Senate Standing Committee on Education

Their mission statements express how best to meet the needs of the state and provide the framework within which the state funds and supports higher education programs and initiatives. More importantly, they share a deeper mission beyond the division between them to provide educational opportunity and success to all of California's people. We have four segments of post secondary education California three public, one private. The community colleges are the gateway to equity, providing access to top quality lower division transfer and vocational education.

The California State Universities offer quality undergraduate, graduate and professional education and are regarded among the world's leading teaching universities. The University of California is the state's premier research university, and its research scholars and scientists play a critical role in the economic and social development of this great state. The private, independent colleges and universities of the state are essential and valuable components of California's higher education system. Needless to say that our universities and colleges play a fundamental role in our state.

The degree to which these institutions collaborate and coordinate their efforts directly influences their ability to address the evolving needs of our students and the workforce, ensuring that every aspect of the system is functioning effectively for the benefit of all Californians. The state has been without a higher education coordinating body for more than a decade, and a discussion of the current conditions of how different elements of the state's higher education system work together is worth having.

I look forward to having a robust conversation on areas of success, challenges, and strategies for enhancing coordination and collaboration. Today, we will have three panels. First, we'll have an overview discussion with stakeholder experts, including remarks from Dr. Su Jin Jez with California Competes, a nonpartisan higher education policy and research organization, and Audrey Dow with the Campaign for College Opportunity, a higher education organization focused on student success issues. Next, we will hear from higher education system representatives about theories of success, challenges, and strategies for enhancing coordination.

And last, we will hear from faculty from an implementation standpoint. Thank you all again for being here. We have a very full agenda, so I'll try to keep us on track and on time. That being said, I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Assemblymember Fong, for his opening remarks.

Thank you so much, Senator Newman, for that warm introduction and so excited to join each and every one of us here today to have a robust conversation. I'd like to thank my fellow members from both houses to our panelists and the public for joining us at today's meeting. The Assembly Committee on Higher Education held a fantastic informational hearing in October at East Los Angeles Community College to talk about enrollment decline, learning loss, retention, reading, recruitment strategies.

A major takeaway from that hearing was the importance of collaboration. Campuses that were being innovative and really engaging their local communities were observing, encouraging growth and stronger engagement from the community. When campuses and their local communities work together to find solutions, we see creative solutions to complex problems. And our hearing today also demonstrated what happens when higher educational institutions work collaborative to find solutions in their regions and has created additional opportunities for our students. As you mentioned earlier, the senators mentioned California community colleges.

California State University, University of California, and our independent institutions each contribute meaningfully to our higher education ecosystem. These schools educate the next generation of leaders in our communities, helping to create engaged citizens while also addressing our future workforce needs. Our higher education system fundamentally addresses California wide problems, and there needs to be a space for us to explore California wide solutions.

And in fostering that state wide collaboration and coordination, we can help to provide fertile ground for regional partnerships to continue to grow and prosper as a state. So thank you so much again to all our panelists for coming to testify today. Your respective insights will help us immensely in understanding the perspectives and challenges faced by institutions today. Thank you so much again.

Thank you, Chair Fong. We will be joined by some of our other colleagues as we move along. Before we start, let me welcome Assemblymember Chair Quirk-Silva. Assemblymember, any comments to start?

Well, since I'm the only other one here, of course. No, I'm really excited to be here. I'm back on the higher-ed committee I was on a handful of years ago, and I'm happy to return. My district has the Cal State Fullerton, the great Titans, but I also have one of the oldest community colleges, Fullerton College, in my district. And in the new part of my district, I have Cerritos College, which borders Cerritos and Norwalk.

So we are definitely invested in education with thousands of individuals graduating from my district AD 67. And we know that there's pressing issues facing not only community colleges, but additional higher-ed. And as the chair noted, we have to figure out a way to collaborate as we move forward. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And that is an excellent segue to our first panel, the overview panel. Let me welcome Su Jin Jez, PhD, who is the CEO of California Competes, which looks at higher education for a strong economy, and Audrey Dow, Senior Vice President of the Campaign for College Opportunity, please proceed.

Good morning, Chair Newman. Chair Fong, Assemblymember Quirk-Silva my name is Su Jin Jez. I'm the CEO of California Competes. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about California's history with higher education coordination and where we are today. Coordination at its best is about thoughtful integration of California's policies, programs, services, and resources that centers the individual Californian rather than the interests of state agencies or universities, and empowers more Californians to develop the knowledge and skills essential for fostering thriving communities. This is a nontrivial task.

California is home to 3.4 million students attending over 500 colleges and universities. Numerous state agencies hold higher education responsibilities in addition from administering financial aid to overseeing regional initiatives. Despite this vast scale and diverse needs, California remains the only state in the nation without a central higher education entity. How did we get here? California hasn't always been without a coordinating entity.

In fact, we've had many coordinating bodies dating back to at least 1932 and extending to the most recent entity, the California Postsecondary Education Commission, often commonly called CPEC, which was defunded in 2011. Our first formal standing coordinating body was created in the master plan of 1960. The authors of the master plan recognized the need for oversight and alignment when restructuring California's public higher education system into the three segments we have today.

As such, the master plan established the Coordinating Council for Higher Education, which was responsible for ensuring coordination, differentiation, and efficient resource allocation across the segments. This approach for alignment showcased a commitment to proactive and strategic governance, if perhaps not always realized in practice and is foundational to a well integrated, high performing higher education system. While this entity served its purpose during a period of rapid enrollment growth, its effectiveness waned over time due to structural and limitations and evolving needs.

The entity's limited authority and scope meant California really had no statewide planning, and institutional interests were prioritized. In response, the state created CPEC in 1973 with more planning responsibilities and less institutional influence than its predecessor, but it too, faced challenges. CPEC had many responsibilities but no jurisdiction for decision making, making it difficult to navigate power dynamics across governing bodies or address challenges directly without consensus. Its planning and analytical efforts were undermined by a lack of clear state goals and limited access to data.

CPEC aimed to serve as the state's nonpartisan independent policy and budget analyst for higher education, but it was also an advocate for higher education. These conflicting roles often meant it could do neither well. Ultimately, CPEC's effectiveness also waned over time, leading to its defunding in 2011. CPEC's responsibilities were either shifted to other state agencies or discontinued. What does this mean today?

The absence of coordination between the myriad of partners means we fall short in understanding California's needs for higher education, addressing widening equity gaps, assessing the impact of policy reforms and programs implemented, and maximizing returns on the billions of dollars in investments. More specifically, the lack of effective coordination has left our higher education system struggling to support Californians on their path to degree completion and a good life.

We see it in the fractured transfer system, delaying or, more often, blocking degree attainment and access to better paying jobs. We see it in our students who put their educational goals on hold, often for forever, because they can't afford college. We see it in labor shortage, in critical fields like health and education that hold back our state and its residents from reaching their full potential.

The rigor of courses and the hard work of learning should be what makes the journey to and through college challenging, not bureaucratic hurdles like navigating transfer or balancing work, family and school. Yet despite the substantial investments in California's higher education system, the most significant challenges college students face are outside their studies. This misalignment reflects a failure in coordination. Without it, our students, communities, and states suffer.

As the legislature contemplates the next steps for coordination, I urge Members to first be deliberate in identifying the problems we as a state seek to solve and then to design an entity to coordinate towards that. Thank you, chairs, members of the committees, for your thoughtful consideration.

And thank you for your testimony. Ms. Dow, welcome.

Thank you and good morning. Good morning again. Chairs Newman and Fong and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me here today to participate in the hearing and more importantly, for your leadership in higher education, which is a critical undertaking for our students and for the future of our state. My name is Audrey Dow. I'm the Senior Vice President of the Campaign for College Opportunity.

The campaign is a nonprofit, a coalition of education, civil rights, and business leaders really seeking to expand college access and student success here in California. I'm also an appointed commissioner of the California Student Aid Commission, where I assist in guiding California's student financial aid investments and priorities. We're here today to discuss higher education coordination in California, and since the defunding of the California Postsecondary Education Commission in 2011, the state has not had a body with planning and coordination authority over our state's systems of higher education.

The challenges that spring from a lack of coordination are many, and they're urgent. We have a broken transfer system, three separate financial aid systems that students who often straddle two or three institutions at a time must navigate and often must navigate alone. We have an attainment goal but no plan for reaching that goal. We see regional or piecemeal approaches to sharing resources when something much bigger and more powerful is needed.

We lack standardized data collection, and no entity with the authority to analyze that data propose recommendations supported by that data, or to engage in any kind of long range planning using the data to achieve our attainment goal. Unfortunately for our state, but especially for our students, we leave coordination across the three segments and CSAC to the individual relationships of the appointed leaders, the UC President, the CSU and California Community College chancellors, and the CSAC Executive Director.

Those relationships are important, but there's nothing that compels them to work together. This is especially apparent in our budget process, when institutions compete for limited resources and often see each other as competitors instead of allies. A coordinating body can be a neutral entity with only one goal in mind, serving students. California has a special prominence in national policymaking. We've all heard the expression, as California goes, so goes the nation. But on this one issue we see the reverse.

California is the outlier and the anomaly to our own detriment. We see all other states having some version of a higher education coordinating body. They may have differing degrees of authority and autonomy, but every other state in the nation has made a conscious decision that, yes, it makes sense to devolve some degree of decision making, analysis, and planning authority to an entity that has the expertise, the mission, and the staff to do so. We see coordinating bodies in red states and in blue states.

In fact, there seems to be no relationship to the politics of a state and whether they have a commission. Rather, it's understood to be a necessary tool of governance and coordination critical to ensuring that institutional interests do not drive the state's interests, that our higher education investments and policies are guided by evidence and, most importantly, made with students' needs in mind. We can look to other states. Oregon, for example, has a coordinating entity with formal authority to decide on and allocate institutional budget resources.

That way, for example, there is appropriate vetting and analysis to evaluate the capital needs of individual campuses and determine financial aid needs, and they do this analysis through an equity lens, which is the cornerstone of Oregon's approach to higher education policy and, most importantly, funding.

Colorado is another example that has a distinct division that coordinates and implements a statewide transfer policy, ensuring seamless transfer pathways and course mobility are prioritized. That we have lingered as a state so long without a body is even more egregious when you consider the complexity that distinguishes California from almost any other state. We have nearly 40 million people. The next closest state is Texas, with 30 million. We are an incredibly diverse state, with over half the state being Latinx, Asian, or African American.

Not only that, but more than half of young Californians, our college going population are Latinx. We have pronounced income inequality, with an income gap between high and low income families exceeding all but three other states. We have a housing crisis which both reflects and reinforces racial and ethnic inequities which also reveal themselves in our segregated K-12 schools and districts. We have not one system of public four year institutions like other states, but two.

We have the largest community college system in the world with 2.1 million students, with 64% classified as economically disadvantaged. So the question isn't, why should we have a coordinating body? The question is, why on earth wouldn't we? A good example of both the limits and potential of coordination can be found in the AB 928 Committee, which the campaign was appointed to, participated in. Signed in 2021, AB 928 articulates a vision for coordination that is time limited.

