Nonetheless, she affirmed that her office would “of course want to work with the legislature” on its requests.
Neither Newman nor Fong responded to questions from CalMatters regarding the letter. A CSU spokesperson said the Cal State system wouldn’t speculate about what it would do if the community college system doesn’t pause, per the legislators’ request.
“We expect that the final approved bachelor’s program will not duplicate a CSU or a UC regardless of location,” the legislators wrote, which runs counter to the interpretation that the community colleges have made.
The colleges see “relative geographic location” as one reason why a school may deserve to award a certain bachelor’s degree.
Feather River College is a prime example. Nestled in the High Sierra two hours north of Lake Tahoe, Feather River is a small, rural school with the setting to prove it.
“I can walk out on my campus and look at the hill across the valley and see a burnt hilltop,” Kevin Trutna, president of the college, told CalMatters. “Plumas National Forest, Lassen National Forest, Lassen National Park. Three-fourths of our county is federal or state forest. You have a ready-made (wildfire) laboratory here that nobody is focusing on. This is our speciality.”
Both the Camp and Dixie fires tore through the Feather River Valley in 2018 and 2021, respectively, leaving nearby towns like Greenville in ashes.
“We cannot sit here and let Humboldt State (Cal Poly Humboldt) or Cal Poly San Luis Obispo or Chico or anybody say ‘Hey, this is our business. We’ll send you people out there,’” Trutna said. “We need to do something to be proactive to preserve the rest of our national forest.”
When Feather River College submitted an application in January 2022 to offer a bachelor’s degree in “Ecosystem Restoration and Applied Fire Management,” two professors from Cal Poly Humboldt, as well as professors from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal State Chico, UC Davis, and the nearby UC Cooperative Extension school all submitted letters in support.
Four months later, then-Associate Vice Chancellor of the Cal State University system Alison Wrynn objected to the Feather River program, arguing that it duplicated Cal Poly Humboldt’s soon-to-be fire management program.
While the Feather River program has become the most contentious, other community colleges faced similar pushback. Out of the nine colleges that were approved to offer bachelor’s degrees under the new law, at least four faced objections from CSU campuses.
Cal State San Marcos, for example, said that San Diego City College’s application to award bachelor’s degrees in “Cyber Defense and Analysis” would be duplicative of a program that San Marcos intended to build.
The nearby CSU campuses later dropped their opposition to San Diego City College’s program, but communication hiccups between the CSU and community college administrators led to additional delays to the program’s approval, the Voice of San Diego reported.
If there’s disagreement about whether a community college should proceed with a bachelor degree program, the administrators at each higher education system establish a “written agreement” that explains whether the objections have been resolved, according to the 2021 law.
The new law stipulates that the entire approval process, including any conflict resolution, should take no more than five months. It ultimately took more than a year for the community college and California State University officials to reach agreements regarding eight of the nine proposed bachelor’s degree programs.
The agreement that wasn’t agreed to
The Feather River dispute was never resolved.
“A written agreement was shared with the CSU and we didn’t really get a response back,” said Navarette.
That’s because the CSU system didn’t agree to it, said Nathan Evans, a CSU associate vice chancellor.
In the legislators’ letter, they take aim at the community colleges’ actions, writing that “written agreements” need to be signed by the “impacted parties.”
Instead of moving forward with the fire management program, Evans wants to see Feather River College and Cal Poly Humboldt collaborate on a joint degree. He pointed to programs across the state that help students work towards a certain major through two years of school at community college and two years at a four-year university. In another scenario, he referenced how professors from Cal State Fullerton and San Bernadino travel to Riverside City College or teach remotely so that community college students can get a bachelor’s in nursing in less than three years.
But Trutna doesn’t see those options as realistic. “Our students just can’t move over there for two years,” he said, adding that “this is a hands-on vocational degree, not something you can do remotely.”
And so, in March, the community college board of governors approved Feather River’s program. The law grants the community college board with the ultimate decision-making authority, leaving CSU leaders to search for a different recourse.
Meanwhile, the 14 colleges that just applied to launch their own bachelor’s degree programs will go on hold as they wait and see what agreements, if any, the two higher education systems can reach.
