A new state law will make it easier for community college students to get into Cal Poly, but it could also weaken Cal Poly’s mathematics degrees.
The five math classes in an associate’s degree would count for the same as eight math classes in the first two years at Cal Poly. This doesn’t match up, mathematics department chair Don Rawlings said.
“What it does, in essence, is it ties the strongest programs at the California State University (CSU) campuses to the weakest California community college campuses; that means we have to accommodate the weakest (associates) degree that comes out,” Rawlings said.
The Student Transfer Reform Act, signed in Fall 2010 by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, was passed to make it easier for students to earn their degrees faster. Under the act, community college math classes satisfy the first two years of Cal Poly’s math requirements, author of the law and Senator Alex Padilla said in an announcement at the signing of the law.
The law aims to save students time and money, Padilla said. The demand for skilled workers in the state means more students need to transfer from community colleges and get their degrees from four-year universities, he said.
“There’s still a lot of people that are getting through high school, going to college but not graduating within four, five or six years,” Padilla told the Daily Sundial, Cal State Northridge’s
student newspaper.
But, transfer students would slow down the graduation process because they wouldn’t have the needed skills, Don Rawlings said. When the students arrive at Cal Poly, they would essentially be down a quarter’s worth of classes, he said.
The law makes sense in principle but it doesn’t take the CSU’s into account, he said.
“It sounds like common sense, but it is anything but common sense,” Rawlings said.
He said the law favors the California community college system, because it assumes that all the California community colleges offer the specific courses students need.
The California community college representatives dominated the meetings in the writing of the bill into law, Rawlings said. CSU department chairs attended a meeting to discuss the law and learn about it with a representative from Padilla’s office, he said.
“He listened to our concerns, but took none of our recommendations,” Rawlings said.
Although the law was supposed to be implemented in Fall 2011, Rawlings said he has yet to hear about implementation.
There are presently four different concentrations that mathematics majors can follow: pure, applied, teaching and general. If the law was implemented, another track would have to be created or an existing track would be substantially altered, Rawlings said.
The general concentration in mathematics could be altered if the law is implemented and a new concentration isn’t put into place, he said. This could lead to the general concentration being a weaker degree in the mathematics department for all students, he said.
The law could also lead to an overall dilution of the mathematics program, which could affect Cal Poly’s status as being one of the top CSU schools, Rawlings said.
“We want to maintain our difference,” he said.
Other professors in the mathematics department said they agree with Rawlings. Cal Poly should be trying to find ways to distinguish the math curriculum and not water it down, Ben Richert, a mathematics professor at Cal Poly and also the math department Undergraduate Coordinator, said.
“We’ll continue to get pressure to move away from things that make Cal Poly distinctive,” he said.
The community college transfer students wouldn’t be at the same level as the Cal Poly mathematics majors, he said.
The odds would be stacked against the transfer students coming into Cal Poly, assistant mathematics professor Rob Easton said.
“There would be a slightly lower passing rate,” he said.
Rawlings said he remains optimistic that the law will not get implemented any time soon. Even if the law does come into effect, transfer students would have a hard time getting into the mathematics department at Cal Poly, he said.
Cal Poly is an impacted campus, which Rawlings said gives it the opportunity to be more selective when accepting students. It’s a possibility that none of the transfer students under the new law would be seen at Cal Poly, he said. If none arrive, the mathematics department would be unaffected. Something would be put in the books just in case the transfers do arrive, Rawlings said.
This article was written by Ryan Murphy.