Focused on the issue of transfer and with clear parameters to its authority, the AB 928 Committee has been successful in bringing stakeholders together to work on unified goals to improving transfer. As a public facing venue, many conversations that would typically have occurred privately, behind closed doors and in silos now occur publicly and in collaboration.

However, the limits of the AB 928 Committee is that its authority is limited to transfer, despite there being many areas, including BA and MA, granting authority or changes to undergraduate admissions requirements that require coordination. So actually, the lesson is coordination is possible and parties can be incentivized to participate constructively.

Imagine for a moment if some of the more controversial debates in California's higher education ecosystem weren't decided by one systems governing board, who have a vested interest in maintaining and strengthening the autonomy and prestige of their system. But instead delegated decision making to a venue where policies are evaluated by whether they serve the residents of the state, whether they create barriers to access or completion, in essence, whether they are in the public's interest.

Another area in desperate need of coordination is both goal setting and the harder part, goal attainment. The Newsom Administration has articulated an ambitious attainment goal of 70%, meaning 70% of the state has a credential of value by 2030. But how do you actualize a goal that by its very nature requires coordination, not just between the three systems, but with the K-12 system and the workforce as well. In what programs and policies do you invest to make progress against that goal? How do you measure progress?

Using what metrics? We are so encouraged by the conversation today and by the recent master plan for career education, which acknowledges the need for a planning, oversight and goal setting venue to move our 70% attainment goal forward.

We see this as a necessary first step, but we also hope that any new coordinating entity is embedded with the appropriate authority that would be required for institutional accountability, which includes the power to recommend institutional budgets, inform budget and policy priorities, and perhaps most vital of all, monitor compliance with and implementation of statute. Thank you again, members of the committee, for your time this morning. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you both. Let me ask one question. I'll open it up to my colleagues. You both noted the absence of a coordinating body and its implications. And so, two part question. In looking at reinstituting something like that, what would it look like? Would it just be CPEC sort of reinstalled, or would you describe it some other way in the interim? How can we accomplish those goals in the absence of a coordinating bite?

I'll kick us off. So I think that funding CPEC is not the answer. I would think about what are the big needs that we have for California today? The context is very different. Today, the needs of students are different. We have a handout that goes through some, like 10 of the top issues that we see coordination could help the state address today. The big issues I see for California higher ed are around the policy leadership, the statewide policy leadership, around goal setting.

I know the Governor set a goal, would love to understand why is 70% a good number for our state, and then how do we meet the goal? So I think that is one key piece. And then the other big issue I see for California is we have made so many investments around intersegmental programs and policies, but we don't have a good place for those programs to be implemented. So we see these programs going to different state agencies.

The K-16 regional grant program is being administered by the Office of School Construction. We see work based learning programs, some in the governor's office, in OPR, some in the California Student Aid Commission. The big housing grant program is being implemented by the state treasurer's office. All of these have intersegmental components, and so when we're putting them in different parts of our state, we're losing the connective tissue that would make these programs a lot stronger. And we're not learning about how this is reaching students well.

So I think those are two major issues that I see for our state that CPEC didn't do. Program implementation, I think is one key piece also thinking about. I think another issue that's come up more so lately has been around the mission of our three public higher ed segments. So I think that is something that a new entity could be very useful around thinking about. I think the applied baccalaureate, for example, the community colleges. Should the community colleges have the applied baccalaureate?

What's the impact on the CSU? These are really important questions for our state to grapple with. So I could see this as being another issue that an entity today would grapple with that perhaps wasn't in CPEC's purview. So I'd say, starting with the what are the problems today? What does our state look like? What are our issues, what are our needs? And driving from there?

And I think the connection to workforce is also a big one, that in 2011 was sort of an emerging issue for our state. I think these are really urgent needs, and I would think that an entity today would also be very thoughtful about connections to our state's labor agency, to employers, to regional needs. Also, we need a sort of regional exoskeleton to support the regional work that our state has invested deeply in.

That would be another key thing that I would see a coordinating entity today really focused on.

Appreciate that, Ms. Dow.

I think what I'll add is I want to talk a little bit about what was good about CPEC. I echo Dr. Jez's comment that I don't think CPEC is the right model. But CPEC did provide a critical data research function for the state. It did collect data that was seamless across the three systems, and it also did really important projections for the state around capacity. They had a series called ready or not. Here they come.

Really looking at what was coming, students coming from the K-12 system, and predicting for the colleges and universities how they needed to prepare to best serve those students. That data function has not been picked up at all by any other entity, and each segment collects data in its own way. When we look at that data from the campaign for college opportunity, each institution disaggregates their data differently. Race and ethnicity categories are different, and it's really hard to get a sense of what is going on.

I think the cradle to career data system is going to be a huge step in the right direction from there. But that is an essential part to any coordinating entity is having the data capacity for us to understand who is in our system, who's coming into our system. Who's leaving? Where are they getting stuck? I will say that to your question, Senator Newman, about what do we do if we don't have a coordinating entity.

I don't know if I could in good conscience say that we should follow that approach, because as Su Jin shared, we have continued to figure out piecemeal ways to do this intersegmental coordination that just doesn't work. We've had the leaders of the segments meet informally with the Governor with no public agenda, no public accountability, and that really doesn't allow for all the issues that need to be vetted. I made a quick list of the issues that a coordinating entity need to talk about.

It's goals, transfer, financial aid, admissions, data collection, the sharing of best practices, shared resources. When we talk about housing, we actually have some campuses that have housing that could be shared with a neighboring campus. We are leaving those opportunities to chance that leaders are talking to one another. But there's no formal way to really look at our inventory and coordinate around that budget, evaluation, capacity and workforce.

Just in the last two or three years on the issue of admissions, we've seen the CSU try to add an additional requirement to A-G, looking at an additional quantitative reasoning, quantitative reasoning courses. And right now, the UC is considering adding another layer or taking away a course that would be counted under the math requirement with no consultation with the California Department of Education. That is where the value of a coordinating entity would come in.

If we have higher education setting admissions requirements, which they do, but without talking to K-12, the K-12 system, we are essentially saying that K-12 may not be ready to produce students and meet those new admissions requirements, and we're siphoning off access. If those conversations are not happening, if those conversations about how long will it take you, K-12, to be able to offer these courses in a way that's equitable, we're not having those conversations.

So I don't know that at this point, with the volume, I think, of issues that require intersegmental coordination, I don't think that I could recommend another way to really get around it, because I think we've been trying to do that, and we keep coming back to the same place of when are we going to have, I think, the political will to institutionalize a coordinating body.

Your point is well taken, colleagues. Questions? Comments? Sir?

Thank you so much, Chair Newman, and thank you so much for the great presentation here today. And I know you mentioned Colorado and Oregon and some of the examples here. Can you give us other examples of what other states have done to really support collaboration and collaborative work between the different segments and how we can really continue to encourage that work here in California.

There are a lot of other states that are doing coordination work. And I think where we saw a proliferation of states has been around attainment goals. So we've seen a number of states through their coordinating body have an attainment goal that was set by the Legislature and the Governor and these entities, the Coordinating Commission is really setting out what the plan is, what are the metrics by which we're going to measure ourselves and what are the key drivers of that.

So I would really say that a lot of the commissions operate as setting a strategic plan for higher education to meet a goal and then implementing that. A number of states, as I shared, Oregon and Colorado included, are taking the systems within their state and recommending budget. A lot of the systems are doing transfer work.

A lot of the systems are also thinking through, or a lot of the coordinating bodies are thinking through financial aid from start to finish, regardless of what segment the students are in.

So those are just a few of. The ways that we're seeing the coordinating happening.

Thank you. And secondly, I know you've touched upon the history of CPAC, but are there any additional lessons that we should be learning from CPAC as we go forward? Thank you.

I think some of the key things, and it sort of ties to what Audrey was saying about the other states, would be thinking deeply about what does California need today? And thinking about other states have, literally every other state has some sort of coordinating body. I think they're interesting, perhaps to help us bring up some ideas of what would be possible in California. But those other states also have very different political contexts, different higher ed structures, the way that they're governed.

So some caution about looking at what other states are know. Tennessee has a very effective coordinating entity. It's a very different state than California, but they do some very cool analytical work that really guides the Legislature. I think Oregon's very interesting around the allocation. One cool thing I love about Colorado is that every five years they come up with a new strategy for higher ed, and they do it leveraging data, but they're realizing that they have to be agile in serving their students and those things.

I think for CPEC, the lessons learned are relevant for thinking about the new entity today. One thing I touched on lightly for CPEC was around the data piece. And so I think having a strong data system and the California is well on its way with the cradle to queer data system and continuing that investment to make sure that it has the value that we all saw when we advocated for this.

When the Legislature funds it, that will be really critical for the state to be able to make good decisions is having that. And frankly, that is going to be a model for the nation around a strong statewide longitudinal data system. So I have big hopes that California can go from being one of the few states that the only state without a coordinating entity to a state that has the best coordinating entity in the country.

Assemblymember Quirk-Silva.

Thank you for your testimony. I am taking a lot in here, but I'm doing the math on CPEC. Was.

Dissolved in 2011. So about 13 years ago. And over those years, like I said, I was on higher ed. I, my fact am an educator by profession, 20 years in the classroom, elementary classroom. And some of these conversations I've heard in roundtables in our district on higher ed, I've heard individually from going to meetings with higher ed, whether it's community college, higher ed, and yet I'm astounded that we're not making progress.

You mentioned on the transfers, I understood that we had about close to 30 transfer programs where if a student knew what they wanted to do to say at a CSU and they started community college, if they had chosen that transfer program immediately, they could get through in four years. And yet many students don't know this because they're not getting to campuses talking face to face with the counselor. So they may spend a year on a community college before they even know about these programs.

So you talked about broken financial systems and so forth. And I agree that coordination is imperative. But without us bringing back a formal body, which I don't think is going to be likely in the climate we are now, how do we insist that there is coordination without having a mandate to do that? I see a lot of people in the audience, and because I've seen silos forever in education and about every 10 years, there's another big mandate.

Matter of fact, right now in elementary, I know, I spoke to the chair. It's now a new way to teach reading, and it's going to be everybody's going to learn to read by doing science of reading. The truth is, that's not the truth. The truth is that we have multiple ways to get there.

And unless we figure this out, we're going to have the same situation 5 or 10 years from now where people keep asking for more funding and we have to embrace who we have in front of us, the students that are a changing body, changing demographic. And I'm wanting to hear more, but I am raising my eyebrows, I guess, if you would say, on some of the information I'm hearing, because I heard it 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

If you want to comment, you don't have to comment.

We've put a lot of thought into thinking about how does our state coordinate its efforts around higher education and connecting to k 12 and the workforce. And we approach it with can we have coordination without a coordinating entity? Because as I mentioned, all the 49 other states have coordinating entities, but a lot of them are less coordinated than California. So coordinating entity does not necessarily get you coordination. That said, I don't see a way that California becomes more coordinated without a coordinating entity.

