Having clearer and more uniform policies for accessing introductory transfer-level courses (e.g., college composition, college math, and statistics, among others) is critical because these courses are considered equal in the eyes of four-year institutions accepting them for transfer. Variation in the standards used to access these courses dilutes this presumed equality.

California State University (CSU) presents a compelling case study for a statewide system that has consistent assessment and placement policies for determining college readiness. Across the 23 universities in the CSU system, a common assessment and common cut-off scores are used for placement into transfer-level math and English. Yet individual campuses maintain flexibility regarding how they structure developmental education sequences and placement into these courses.

Systemwide assessment and placement policies at California’s community colleges could yield multiple benefits:

  • Eliminating barriers for students who transfer from one college to another. Clear and uniform policies for accessing transfer-level courses would begin to make students’ assessment results more portable across colleges, especially those in the same region.
  • Improving programs and support for students in developmental education. Currently, the lack of comparable data across colleges has prevented the system from measuring the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase student success in developmental education.
  • Sending a clear message to high schools about college readiness standards at community colleges. This would be akin to the uniform policy used by high schools and colleges across the state to determine college readiness as part of the Early Assessment Program (EAP).

Continuing to let community colleges determine placement into developmental education while standardizing placement policies into transfer-level courses will preserve local autonomy and help to bring about the benefits that come with systemwide uniformity.

Learn more

Read the report Determining College Readiness in California’s Community Colleges: A Survey of Assessment and Placement Policies
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Video: Grading the Higher Education System

Californians give positive grades to the three branches of the state’s public higher education system—the community colleges, California State University, and the University of California. But the PPIC Statewide Survey on higher education shows that they have big concerns about affordability. Most California adults—regardless of political party, income, or age—see it as a big problem. And when Californians are asked to name the most important issue facing the state’s public colleges and universities, affordability leads the list.

“This is really the issue that’s at the forefront of people’s minds when you’re talking about higher education,” said PPIC researcher Lunna Lopes, who presented the findings at a Sacramento briefing last week.

Two out of three Californians say state funding of public colleges and universities is inadequate. While most would support a state construction bond to fund higher education projects, there is much less consensus on other ideas to increase revenue.

Learn more

Read the December PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Higher Education
Find out more about the PPIC Statewide Survey

CSU and UC Are a Better Value Than Universities Nationwide

With college application season underway, the US Department of Education’s yearly scorecard helps prospective students and their parents by providing information on the costs, graduation rates, and student debt associated with individual colleges. Since last year, the scorecard has also included wages for former students based on federal tax data. We reported on how to interpret the earnings measure in an earlier blog post.

The scorecard also highlights 26 affordable universities with good outcomes in the form of relatively high earnings. California’s public universities do quite well: eight California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) campuses make the list. This list uses a school’s average net price (its tuition, fees, room, board, and other expenses minus the average amount of grants and scholarships) and the typical student’s earnings 10 years after enrolling to estimate how much “bang for their buck” students get in terms of future income.

In fact, almost all CSU and UC campuses provide higher-than-average incomes given their net price when compared to four-year colleges nationwide. California’s private four-year colleges show mixed results, as they generally have higher net costs; about half have below-average earnings for their price.

These results speak to the relative success of CSU and UC compared to other universities in the nation. However, it is important to note that this isn’t the whole story: the net price and income data are only collected for students who received some form of federal aid. While this represents a majority of students in public universities, it can represent a smaller fraction of students from private universities in the state.

California’s public universities have a couple built-in advantages. The state’s generous financial aid program provides grants that cover tuition for qualifying low-income students and, in some cases, help pay for living expenses and books—substantially reducing the net price for those students. Also, workers in California earn more than those in other parts of the country, and the concentration of higher-paying jobs in California (such as in the tech industry) may contribute to the relative success of the state’s students. However, many private colleges in the state are associated with low median salaries, suggesting it’s not just location that matters.

California also likely benefits from high-quality institutions. Most UCs are highly ranked nationally, and as PPIC has shown in other research, CSUs have relatively good six-year graduation rates when compared to similar institutions. This is important, as the scorecard reports the incomes of students who attended a university, regardless of whether they graduated. College graduates tend to make more than non-graduates, so institutions with better graduation rates are more likely to produce workers with higher incomes.

While the scorecard can help students decide which college is right for them, it also shows students that the economic returns to a college degree can be had for a reasonable price in California.

For those interested in diving deeper into this finding, this chart illustrates the relationship between net price and the yearly income of students after 10 years. Each dot is a university. The CSUs (orange), UCs (dark teal), and in-state private universities (light teal) are marked alongside other universities in the nation (light grey). Nationwide, higher net prices are associated with higher earnings. This isn’t shocking, as we generally associate higher prices with higher-quality universities, which may net students a higher future income. The diagonal line shows typical earnings for a given net price. Universities above the diagonal line have higher-than-average earnings given their net price, and universities below the line have lower-than-average earnings.

Learn more

Read “What the New College Scorecard Can—and Can’t Tell You”
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center