Santa Rosa Junior College decides against offering four-year degrees

Santa Rosa Junior College decided against participating in a new pilot program to offer bachelor’s degrees at community colleges because California isn’t providing any extra money to help launch the effort.

The college originally submitted an application to offer a four-year degree in cybersecurity but withdrew it after concluding it was “not fiscally prudent” to take part this year, said Mary Kay Rudolph, the college’s vice president for academic affairs and assistant superintendent.

Paraphrasing college President Frank Chong, Rudolph on Thursday explained the decision this way: “I want to be on the cutting edge, not the bleeding edge.”

The California Community Colleges board of governors this week gave approval for 15 community colleges to each develop a single bachelor’s degree program under a law approved last year. The program seeks to provide training in little-offered degrees and to open up a more affordable way to obtain a four-year degree.

The aim is for the colleges to keep the student’s on-campus costs for such bachelor’s degrees as dental hygiene, respiratory care and biomanufacturing to about $10,000. That compares with tuition fees of $44,000 to $53,000 for four years at the ?California State University and University of California systems.

“We’re really excited about this,” said Community Colleges spokeswoman Paige Marlatt Dorr, an alumna of SRJC. “I think this is going to be very helpful for California’s workforce and economy.”

However, she acknowledged that the participating colleges will receive no extra state funds to launch the program. Once it begins, participating students will pay higher fees for the upper-division classes, at $130 per unit versus $46 for lower-?division courses, still far below those of a four-year school.

Most of the participating colleges are likely to launch their programs in 2016, Marlatt Dorr said. Some campuses are receiving financial assistance for the programs from industry groups.

Rudolph emphasized that Santa Rosa didn’t lightly decide to pull its application. She has been following the issue and two years ago served on a statewide task force that evaluated offering a four-year degree in nursing at a community college.

Of note, she said, is that the current law specifically prohibits the community colleges from offering a bachelor’s in nursing.

In order to join the pilot program, the college would have needed to use its own funds to hire additional faculty with doctoral degrees for the upper-division courses, develop the curriculum and gain the needed accreditation. Rudolph said both Chong and the college’s faculty senate members suggested that the junior college should wait and possibly apply in the future.

Looking ahead, Rudolph expressed skepticism that community colleges can offer a program with qualified faculty and expensive training equipment at a price far below the CSU or UC campuses’.

“Why would it be less expensive for us to do it than someone else?” she asked.

A different approach, she said, might be for the junior college to develop a partnership with a four-year college like Sonoma State University when local industries identify a need for a new degree program.

You can reach Staff Writer ?Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or ?robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.