The only thing I'll add to that, Assembly Member, is the example I gave in my testimony about the AB 928 Committee, which really legislated that the parties come together to figure out and strengthen transfer via the associate degree for transfer, which I think is what you were discussing. I don't think that's the way we want to approach coordination, that you want to legislate essentially every opportunity that requires intersegmental coordination.

But that is an example, I think, again, of a way that a conversation happened in the public with clear goals, was facilitated to have regular convenings to meet a charge. And that is what we're lacking. We don't have kind of a neutral place where all of the players are coming together in a legislated way, required to report out so that there's accountability and do the job that they're supposed to do.

Again, across the segments, when it does happen, it is organic, and there's a lot of stuff that happens organically, and that's wonderful. But as a state, I think that the stakes are too high for us to leave some of this coordination to chance to the existing relationships of higher education leaders, because they know each other and want to work together. If there are institutional leaders that don't like each other, they could decide, I'm not going to work with that person, and where does that leave us?

That's not a good place to be. And so I do think there needs to be the formality of a Commission of a coordinating entity to coordinate.

So I do appreciate that we've seen some of that friction around conversations around baccalaureate programs between community colleges and the CSU, and it's largely based on goodwill. Right. There's no real leverage to force either of those entities to work closely together. To Assembly Member Quirk-Silva's point, I mean, it's not a small thing to re implement coordinating bodies. So my last question for you is getting from here to there, right? So I accept that both of you think that this is needed.

What guidance would you give us on sort of working deliberately toward creating and implementing a new coordinating body?

I think there are a couple of things. I think first, it's really assessing what are the priorities in terms of what California should be coordinating, what are the areas in determining capacity, in access, in completion, in financial aid. Right. What are those big buckets? I think it is doing that landscape analysis, a lot of which California competes, has done to say what are some of the best practices that can work for California that other states have tried?

I know several years ago, the campaign for college Opportunity actually brought the leaders from Oregon to California to talk to our legislative bodies about how they approached establishing and strengthening their coordinating entities. So I think it is talking with those stakeholders to figure out how might.

We set this up.

The California Legislature has had no shortage of tried policymaking. Right. To establish a coordinating entity. I think looking at those conversations, I think the hearing today is a great first step, but then I think it is putting out a proposal based on that feedback. I think the Legislature has a tremendous amount of power. Sometimes the question is, well, what do we do about UC as an autonomous entity? You do have significant power with your budgetary authority that can essentially wrangle the three systems to work there.

You have significant leverage, I think, to require that and a call to the state to meet those needs.

Dr. Jazz, any comment?

Yeah, I think in some ways we're closer than it seems. So what Michigan did when they created their coordinating body is they pulled in the various efforts from across their state into a single agency. So that is one thing. As I flagged, we have a lot of intersegmental and cross sector work happening already in our state.

So it's not necessarily creating new tasks for the state to handle, but it's bringing together all of the work that's happening across our government into a single place where they can work together. And then with regards to the policy leadership, we have models around that and some that exist already, perhaps like CSAC as an example, the governor's council.

So it's not necessarily having to create a brand new thing, but taking what our state has already invested in and then pulling it together in a way that's more coherent. So it's almost reorganizing rather than creating something new.

Thank you, colleagues. Any final thoughts? Questions, please?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Certainly, we know that it would be helpful to have some level of coordinating in terms of making sure that we have the workforce that we need. I can't think of an industry or segment right now that is in dire need in terms of workforce. But I also understand that I actually was a Member of the CSU board of trustees at 1.0.

I remember a time when we were asking to have the right to be able to offer a doctorate in education, because we were the educators of the overwhelming majority of teachers. And many times we thought the people thought the world was coming to an end. And I think that we certainly need to find ways to ensure that there's proper coordination, because if we don't, we have so many gaps right now. But I don't think that just having data is part of it.

If we're going to do it, we have to do it right. How do we ensure that we prevent a body from falling into a lack of relevance? For people to think that this is a body that's autonomous. They're talking, they're having conversations, they're producing reports that nobody's reading. Right, all those type of things. How do we prevent a body from having falling into a lack of relevance?

So I think there's a couple of ways, and CPEC is probably informative around this and a number of other states court entities that have they describe like a Lamborghini in the garage that they never drive. I think one key thing is the mastery makes you useful. So if you're delivering towards a need and you have expertise, there will be a demand for that work. If it's not useful, if it's not rigorous, then that falls to the wayside and they're no longer a useful advisor.

So being that trusted advisor, you have to execute that role well in this entity. Also, I think around Audrey has talked about the budget incentives matter. So what incentives would this entity be able to offer to coordinate the higher ed segments? Budget is one formal authority. The power to mandate is another thing to consider. So for what areas would it be useful for this entity to have authority to make decisions?

I think pairing some of this policy leadership around planning and research with implementation and capacity building for the segments, along with the balance of incentives, authority will be really critical for its effectiveness. And I completely concur. I was talking about the education doctorate, I was SAC state's associate Director of the EDD, and Jack Scott is on my board.

So I think this traffic cop role of the entity would be really useful, not just in sort of dictating who can do what and who cannot do what, but also providing a space for segment leadership to get together and deliberate and ideally come to consensus on their own around what makes sense and what doesn't. But they have that space to pull together with experts to figure out, is there a space for the CSU to offer the education doctorate independently?

And if so, what does that look like? Are they serving a state need that's not being addressed by the UC or by private institutions, which also have a really critical role in our state around serving workforce needs.

Any other thoughts or questions? Certainly, Assembly Member.

Thank you Dr. Jez. I'm just looking at your handout. On page seven, it talks about how CPEC suffered from ongoing tension that ultimately undermined its effectiveness. Over time, CPEC's credibility with lawmakers eroded, with some claiming that basically that the segments were dominating CPEC's agenda and undermining the overall credibility of the body. And yet your proposal is talking about how detailed expert analysis is essential for informing decisions by the Governor of the Legislature. I apologize I came in late.

But how do we avoid making that same mistake with CPEC? It seems like common sense that we should be coordinating our efforts to maximize the outcomes other than our budget challenges of trying to create a new body at this time. But in terms of this basic problem of CPEC's credibility being dominated by undermining, being dominated by the segments, representatives on the body, how do we avoid that from happening again?

Great question. So I have to say, coordinating higher in California is complicated, and the solution is going to be complicated and not very clear, I think. I don't think there's going to be a, this is the obvious solution to coordinating hire in California. I think some of the issues that you've flagged here, that California can be just flagged, that you're raising the leadership of the coordinating entity will be critically important.

The Executive Director or whoever is that front person that drives the work, that individual has to have, I think extreme expertise, both in the structure of higher ed and the needs of the state, but also in sort of what happens in governing and politics in our state and be able to navigate that well with regards to the institutional influence around CPAC, the challenges with public Members of a governing board often come to these governing boards aren't as staffed as institutional leaders are.

So when you have someone from the UCCSU and community colleges, they have the power of their institutions behind them. And knowledge is power in these boards. When you come in informed, when you come with the solution versus an appointee who may not have that sort of same balance. And so it's not a formal governance issue, but it really is a power issue around who comes to this.

So thinking through, how does this entity and its staff balance that power dynamic so that public Members who are representing California as a whole, the Legislature students, come with equal footing as the higher ed segments. Those, I think, are the key pieces. And it will require, I think, the Legislature to keep an eye on things like to see how is this entity doing in five years. Do we need to make changes?

And I will tell you, every other state is making changes constantly, and California has had calls for reforms of coordination. There were many, many calls to reform CPEC before it was defunded. What our state really did was cut its funding and it became less and less useful. So rather than actually making the changes that were needed to allow CPEC to be more effective.

I hear what you're saying, but I'm just a little, with all due respect, skeptical about just relying on getting the right people involved when there seems to be a structural issue that we've seen here in California. Given the constitutionally autonomous University of California and the segments, I'm not aware of anything in terms of that fundamental dynamic changing between when CPEC was disbanded in 2012 or 2011 and now.

I would just hope that this discussion and ongoing discussions would try to address structural solutions rather than just relying on getting the right leadership.

Absolutely. I think that the incentives and the authority piece that I hinted on earlier are also key parts of this, too.

Yeah, I would echo the authority. I think CPEC, while it did, as I shared earlier, have a great data function, what it completely lacked and what I think made it ineffective was its lack of authority. Authority. Know, I think as you're thinking about a new entity, we should be thinking about budgetary authority such that the entity can make a recommendation to the Legislature for a budget for the three segments, not just one segment.

It should be thinking about approval around admissions such that if an institution wants to make admissions changes, how does that entity, quote unquote, approve those things? I think we also degree offerings. We talked about that a little bit right now, right? Who offers degrees? What degrees? How are we meeting demand and having that entity? Without those levers of authority, there's no incentive for the institutions to participate in the coordinating entity at all. There just really isn't.

And then it can become a platform for just rhetoric and fun, maybe conversation, but no real work.

Can I build a little bit off of that? The Oregon example that Audrey mentioned more concretely, the Legislature in Oregon allocates its higher ed budget, and the coordinating entity makes decisions on where does this money go? So it has that Supreme Power there, which I think cannot be understated.

I appreciate all of your comments. Anything else? Okay, as we close. So I do think first. Thank you, Dr. Dowd. Dr. Jez, Ms. Dow, you have framed well the rest of our discussion. It probably went on longer than we'd assumed, but I think that's a good thing. So thank you very much for your testimony, and it is very relevant to the rest of the hearing. Let me turn it over now to my colleague, Assembly Member Fon.

Thank you so much, Senator Newman, and thank you for a robust panel here. The next item is item number three, California higher education segments, areas of success, challenges, and strategies for enhancing coordination. I'd like to invite our panelists up. We have Dr. Aisha Lowe, Executive vice chancellor of equitable student learning experience and impact for the California Community College chancellor's office. We have Dr. Nathan Evans, deputy vice chancellor, academic and student affairs chief academic officer for the California State University.

We have Dr. Catherine Newman, provost, University of California. And we have Kristen Source, President, Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities. Welcome. Dr. Lu. Would you like to start, please?

Thank you very much. Good morning, Committee Members. Thank you, chair Newman and Chair Fong, for this opportunity to discuss this very important topic of public higher education coordination. Collaboration I'm Dr. Aisha Lowe, Executive vice chancellor with the California Community College's chancellor's office. Given the higher education ecosystem established by California's master plan for higher education, intersectional coordination and collaboration is absolutely essential to coordinate programs and pathways across four segments and over 200 institutions, inclusive of AICCU colleges and universities.

Those four segments and over 200 institutions are decentralized and autonomous with the community college, CSU, UC, and AICCU segments operating under different governance and funding structures. Intersegmental collaboration is a matter of curriculum coordination and the processes needed to coordinate curriculum across hundreds of independent institutions is detailed, complex, iterative, and institutionally distinct.

In order to provide Californians with a diverse plethora of higher education pathways that are aligned to workforce needs and opportunities, we must ensure that transfer pathways are clear and streamlined, that the acceptance of transfer pathways is standardized across campuses, that students credits are objectively accepted and applied to their degree requirements, and that students have the financial and social emotional support they need to persist and complete.

