Due to a potential decrease in the number of college graduates, the California State University has implemented programs aiming to increase college attendance and graduation rates and rekindle the state’s struggling work force.
According to the April report, “Closing the gap: Meeting California’s need for college graduates,” the state will lack nearly 1 million college graduates by the year 2025. By then, it is predicted that only 35 percent of working-age adults will have a college education in an economy that will need about 41 percent.
However, the CSU system has already begun addressing this issue. In May 2008, the Board of Trustees embraced the Access to Excellence plan, a system of small-scale programs which will hopefully cut current achievement gaps in half during the next 10 years.
“Part of the CSU’s mission is to provide high-quality, accessible, student-focused higher education,” CSU media relations specialist Erik Fallis said. “We also educate California’s workforce of the future. Making sure our students attain their degrees goes hand-in-hand with our mission.”
Working in conjunction with community colleges across the state, the CSU created the Lower Division Transfer Pattern (LDTP), a program that prepares students for transferring to four-year universities. The LDTP tells students exactly what they need to accomplish in order to transfer to a specific major at all 23 CSU universities.
The LDTP also provides detailed plans, comprised of general education coursework, to students who are not sure which CSU campus they want to attend. All students need to complete at least 60 units to transfer to a CSU campus.
Junior Cuesta College student Lindsay Walker will be transferring to Cal Poly as a nutrition major next fall. For Walker, figuring out transfer requirements hasn’t been a difficult task because Cuesta and Cal Poly work closely together to iron out minimum standards for all majors.
“My counselor actually printed out a page from the Cal Poly catalog and gave me a list of Cuesta classes that are equivalent and transferrable,” Walker said. “The Cuesta catalog lists transfer requirements for CSU schools.”
The CSU system has also developed a standardized test that gauges college readiness in high school students. The Early Assessment Program (EAP) tests high school juniors’ proficiency in English and mathematics and determines whether remedial work is necessary before entering a CSU campus. High school students who perform poorly on the EAP can tailor their senior year towards college preparation.
According to the CSU’s Web site, 346,000 students volunteered to take the EAP in 2007 — 30,000 more than the previous year. Only 16 percent of the students taking the English EAP demonstrated proficiency, while 55 percent of the students who took the mathematics EAP showed proficiency.
The CSU has created a college poster which is designed to keep middle school and high school students on track for college entrance. This poster informs students about class requirements as well as financial and statistical information about college.
“The CSU has a great working relationship with high schools and community colleges throughout the state,” Fallis said. “The success of these programs will be seen over the long-term.”
According to Fallis, fall 2009 transfer applications are up 13.7 percent compared to fall 2008 – an early indicator of the CSU’s success.
“As the nation’s largest public university system, the CSU has taken a leadership role in providing access to quality higher education,” he said.