Now there is much success to celebrate, and in fact, as the segments of public higher education, as well as our ASCCU partners, we have been coordinating to solve these problems. Today, 31% of UC graduates start at a community college and 54% of CSU graduates are community college transfers. The number of ADT earners associate's degree for transfer earners has substantially increased, as well as students that we define as transfer ready.

One of the hallmarks of California intersegmental coordination is a sincere willingness to collaborate on the part of the segments. Despite the size and diversity of our segments and campuses, we are collectively invested in navigating those complexities to ensure pathways and processes that are student centered and easy to follow.

For example, while CSU, UC, and AICCU were not mandated to participate in AB 1111 common course numbering, they have willingly and enthusiastically participated as thought partners and strategists in helping design a common course numbering implementation plan with community college stakeholders. Similarly, UC and CSU worked closely with the community college Chancellor's office and community college stakeholders in their design of their dual admission programs.

Additionally, prior to the AB 928 Intersegmental Transfer Committee, the Community college Chancellor's office and the UC Office of the President formed a transfer task force and worked together to identify needs and prioritize strategies between segments. We also have a very strong partnership between the community college Chancellor's office and AICCU, where we have developed dozens of transfer MOUs with private institutions. Lastly, the Community college Chancellor's office, the CSU Chancellor's office, and the UC Office of the President equally support and maintain the assist platform.

We could add to that an untold number of local partnerships that take place across our institutions, partnering on curriculum, on program pathways, on housing, as well as supporting student social and emotional needs.

Another key area of success that is worth noting is the faculty leadership and coordination across our segments, evidenced by the work of ICAs to establish the Calgetzi Unified General education pattern for transfer and collaboration between community college and CSU faculty to co create what are called transfer model curricula, the foundation of the associate degree for transfer pathways, work that is led by the academic Senate for California community colleges.

Now, while we celebrate these areas of success, there are challenges to achieving the unified and streamlined transfer process the state envisions. Chief among them is the current complexity of transfer pathways, where there are many differing transfer requirements across the segments, campuses, and majors.

While course articulation processes and agreements exist and there are centralized processes to articulate courses for baccalaureate and General education, credit course to course articulation for major preparatory courses remain decentralized and autonomous across campuses, the policies, practices, timelines, and requirements for these course articulation processes also vary across segments and campuses.

Additionally, while the academic Senate for California community colleges has worked tirelessly to establish a course identification system known as CID to coordinate curriculum across the community colleges and a transfer model curriculum design process to co create transfer pathways with CSU faculty for the ADTs, that is a voluntary process. Faculty must be recruited to participate in and for which faculty are gravely undercompensated.

Lastly, as has been spoken to, it is difficult to fully understand in the California transfer landscape because we lack the needed intersectional data to track progress and identify gaps. The lack of an intersectional data system in California seriously constrains any type of intersectional analysis, and limited access to program and course data hinders baccalaureate degree development and collaboration. So how do we.

Move forward. In order to simplify these complexities and achieve the transfer and baccalaureate degree attainment success we all desire, we believe a few key strategies are needed. As called for in the recent 2023 recommendations of the AB 928 Committee, we need a resourced, intersegmental course articulation and pathways development infrastructure that builds upon existing structures to oversee and facilitate the process of course review, pathway development, and determinations of similarity.

We need to invest in the accelerated completion of the cradle-to-career data system with active participation from the four segments of higher education to inform the data and information needs. This data system is needed to inform the development of metrics, monitoring mechanisms, and dashboards related to transfer and credit mobility.

We must recruit, train, support, compensate, and provide incentives for faculty participation in curriculum coordination to design transfer model curricula, and collaborate on program pathways, and we need to be able to do that across all four segments of public higher education. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dr. Lowe. Next up we have Dr. Evans. Welcome.

Good morning. My name is Nathan Evans and I serve as Deputy Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer for the California State University. Chair Newman, Chair Fong, Committee Members, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today along with my segment colleagues. Echoing many of Dr. Lowe's remarks, the California State University prioritizes and takes great pride in building and strengthening effective intersegmental partnerships with our higher education peers.

We recognize that California students are all of our responsibility and all of us have a vested interest in their success, their mobility between and among our segments, and ultimately their graduation and service to our communities and to our state. Today, we continue to work together to ensure that students from every background, income and region of our state are well served and supported in pursuing their goals throughout their lifetimes and reaching their full potential. The CSU remains committed to this collaboration and engagement across segments and sectors.

There is much to celebrate, as we've heard some of today, in our collective work to ensure success and social mobility for California students and residents. The state's continued support, for example, for the CSU's graduation initiative, has resulted in all-time graduation rates for students from all backgrounds, those arriving immediately from high school, and those from our community college partners, as well as new data-informed strategies that are showing great promise in closing equity gaps.

As another timely example, the CSU community colleges, AICCU and UC have been working collaboratively along with CSAC in light of the delays in the federal financial aid application. And due in large part to recent legislation, and in partnership with the community colleges in the UC, we've made impressive strides in simplifying transfer and carving clear pathways to four year degrees, graduate school, and fulfilling careers in California's workforce.

To that end, the CSU is deeply grateful for the Legislature's continued commitment to higher education access and its investment in our institution's core missions, including preparing California's diverse workforce of the future. Despite this progress, the absence of a higher education coordinating body for the last 12 years has illuminated opportunities for even more effective collaboration and synergy. A coordinating role with the right scope could look broadly across the higher education landscape to better facilitate and even incentivize cross-segment partnerships.

Such an entity could help reduce redundancy and ensure fiscal efficiency in use of limited state dollars. It could also impartially inform and maintain valuable institutional knowledge and the continued advancement of collective priorities through transitions in both institutional and government leadership. While including representation from education segments, such an entity could also incorporate impartial voices to ensure effective collaboration and address disputes, which may distract from cooperative efforts.

It could also provide a source of feedback on proposed reforms and ensure they are given time to work, and it would provide a more robust infrastructure that would allow our institutions to act nimbly and efficiently in the face of shared challenges and common goals. In short, such a role could aid all of our institutions in maximizing resources, better serving students, and ensuring California remains strongly competitive in the increasingly competitive higher education landscape.

The absence--or challenges--associated with not having such an entity today has really necessitated solutions to be quickly spun up without continuity or the benefit of long-term context. To name just a few specific examples, such an entity has the potential to address issues, as we've heard today, of academic program duplication, such as applied baccalaureate degree programs proposed by community colleges or doctoral programs as proposed by the CSU.

It could also conduct regular assessments of CSU and UC admissions eligibility criteria, a once again overdue task last required by the 2015 Budget Trailer Bill. It could also assess higher education capacity and demand, providing recommendations to address barriers that limit access to all segments, such as clinical placement availability, and nursing. And it could facilitate the expansion of online education to make it more portable to California residents who may be transitory, as well as California employers with nationwide presence.

In closing, the CSU is open and receptive to continue to engage with our partners and with the Legislature on this important topic and the opportunity to address higher education issues that span across all of our segments.

Such discussions should consider an appropriate scope that complements the work of higher education segments, that leverages representation from the segments themselves and other critical voices, and focuses on work that would build upon our existing partnerships and leverage existing infrastructure as Dr. Jez described, and finally optimize our collective efforts in service to our students and the state. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you, and I welcome any questions at the close of our discussion.

Thank you so much, Dr. Evans. Next up, I'd like to welcome Dr. Katherine Newman.

Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to join my counterparts across the table here in talking about the extraordinary work we do to collaborate together to produce the finest education system in the nation. I personally am a proud product of this Legislature's investment in public higher education. Having completed my degrees at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, 10 members of my family have been similarly blessed. We owe pretty much everything we've able to accomplish to your investment in public higher education.

I'm very proud that California's higher education segments are coming together across all of our boundaries on many major issues, including especially our recent partnership on the cradle-to-grave--Cradle-to-Career Data System. Excuse me. All the way to the grave as well.

As UC system-wide Provost and a specialist in the study of labor markets and economic mobility, I'm very keen to work with my counterparts in the other segments on serving state workforce needs, both in terms of creating new industries that create the high-wage jobs and in training the employees that can fill those roles. The University of California has a special role to play in supporting that growth because we are, as you know, a powerhouse of innovation that leads directly to those new industries.

Just to show you how high-tech we are, I brought with me my homegrown visual aids. Thanks. Cardboard-backed visual aids, thanks to the Governor's Office, just to illustrate this point. We have the most patents in the nation, more than 50,000 patents, nearly four times as many as Texas and 10 times as many as Florida. And compared to the rest of the world, California would rank second globally. We are number one in higher education for U.S. Patents.

The University of California was granted more U.S. utility patents last year than any other University in the world. That does not happen by accident. It happens because the Legislature and the Governor and the citizens of California have invested in this kind of extraordinary high quality. But to benefit from those innovations, we need--we all need--a steady stream of talent. That's why UC is committed to opening the doors of opportunity to students from all backgrounds, especially transfer students.

We want to make that path to transfer as seamless and accessible as possible, and you can see that deep commitment in our student body. The University of California enrolls more--as Aisha Lowe mentioned--more community college students than any other university of its caliber in the nation. One in every three UC graduates starts their career at a California community college. 75% of the California community college students who apply to UC are admitted. Altogether, almost 45,000 current undergraduates are community college transfer students.

So, my colleagues, when you hear that this system is broken, I would like you to think again. It's actually working extremely effectively. There is no other public university system of the caliber of UC that can boast these kinds of transfer statistics, and that is not an accident. We have invested in exactly that outcome. Starting as early as middle school, UC has programs across the state to help students prepare for transfer as a path to four-year college degrees.

In addition, we collaborate with our community college partners to provide academic preparation through the Puente Project. And in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement, or the MESA Program. This reflects the goals not only of the Legislature, but of the Governor through the compact that we have to improve on all of these dimensions. Collectively, along with UC's transfer prep programs, we provide direct academic preparation, academic advising, admission and financial aid, and college knowledge support to more than 40,000 community college students.

Transfer students not only enroll at UC, they also thrive with us. They graduate and go on to careers in some of the nation's most important industries. Through our UCLA ADT pilot and other efforts, including the journey to UC transfer programs, we are also creating more seamless transfer experiences and helping to make a world-class UC education accessible to even more Californians. And that ADT commitment will grow in time.

When we look beyond transfer, I also--like my colleagues--view online education as another area where the segments are well positioned to come together to expand access to new populations in the state with new modalities. We need to create high quality online programs that are a model for the nation and for the world. Finally, as we plan for the future, it's clear that we need a vision in the state regarding the funding needs of California's higher education system. I was not here when CPEC was disbanded.

I understand there were pros and cons involved, but I've been told that it did a very good job, especially of assessing capital facility needs and advocating for general obligation bond acts for post-secondary education, something that we would welcome again. And that is a role where the segments can come together with a single voice that matters to all of us. Our sister states look with envy on the achievements of the California Master Plan, in which each segment focuses on excellence in its own sphere.

The differentiation of functions has worked. No other state has as many excellent R1 research institutions, nor have they been able to grow new ones. But UC Riverside just last year became the 8th UC campus invited to join the prestigious American Association of Universities. That's the top 65 universities in the country. Eight of them are UC campuses.

It is particularly important, we think, in times when resources are constrained, to emphasize mission-specific excellence and maximize the benefits through collaboration of the kind you've been hearing about, rather than duplication. We have challenges, but we should not lose sight of what California has accomplished. And I look forward to hearing from my colleagues today and answering your questions to see how we can build on this remarkable track record of success. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dr. Newman. Next up, we'd like to welcome Kristen Soares. Welcome.

Good morning. Thank you for the invitation today, Chair Newman and Chair Fong and Members of the Committee, I'm Kristen Soares, the President of the Independent California Colleges, the Association representing our diverse sector. The independent sector, I just will underscore, is independent. So these are 90 institutions, all with their own governing bodies. And I think it's really important to underscore what we heard from Dr. Lowe, that California is an incredibly diverse state with incredibly diverse institutions.

But when we come together and collaborate, we make the difference for students. So independent colleges and universities have been working with our partners, working with all of you, since the inception of the Master Plan. I think it's really important to underscore that independent colleges were an integral part of drafting the original Master Plan, from overseeing and chairing the oversight Committee to being on every Committee that developed the plan.

Our plan came together with one purpose, and that was to serve students in the state: K-12 students and community college students and adult students, or what we call nontraditional students. That work continues today, and we continue to collaborate around that. So I think as this body, if we keep students center, if we keep the regional aspects of our education system center, and really think about institutional diversity, if we come through with that lens, we can think about how can we improve collaboration.

As you've heard, we collaborate well. We work on systems. AICCU is pleased and proud to have adopted the Associate Degree of Transfer. That is a pathway that was developed between the faculty of CSU and the community colleges. But we took that opportunity to use that pathway because it's well-known. Students are using it to say, how can we adopt that within our sector so that we can serve students? 39 institutions of the AICCU have adopted that pathway. It's been successful.

To date, over five years, 10,000 students have been accepted to an AICCU institution. But with it comes some challenges, in that it is a program between CSU and the community colleges. So that when our faculty want to develop a program, for example, one institution who had an early program in cybersecurity, a high-need workforce field, we weren't able to map that since we don't have that faculty process. So I think that's an area of improvement. The other areas that Dr. Su Jin Jez also brought up was mission creep.

And while we now have the applied baccalaureate, you also heard this from Dr. Evans, the applied doctoral degree. What does that look like? And what is the impact on AICCU institutions, who have many programs in these fields? We are the preparer of the advanced workforce in this state. We collectively enroll over 150,000 at graduate students. That is larger than UC and CSU's enrollment combined.

So today we are enrolling, graduating 40%, preparing 40% of the teachers, over 90% of the clinical professionals, high-need, 95% of physician assistants, over 50% of nurses. So this time, to come together and collaborate to better understand the needs of our students, to better understand the needs of our workforce, is critically important. We will continue to work with our segment partners. We'll continue to work with you. We are excited about the new plan that's being developed on the Master Plan for career education.

We are all participating that as well. So we welcome the opportunity to work with you on what improved coordination can look like. I will underscore that it must have segment representation to understand the complexities of our institutions, to understand the regulatory infrastructure that we must comply with, and the accreditation requirements that we must also comply with. Thank you.

Thank you so much to each of the segments for sharing your insights and narratives here today and to really talk about the challenges and strategies going forward as well. Just a quick question and open up to my colleagues. We know that there's been many significant reform efforts over the last 15 years, and it was just highlighted with the associate degrees for transfer program. Also, Cal-GETC and many other reform efforts. Has the pace of reform placed a burden on implementation?

And would a standing coordinating body help relieve some of the pressure in getting their folks together to really implement a lot of these new policies? Any of the segments like to share? Yes.

I could take a quick crack at that one. I do think it's very important as we proceed with these reforms to be careful to evaluate them and to be sure they're working well before we spread them too far. This is the genius behind the ADT pilot at UCLA, which is our largest transfer-receiving institution. And that's the reason why we felt it was important to begin with them.

But we're going to do so in a way that's systematic, with the data collected so that we can see whether or not it's effective. And then we have committed to expanding, both expanding the number of majors at UCLA and then expanding to our other institutions. But we want to do that only understanding how effective it is and measuring questions like time to degree. Are we sure that students are properly prepared?

Are we able to measure their progress so that we know they're not having to spend additional funds to stay longer with us if they have gaps in their preparation? I think this has been very well-planned for exactly the kind of experimentation that is needed in order to be sure something works before we implement it in ways that are very expensive.

If I may, I'm sorry, if I may add to what Provost Newman shared. So I think those are all absolutely valid points. I think one of the other realities is, in absence of some type of entity that's looking broadly, for each of these, and you heard this from Dr. Jez, as well as Senior Vice President Dow. There's been the need to create or spin up an infrastructure to address each of these. And what that means is there's not continuity often across them.

And so that institutional, that historic knowledge and context, has to be sort of scaffolded for every one of those projects. And so I do think, yes, pace may be one element, but the absence of a way to bring those conversations together sometimes also makes the starting point further than it need be each time we address these topics.

Thank you, Dr. Evans. Dr. Lowe.

Yes. So thank you for that question, Chair Fong. I think the simple answer is yes. As Dr. Evans just spoke to, as we receive new policy initiatives, which we support and are happy to receive, we then have to create an infrastructure and a process for implementation. We're doing that in silos within our respective segments, coordinating then across our segments. But all of that requires time and bandwidth and resource. That makes it a challenge.

Right? When you then have four or five different major statewide initiatives that you're implementing at the same time and certainly can speak for the California Community College Chancellor's Office as a small state agency with 160 employees to serve 116 colleges and almost 2 million students. We do the work. We make the sacrifices to do the work. But I think we do the work a disservice, because we have to individually stand up a plan, a process, find support, hire consultants, often to help close those gaps.

And to Dr. Evans' point in particular, because of the pace at which reform is moving, we haven't taken the time to pause and really strategically tie all of these policy initiatives together and be thoughtful about how we're going to implement them in cohesion with one another in partnership with our segment partners. And as Dr. Newman talked about, with evaluation as a part of the plan from the beginning.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. President Soares.

I'll just underscore what my colleagues have shared, and again, with that student focus and lens, the ADT, for example. I mean, it's a wonderful program and it's been working, but evaluation is really important. The Cradle-to-Career, that is a success and that work is going to be able to help us drive and improve this as well. But yes, there can be, I think, greater synergy about, again, how these programs operate to serve students in the context of everything else.

Thank you so much, colleagues. Chair Newman.

Thank you, Chair Fong. So I'm impressed that there is apparently a good consensus across all the segments about the need for a coordinating body. Let me ask you sort of the same question I asked of the first two panelists. What would your advice be to us about how to get from here to there in some way that makes sense? And what's the first order of business for the Legislature in assisting in that process?

Thank you so much, Chair Newman, for that question. I would echo some of the comments the first panel shared. I do think it would be important to almost start clean sheet in terms of envisioning what California's needs and what our students and communities needs are today. There's a frequency, and I know it's to sort of shorthand a CPEC 2.0. But as was discussed earlier, CPEC originated more than four decades ago. We were a different state, a different population, different needs.

And so I think really starting fresh and, and thinking about that and building on the successes that you heard today, thinking about how those can come together, rather than completely starting something that still has the reality, as you heard from Dr. Jez, where pieces are spread throughout the sort of government agencies. And so I think really starting clean sheet and not tying it back to CPEC, but really then building and bringing together the efforts that are also underway in a cohesive manner.

Now, second what Dr. Evans just said, and I would add to that, that in addition to this notion that we need a coordinating entity to provide accountability for the segments, I would hope that if such a thing is created and agreed that we should start sort of tabula rasa there, that there would be sort of an ethos of support. The synergy you're feeling here is very real. Right? I have these individuals' cell phone numbers. We are in very close contact with one another.

We are certainly doing all that we can to coordinate our efforts and keep students at the center, but we need support. And so when I think about the role of a coordinating entity, the support I would like to see from such an entity, as was spoken to by our previous presenters, is around data and research. I have the pleasure of chairing the AB 928 Committee for its first two years.

And as we grappled with making recommendations for some of the goals that were put before that Committee, goals like creating a plan of action for how we're going to close regional gaps, we were really stuck with a lack of data and information. We don't have a regional landscape analysis to understand what the needs and opportunities are within each region. We need that. The AB 928 Committee was asked to provide recommendations on goals around workforce and economic development. We don't have a landscape analysis. Right?

Of the workforce needs within our region, within regions across the state. So that role around data cannot be understated. It's very important so that we can make well informed, data-driven decisions. I think what would also be important for such an entity is to provide a platform for the segments to come together on policy implementation. We do that, but we do it ad hoc, as Dr. Evans talked about. We then have to activate our small staffs to take on yet another thing.

It would be very helpful to have the support of an entity that when a new piece of legislation is passed, that there's a place to bring that, and that we have resources and support to help us in that coordination, in that planning. And then, as I talked about, in particular in my comments coming out of the AB 928 Committee, we're actually asking for support for something very specific, which is the process of faculty across the segments coming together to coordinate on curriculum.

That's how you build transfer pathways. So I think in addition to the larger policy needs and data needs, we need to resource an opportunity to bring our faculty together so that they can collaborate on designing opportunities for students.

Provost Newman, who is not related to me.

Not at all. I wish, but not at all. I would like to support the comments that have just been made. I think the UC system would probably advocate for a somewhat more cautious approach to collaboration. The most important element we need, as Dr. Lowe said, is resources that support coordination, whether they flow through a body or they don't flow through a body. It's critical if we're going to actually achieve these coordinated goals that we have the resources necessary to make them stick.

I do think the data issues are critical. I would argue that we need a group that can help us with occupational forecasting, with understanding what, for example, the impact of artificial intelligence is going to be on labor market demand and the ways in which occupations will grow and shrink. That matching together the data needs of the state's economic system and the university's role in providing the labor force seems to me to be a particularly helpful way in which that coordination could matter.

But I do want to underline, again, there's a great deal of success already in place, and I would be careful not to burden it too much with elements of coordination that can make it harder for us to continue to achieve these extraordinary accomplishments. I mean, there is no other state in the nation that has a record equivalent to ours. So let's be careful about what we do to affect the way in which that works.

Ms. Soares.

I, too, echo and support what my colleagues have shared. I think there are some opportunities here with the C-to-C that's already been developed and to align with that. So to really look across the infrastructure of what's in place and what can be built upon. I think a clean sheet, as Dr. Evans says, is exactly right. What I would underscore for AICCU is that there be representation to be sure that we're inclusive of the assets in our sector as it was in the CPEC.

But C-to-C, when our system sector is actually a representative on the actual governing board, I think we're better understood and valued. So I would argue for that. Again, I think Provost Newman said it well. There is a lot working well, and it's just about how do we scaffold it appropriately and support is absolutely critical.

So I'm still curious about how we translate all of this into legislative action. Is it something like the AB 928 process as a first step, in your view, Dr. Lowe, or is it something else? I'm hopeful that we'll leave here today with something that sort of gives us some direction to Legislature on how we can assist you in creating a useful and adaptable coordinating structure that works for all of the segments.

I think we can build off of what was established for AB 928. If you look at the membership of that body, you are talking about a small representation of sort of individuals representing what is really thousands of people. So I think when you think about what a future coordinating body might be, I would recommend that it needs to have parts and pieces, in terms of, for example, when I sit in that room. I am the leadership voice for the entire community college system.

I would argue we need more voices than mine at the table, though I appreciate my own, to be a part of those conversations. So how might you have a structure where there is a coordinating body, but there are subcommittees and other bodies that really tap into the expertise on the ground that is doing the actual work of building these programs, of supporting students.

So I would say a general structure similar to what has been established with 928, but with more layers, so that there are more voices contributing to the design of recommendations and in particular those who are in the field doing the work.

If I could just add to that, and it's echoing one of your points. Sorry.

It goes on and off on its own. AB 928, I think, was really quite a model process. But if you look at the implementation resources to make it work, it's not as robust as would be helpful. We need to involve hundreds of people, faculty members, across these systems, who can coordinate so that students not only are admitted to the UC, but are prepared properly and succeed. To bring those people together, we're basically creating extra jobs for them. Wherever we can provide release time for them, to make it easier for them to participate, we have more voices at the table. So personally, I would say that the AB 928 process, properly resourced, is an excellent way to go.

I appreciate that.

Senator Ochoa Bogh. Welcome.

Sorry, I'm all the way here. So I really, really appreciate the feedback that all of you within your own spaces have actually contributed this morning, because I actually have been thinking about this for the past couple of years, especially recently in this last year, about the impact that we're having as a Legislature coming in with Bill proposals on changing and correlating things. And I'm going, yes, but there was different systems for different purposes. So, Dr. Newman, I really appreciated your comments today.

All of you. I think as far as legislatively, what I'm hearing is that it's budget, it's allocating money so that we can literally create the jobs for these professors to come in and be able to coordinate. That's the number one thing. So if we were to expand legislatively, it would be adding numbers to the Committee, to the Commission, and adding the appropriate funding so that people can actually do the job of the coordinating.

So adding numbers to the Commission and the funding to be able to pay them to be able to do that job.

At least for us, I wasn't thinking so much of adding new people. It's the people we have who need a bit more time to mobilize their expertise to contribute to the discussion about how we coordinate across our segments. So it's less about funding Commission Members and more about enabling us to tap the expertise in our systems because they already have full time jobs.

So we need to replace their teaching, for example, if they're going to be seconded to the task of deciding how to build a program in engineering that's going to crisscross all of our systems. But it certainly helps to have those resources. It makes the process move faster. It makes it easier to call on people. And we think in the end, it provides for a much more effective, efficient system for the state as a whole.

Do you have enough staff for every field that you're working with? Is that how it would work, or...

Are you asking us if we have enough staff? Because we would be happy to give you an estimate.

As far as coordinating the correlation between one major to another major, from one school to another school, do you need to have specific people within those majors to be able to coordinate?

Yes, we ask them to do that. So it's very helpful to us if we can provide some supported release time because we then have to put someone else back in the classroom while they're working on the coordination process. So it's not a matter so much of hiring new people as it is being able to provide for some of the commitments that the existing people need to make to make this happen. As my colleagues have said, this is very much a faculty to faculty process.

Right? Because the electrical engineers that are in the community colleges need to talk extensively with the electrical engineers in the UC system to be sure the courses they're developing at the front end seamlessly flow toward the advanced courses they will do when they come with us.

So when we're looking at the numbers of how many people you will be needing to engage, we're looking at every single area of major that you have.

Well, I think we can probably do things in sort of serial fashion so we're not duplicating the entire size of our faculty. But I would just say, and this is in keeping with Dr. Lowe's points, when a mandate comes from the Legislature, even one that we embrace, it's not cost free to implement it. And so it really helps a lot to speed the process if there's due attention to the resources needed, as would be true of any legislative mandate, I think.

I agree. Thank you so much for your feedback today. It was very, very helpful in confirmation.

Thank you so much, Senator Ochoa Bogh. Next up, we have Senator Smallwood-Cuevas, followed by Senator Muratsuchi.

Thank you. Apologies for my mask. I'm getting over a little cold. I really appreciated the comments about workforce, but I wanted- if we could drill down a little bit more on that in terms of how your systems are collaborating around workforce. The state is on the cusp of receiving billions of dollars in infrastructure funds to sort of look at climate resiliency, technologies, sciences, all the way to the actual manufacturing piece that I think our community colleges are certainly prepared to address.

But I'm curious how you prioritize where you focus on workforce. I think, Dr. Newman, you talked about the alignment of the electrical engineers, which was really fascinating to me. But how do you actually collaborate on workforce, and where do you determine, because there are millions of classifications, right? Where do you determine where your focus will be? We know the importance of apprenticeships. We know the importance of learn and earn opportunities. And so I just wonder how you factor all of those things into your workforce collaboration.

It sounds like on transfer, we're getting there, right? Like transfer is- and I don't know if there's a model of that that can be applied in other places, but I'm curious about the workforce because it's one area that I feel we're far behind as we're trying to reach these climate resilient goals. We still have a tough time getting our workforce organized, recruited, in classrooms, and in some sort of pathway that would include all of our systems.

So I'm just curious if you could say more about the collaboration around workforce and what you prioritize.

Thank you so much for that question. I'm happy to begin. I know all of us could speak to different examples, so I would say there are both those that we're addressing sort of in the immediate. You spoke about some of those. There are others in, for example, the educator workforce.

We know the critical need, and now, with changing certification expectations in pre-K through three have brought together because, as you heard from Dr. Lowe, more than half of our CSU baccalaureate degree earners start at community college. So as we are thinking about expanding and meeting both the immediate and future needs, it is most frequently in tandem with our community college partners because a majority of our students start their journey there.

So, for example, bringing together faculty and leaders in the education spaces to sort of co-create that curriculum, much the way that Provost Newman described with engineering, that also plays out. So bringing those fields of study together, inclusive of the employers, to those conversations. And so that is one space. Nursing would be another.

I spoke about one of the limitations that hinders all of us in growing nursing programs are the requirements for clinical placements and the availability and structure that has to be in place. No matter where a student starts, that's going to be a barrier. So bringing together our systems and segments to talk with the Board of Registered Nursing, with the larger healthcare employers, in navigating and designing programs that can address not only the immediate workforce need, but how do we think about that differently across the segments?

Because we're all working towards those similar goals. I would say an opportunity that you've heard today is in the data to be ahead of that. Right now, I'm speaking about addressing the needs of today in absence, and we're all very optimistic of the cradle to career system as well as feeding other data. But really getting ahead and planning is an opportunity that I think you heard from all of us in different ways.

And I would just add to that, certainly seconding what Dr. Evans has shared. When we think about workforce and economic development, Member Smallwood-Cuevas, I think you are correct in your examination that this is an area of needed improvement. Much is taking place, has taken place, and in particular for the community colleges, workforce development- preparing students to go directly into the workforce- is historically something that our colleges have done, will continue to do.

You'll certainly see, under the direction of our new chancellor, Dr. Sonya Christian, and our new vision 2030 and our roadmap for community colleges, that workforce is center. And we are pushing on that very heavily with our colleges, that all of academics is workforce, that all of our students are investing in higher education because they're looking for a workforce and an economic outcome, and that we have to design all programs with that workforce outcome in mind. And so we're doubling down on that.

But when we think about, for example, working towards key areas that we know there are gaps, education, nursing, and things of that nature. But seconding what Dr. Evans said, how do we get ahead of that? How do we actually know what the jobs of the future are so that we can design those programs? And then this is where, honestly, I would say this is where a coordinating body would be helpful. How do we have that data and information?

And then how do we then coordinate, respectively, across systems around the role that each one of us is going to play in building that workforce pipeline? Because depending on the pipeline, students may need to go all the way right to the doctoral degree, sending them off into engineering and other sciences at UC and AICCU institutions. Coordinating that effort would definitely be helpful.

If I can just add to that, I do think we have a very strong model for segmental division of labor, where there are different slices of the labor market that our students are aiming for and that we prepare them for. And I think we've got a very good way of thinking about that.

But if I was going to add two elements to this mix that I think would be important, one I mentioned before, forecasting. Connecting the Department of Labor to the University in ways that help us forecast where the labor market is moving, what occupations are going to be growing, what's going to be shrinking, so that we can think ahead, because it takes years to prepare these programs and years for students to move through them.

But the second thing I would say, and now here I'm speaking mainly for my own segment, I would love to see a much more significant investment in what we call experiential learning. It is not enough for our students to be in our classrooms. They need to be in laboratories wherever possible. They need to have co-op opportunities with industries in the region so they get shop floor experience, so they have references.

This is particularly important for our first generation, low income students whose parents are not going to be able to provide them, probably, with those sorts of references and connections. I think we're behind the curve on experiential learning, not relative to our peers, because all public higher education at our level is behind the curve. But I do think we need to do more.

I think employers are willing to engage with us because they're looking for us to prepare that workforce, and they would really like those people to have more experience as opposed to just the classroom learning. But that is expensive to develop, expensive to provide preparation for, and those students can't really afford to do this without being able to earn summer money. They can't work for free. So that's something I think the UC system is really interested in figuring out how to invest in.

Some of our fields do that naturally, engineering being one of them, others not so much. And pretty much everybody could benefit from such an investment.

I really appreciate this question because we have to prepare the students for the jobs today and the jobs of tomorrow, and we are in a very rapidly changing workforce with AI. We are just at the very tip of where the workforce in California is going to go. I do think a coordinating body could be helpful here as we think about this within our segments, and that we could also learn from one another.

There are some institutions who do that work of putting students into those learning, job training experiences. Enormously helpful when they graduate. They are ready to go and they are ready to enter into the workforce. So affordability is really important here. We haven't talked a lot about financial aid. Senior Vice President Dow mentioned coordination with the California Student Aid Commission. That will be important, too.

And even what the state has and we've seen be very successful in teaching is this funding support for residencies, so that teachers of the future have that first experience where they're fully funded and they can afford the program. So affordability support. I would also underscore at the table of coordination the Department of Labor and other groups who are forecasting so that we're in line with them at one table. At the institutional level and regional level, we have to be very mindful of this, too.

What the Inland Empire may need is going to be different than the Bay Area now. So how are we intentional about that? What the Fresno area is going to need is very different. So we have thriving industries in the state, and we need to continue to think about how to foster those who are here. And again, I think we're all trying to plan for the future as rapidly as it's coming.

Thank you so much, Senator. Assemblymember Muratsuchi.

Thank you. I'm hearing some points where there seems to be agreement of the beneficial, the benefits of having some kind of a coordinating body, although I hear, Dr. Newman, you seem to be the only one emphasizing caution, and I want to follow up on that. But my first question is, several of you mentioned how a coordinating body could be beneficial to identify capital needs.

Capital facility needs. How would a coordinating body be beneficial as opposed to each one of the public segments? I'm thinking about our discussions about education bond for the November ballot. How would a coordinated body be better than hearing from each segment in terms of what your capital facility needs are?

Well, I think you will hear plenty from each segment. But in speaking with a unified voice about the needs of California's needs for investing in physical facilities, in laboratories, in clinical facilities, and so on, instead of hitting you and the rest of the citizens with a thousand voices, speaking with one voice, I think would be very helpful. There are also, obviously, priority setting questions. That's very much your business. But it's certainly something where we could thrash out some of those issues.

We have seen, for example, on our Merced campus, the ability to collaborate on housing. There are community colleges in the area, and we have housing that can help take care of some of those students. Wherever you've got a scarce resource that's expensive to produce, that level of coordination can be very helpful. And when it's a physical facility, it's really quite costly.

My sense of caution is merely to advocate for starting with the things we all can agree are critical, the data needs are absolutely critical, these capital needs are critical, and then proceed with caution so that we don't invent a big, powerful bureaucracy that, in a sense, sublimates what I think has already been a very effective sense of coordination amongst us.

If I may add to that, I echo Provost Newman's feedback, and I think the reality is there are great examples of individual institutions working collaboratively on some facilities. I think student housing and even faculty and staff housing, given the sort of reality of affordability in the state, are opportunities that right now have to be negotiated and navigated by one to one entities. And they're often challenging thorny topics to get through based on how a bond might have originally been written if it's a community college district.

And so we have pockets of success. Compton College and CSU Dominguez Hills, CSU Northridge with some of the valley community colleges. You mentioned UC Merced and some of the community colleges, but they are having to individually navigate that, whereas again, a broader context or entity to help navigate that and simplify, I think would be welcome because I was at a meeting of our five LA basin community colleges and the LA Community College District, all colleges.

This was one of the top issues that arose, the ability to share facilities. But right now it is literally individual institution working with individual institution and navigating all the complexities of, be it a bond, be it the original funding mechanism, whatever, and having to navigate that individually. A more coordinated effort, I think, would open those opportunities up across the state.

No, just wanted to add. Second, what my colleagues have shared, we also have a number of partnerships with community colleges and AICCU institutions in terms of housing and facilities as well. Just wanted to add, Provost Newman is not alone in her caution.

I think we support the idea, we can see the potential benefits, but we would share the caution that it's carefully designed, that it is not designed without the voice and influence of the segment it's going to actually impact, because something of this type could be immensely helpful, and if not designed well, it could be immensely detrimental. So I think we share the caution as well.

All right, thank you. Thank you so much, Assemblymember, any further comments or questions? Thank you so much for a robust panel. I really appreciate the opportunity to hear all the different insights to my colleagues as well, and really the need for data, for research, for policy evaluations. And I think the comments have been really valuable here today. So thank you so much. Next, I would like to pass it back to Chair Newman to introduce our final panel. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Fong, and thank you to the panelists. Do appreciate it. Let me now welcome our final panel and the representatives of the Academic Senate of each of the three higher education tiers in California. Come on up. We will have Virginia May, Beth Steffel, and James Steintrager.

Again, welcome. And Ms. May, you may proceed.

So thank you, Chair Newman, Chair Fong, Senators and Assemblymembers. I too am a product of the California education system. I went here K through 12, community college, CSU, and UC. So now I'm in the system. So, successes. Following the passage of Senate Bill 1450 in 2004, which sought to improve student outcomes through the establishment of a common course numbering system, the Community College Academic Senate led the development of the CID course identification numbering system to identify like courses.

Community college and CSU faculty have worked together establishing descriptors and processes. Next came Senate Bill 1440 and 440, which established the requirements for the transfer model curricula or associate degrees for transfer. Again, the Academic Senate led this work, creating transfer model curricula for community colleges to develop the associate degrees for transfer and for CSU campuses to determine which baccalaureate degrees are similar for a transfer guarantee. Today, there are 40 established transfer model curricula.

Another six are coming through the vetting process, with two in the concept phase. There is such much more than transfer model curricula such as model curricula developed for two year workforce programs. But we can save that for another time. So, recognizing the need to provide clear pathways and opportunities for equitable student outcomes, the Community College Academic Senate started the first phase of addressing one of their 2017 resolutions, aligning transfer pathways for CSU and UC systems.

In 2020, the Community College Academic Senate initiated the Transfer Alignment Project. Transfer model curricula and UC transfer pathways in political science and sociology were easily aligned. However, there was still much work to do. The CSU and UC academic senates have joined efforts with the Community Colleges Academic Senate in this project to align transfer model curricula and UC transfer pathways where feasible and valuable to students.

Where alignment is not feasible, clear justification regarding the value and benefit to students of those different pathways will be documented and communicated for students, staff, and the college community. Currently, ten transfer model curricula are under review for alignment, including seven STEM disciplines. Through December 2023, the Community College Academic Senate facilitated this work through our CID structure with no additional resources. I have some good news. Just this spring, the Community College Chancellor's Office came up with some funding to help facilitate this work.

We did ask for support from the Legislature in the community college budget proposal and request process in 23-24 through that process, but it didn't make it through the state budget process. So here are some challenges that we're facing, and you've heard it from the other presenters as well. There are 23 CSU campuses, 9 UC campuses, and numerous independent transfer institutions with 115 associate degree granting community colleges to establish transfer and course articulation agreements for general education and majors preparation.

Not all institutions can offer all degrees and courses. So two major challenges. The first: there are unintended consequences, new barriers to transfer or associate degree attainment. For example, the economics transfer model curriculum, the framework for the associate degree for transfer, has a minimum calculus requirement of one semester of business calculus, whereas the expected course completion for the major requirement in the UC transfer pathway is a full year of engineering calculus.

While transfer to CSU with a full year of engineering calculus will certainly prepare students to do well and CSU will take those students, it is more than what is required. Thus, aligning the two pathways would raise the requirements for students transferring to CSU, unintentionally creating a barrier to transfer and associate degree attainment. Second, coordination. We've been talking a lot about that today. Coordination of a large number of institutions for transfer and articulation discussions and agreements requires additional staffing, which requires resources.

We have a whole process right now set up with just the community colleges and the CSU. When we bring in our UC partners, our independent institution partners, it is exponential with the coordination needed to get this work done well.

So here are some strategies for enhancing coordination. Fully resource existing structures, so fully resource that intersegmental course articulation and pathways development infrastructure as recommended by the AB 928 Committee. Clarify the roles and processes and missions of each segment. Identify opportunities and challenges faced by each segment while ensuring equitable student outcomes. Recognize the important role faculty play in the education process.

They work closest with students. They understand the details of the programs and coursework. They care about student success. And then finally, keep the educational practitioners front and center in all the coordination efforts and decisions. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, Beth Steffel, Chair of the Academic Senate of the California State University and Chair of the Intersegmental Committee on the Academic Senate. Welcome.

Thank you. And thank you for inviting me to speak today. CSU faculty care deeply about student success. In fact, unquestionably, a primary motivator for faculty working in the CSU is the opportunity to creatively and effectively teach students and ensure their success post graduation. CSU faculty know their students well and are experts on student success in the classroom.

To ensure that the colleges and universities of California meet current and future student needs and demands, it's important for the three segments to collaborate, especially on transfer processes, while also working to showcase the unique strengths to effectively attract students and serve their distinct student populations.

As a process for developing Cal-GETC, a singular pathway and standards for transfer from the community colleges to both the UC and the CSU have shown through ICAS, the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates, which I currently chair and my colleague chaired last year, faculty in the three segments have proven that they can work together productively in a timely way on common goals to enhance student transfer and progress towards a baccalaureate degree.

However, one thing that would aid in this transfer is for the state to have a unified way to handle and communicate transcripts between systems. Currently transferred courses often have to be manually entered from PDFs of student transcripts, sometimes multiple times, introducing both delays in processing and the possibility for errors. Having an integrated system to process transcripts would ease and demystify transfer.

CSU faculty often observe the challenges in student transfer in their roles, academic advisors and mentors who work closely with students to help plan their progress to degree and beyond. It's not unusual for a faculty member reviewing the transcripts of a student who transferred into the CSU to see multiple issues that will prevent a student from graduating within four years.

For example, students might spend more than two years at a community college, often attending multiple different community colleges, earning units that a CSU registrar's office can't transfer to a baccalaureate degree because only a maximum of 70 units can be transferred from the community colleges to the CSU.

Expanding dual enrollment of high school students at the community college is a promising way to engage students in postsecondary education, but these students must be provided with meaningful advising so that they understand how these courses will impact successful completion of baccalaureate degrees. For example, we find that many times these students don't know that their grades in their dual enrollment courses will be included in their college transcripts and affect their college GPA, which then affects their admissions opportunities.

Strong one on one advising- which is expensive, and we've talked a lot about resources- but strong one on one advising and resources such as Assist.org, the official course transfer and articulation system for California public colleges and universities, help students to minimize units that cannot be used towards their four year degree. Several CSUs are building two plus two degrees in fields such as nursing in high demand areas in the state.

Students in these programs take two years of courses at a community college and then, upon completion of those courses, transfer to the local CSU to finish their degree in a pathway that is pre planned to maximize their ability to graduate within four years and enter their chosen field. CSU faculty also observed that a major barrier for students attaining their four year degree is cost of attendance, with students basing their choice of institution and their status as full time or part time on living costs.

For example, students might choose a local community college over a farther away CSU because they can live at home and save on rent, food, and transportation costs. Whether or not they live at home, they still might engage in 30 to 40 hours a week of paid work to cover costs while attempting to finish their degree, which often has an impact on their academic performance, such as having to repeat courses they could not successfully attend to the first time.

So to allow students the opportunity to focus on their studies and progress to their degrees, we support the state funding Cal Grants to cover the cost of attendance beyond just tuition. And in closing, these are highlights of the complicated problems we have to solve, but faculty are willing partners and leaders with a demonstrated history of success, recent success as well as sustained success, engaging every day and helping students learn, earn their degrees, and achieve their dreams and long term success. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next, welcome to Mr. James Steintrager, chair of the University of California Academic Senate.

Thank you, Chairs Newman and Fong and those who remain. I have a script. Apparently I'm losing my voice, too. I have a script, but I just want to mention something off script before I get to this. Earlier it was mentioned or suggested that the main points of contact between the three public higher education segments is really at the highest levels.

President, whatever. I hope, and I think, that that kind of contact takes place. But contact between the three academic senates absolutely takes place, and a lot of coordination takes place through the academic senates, too. And I'm looking at my counterparts here because we know each other through the intersegmental work that we do.

We were on Zoom calls yesterday, the week before, and an incredible amount of coordination already takes place through the academic Senate, where a faculty can provide their input on matters of curricula and transfer and things of that nature. So with that, I will go to my script, and I've cut out some chunks because I think we're over time. Policymaking in the current transfer context is both a challenge and an opportunity to create a coherent long term plan that will strengthen the student transfer pipeline in California.

In what follows, I will highlight both UC and intersegmental policy initiatives and their evolving nature as we work together to meet the needs of prospective transfers. Academic preparation is the foundation of future academic success in college. This is why it is central to the transfer policymaking efforts in each of the state's higher education systems. We must ensure that students not only can transfer, but also that they will thrive after transfer.

Articulation is the practice of aligning curricula across education segments to support students in their transition from one segment to another. Through the transfer articulation process, UC works with California community colleges to determine the transferability of community college coursework to our campuses. After course transferability is established based on UC's academic preparation policy, which is set by the faculty, specific articulation agreements are implemented to confirm what courses count for major breadth and other graduation requirements.

This is how we outline a clear path for transfer students to attain a baccalaureate degree. Given the role faculty play in shared governance structures that uphold the academic mission of higher education institutions, policies for academic requirements rely on faculty expertise to determine appropriate policy criteria. In the case of UC, transferable course agreements identify UC transferable courses for each community college.

These agreements are updated annually so they can accurately reflect the most current curriculum, and it's crucial to maintain clear policy to manage these dynamic components of transfer articulation. Not long after the associate degrees for transfer ADTs were developed for transfer to CSU, UC launched an initiative to identify a common set of lower division courses as appropriate preparation for 20 of the most sought after majors among transfer applicants to UC.

The UC transfer pathways were created in 2015 under joint leadership of the Academic Senate and the UC systemwide provost and in collaboration with the UC Office of the President and the California community colleges. Each transfer pathway identified a single set of courses for a given major that community college students can take to transfer at any UC campus. This unprecedented achievement came from a shared commitment to ensure students are well prepared and supported in their transfer journey.

As interest in ADTs and UC transfer pathways has grown over the last several years, significant work on transfer policy has been undertaken by the faculty senates of the three public higher education systems, as well as by ICAS, the Intersegmental Committee of the Academic Senate, UC, the CSU, and CCCs have long worked together to provide access and opportunity for students seeking to transfer. A key example of such is the intersegmental General education transfer pathway curriculum, IGETC, that the three segments have had in place since 1988.

Assembly Bill 928 became law in 2021 and sought to produce a new common lower division general education pathway for CCC students transferring to UC and CSU. This new pathway is known as CAl-GETC. The legislation also established the ADT Implementation Committee that has overlapping responsibilities with what ICAS oversees. This new law prioritizes alignment of transfer requirements with the structure of ADTs, which originated as degree programs designed for academic preparation and transfer to the CSU.

Although there are many similarities between UC and CSU undergraduate programs, important differences do exist.

These differences reflect the richness of educational opportunities available to transfer students and should not be ignored, and this is partly captured in Assembly Bill 1291, signed into law just last year, which was a unique collaboration between UC and state leaders to launch a new ADT pilot program at UCLA in which Provost Newman mentioned earlier. We've seen success over the decades ranging from UC specific efforts to much broader cooperative efforts involving all the various bodies represented in this room.

Because the state's public higher education institutions are critical avenues of opportunity for all students to meet their educational goals, it is imperative that UC collaborate and coordinate with the CSU and CCC systems to address how the transfer process can be further enhanced. We aim to do this through continuous improvement cycles and intra segmental policymaking among the faculty senates, and we welcome support from the Legislature and state leaders to ensure adequate resources to help us tackle the challenges ahead. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Steinfregard, and thank you to each of the panelists. Let me start the questions. Let me ask sort of the same question I've asked of other panelists. Do you all agree that a central coordinating body would be useful and is necessary, and if so, what role should academic senates play within it?

I have a thought or two. Duplication has been one of the things that's been brought up a number of times, and I think that one thing that a coordinating group might be able to address would be duplication, or, in fact, problems of duplication, coordination across the segment. So I think that that might be a useful function for such a group. I do worry in the transfer area in which I've concentrated my comments, that efforts to kind of coordinate from above might have unintended consequences.

And we've actually seen some of those unintended consequences already, trying to align ADTs with UC transfer pathways. If it's done too forcefully, students are going to lose out, and that would be a danger of that kind of coordination, again, from the top.

And in what way would students lose out?

Well, this was mentioned, right? So alignment might mean...

So it's alignment where feasible. So I mentioned the economics transfer model curriculum and UC transfer pathways. To align those two degrees so that students, regardless of the degree they got, they would be qualified or prepared for transfer to both the CSU and UC system. They would have to up the calculus requirements for those students that are interested in transferring to CSU.

CSU doesn't have the same calculus requirements that UC does, and so that could create an unintended barrier for students that are already earning these economic degrees, a very valuable degree for students. They're earning these degrees, they're transferring to CSU, getting a degree in economics, getting out into the workforce, and landing fabulous jobs. If those pathways were aligned and students had to take the additional courses for calculus, that could put a barrier where students might not earn those degrees anymore, that are currently very valuable to students.

But there are other pathways that align beautifully, and we're in the process of working on some of those. Two I mentioned already align beautifully. So if we had a coordinating body, like Dr. Lowe mentioned with the AB 928 Committee, I am the sole faculty voice for California community colleges on there. And like she mentioned, of course, I like having my opinion shared, but there are many more faculty. There are, what, 56-57,000 community college faculty in our system, full time, part time.

And we need more voices. We need those experts in the room to keep us from coming up with unintended consequences in the work we're doing to serve students so that they have valuable programs moving through the system.

Ms. Steffel?

Yeah, and I would just echo what my colleagues have said, that if you have a unified pathway, that there's an advantage in that and that there's one thing, but it necessarily will level at the highest set of standards, which then potentially creates additional barriers to transfer that we didn't intend.

And I'll say, too, with the coordinating body, I would echo that the duplication concerns which we've had between the community college and the CSU so far, but may happen between the UC and the CSU. That's sort of yet to happen, but it's something that we've definitely had conversations about that. Thinking about how that would be constituted is sort of the question, how a body would be constituted, sort of who would be on that. I think our senses it would be a neutral body, but I think neutrality is often difficult to actually establish in practice.

I'll say with the most recent legislation, which I know for a lot of our times, this chair took up a lot of the space and maybe made us even more closely bonded than we would have been otherwise in working on AB 928. But there's sort of two things on that that I don't think is necessary. If you haven't been deeply in the weeds, which we obviously all have been, there's sort of two parts of that that aren't obvious.

There's ICAS, the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senate, which I currently chair, which my colleague Ginny chaired last year, that created the singular transfer pathway, Cal-GETC. So that's the thing that was faculty driven that we've done that's out there, that exists. And then there's the coordinating body, which I have the awesome responsibility of representing all of the faculty of the CSU on that body as well.

But there's a report that was sent to the Legislature at the end of December, and sort of that's the output so far from the existence of that body. And I think another report is intended to go at the end of this year. So sort of tangible results that will be benefiting students and are being implemented versus sort of thinking about reports or thinking about policy that may or may not ultimately happen or be a good idea.

So let me reframe it. I don't know if the audience could all see your faces when I asked the question. I think I could describe it as skeptical. So good idea, bad idea. You folks have a very different perspective and represent a very different constituency than some of the other folks who have spoken today. But how urgent is the need for a coordinating body?

I think we need to fully resource. Is this working? Yeah, we really need to fully resource the intersegmental coordination with faculty in aligning or clarifying the transfer pathways. Not just the transfer pathways, but the courses. How will the courses transfer? Because right now it's a college to college or a college to the system, and it's very complicated.

And so if we had the faculty and Senator Ochoa Bogh had started talking about this, if we have the faculty working in these areas, we can have the economics faculty in a group coming up with decisions and recommendations and how they can move forward. We could have mathematics faculty doing that, but we need resources so that we have people to do the coordination to write the documents, to send everything through the proposal and approval process.

And we need the faculty experts in there who really understand the programs, who understand the courses, and we need the support from our administrative colleagues to finalize this and make these agreements.

Appreciate that. Any other.

I'll just echo resources. I mean, the work that you've seen, the work of Cal-GETC of ICAs, I mean, it's been done with zero resources, and it was a herculean effort, and it took a lot of goodwill and a lot of effort. And I don't know that if that were to be the model going forward, I don't know how successful it would be. It would be an unsustainable effort. I'll say that.

And so we have processes in effect, and I'll say ICUs has been around since, I believe it's 1980, it's existed since then. I mean, we have the transfer alignment project that Jenny referenced, that there are structures that exist that are wildly undersourced.

And that's a big part of the reason why there hasn't been scale, that if there were proper resources put to it, that the structures in place would be more productive in the way that I think we'd all like to move to, versus thinking about a coordinating Committee that would then be another set of resource demands. I hesitate to say the devils and the details, but, I mean, that's really what it would actually look like, would determine whether it would be useful and successful.

Yeah, it's hard for me to add to that. I mean, I ended my scripted comments with resources. So obviously I believe that the resources part is important. I think what we're all emphasizing is that some of this is really a bottom up process rather than a usefully top down process.

And as an example, I recently co-penned with the provost a letter that at the UC site will go out to Department chairs across the entire system, so large number of chairs, to have them identify a faculty Member who is knowledgeable about how their major curriculum works. So they can then be plugged into our coordination efforts around transfers that we have the set of knowledgeable disciplinary experts that will all be basically volunteer work, but it's how the work ought to get done as well. Right? Really, from the ground up.

So I guess what I'm hearing is a coordinating body might provide additional resources, but it also might create some challenges. Right. Some friction for the folks who are already doing this intersegmental work. Any other questions? Senator Ochoa Bogh.

So it's interesting, because I think what we're hearing is from our previous panels is that we do need to have our systems working together in order to prepare our students with regards to the transferability of majors throughout and the difficulties and challenges that lies within those, especially when there's differences between the community colleges, the CSUs, and the UCs, as far as the emphasis and focus on the type of education that they're providing at different levels.

But what I'm hearing in this particular panel is that we currently have systems that could actually coordinate and do all of that if they were fully funded to be able to do that and had the resources of the funding to be able to do that. So on the previous panels, we have a need.

In this panel, I hear that we have the systems already in place, but they just need to be fully funded to be able to do the work that is already being done with that previous intent. Is that what I'm hearing? Is that correct? Pretty much.

Pretty much. I mean, if they're fully resourced, then we can get the people that need to be there to coordinate and get this work done instead of just piecemealing it here and there. It's like, oh, this needs to be done. We'll find somebody to hurry up and get it done, but have the whole plan set in motion, going different projects all at the same time.

I absolutely understand. I get that. And then the other question that I wanted to address was, based on the Chairman Newman's question, as far as the urgency goes, and based on my conversations that I've had with the different heads of departments and directors for our different systems, is that the urgency is actually pretty urgent.

And the reason being is that currently, although we're graduating to being very successful in our different systems, in graduating people, we're still not meeting the entire need of the workforce for a state and for the nation as a whole, because there's a discrepancy between the majors that we're providing as a whole currently and what the workforce and where we're going in the future.

So the urgency is there because technology, science, the workforce is developing exponentially, and so we need the body and the force and the resources to be able to say exactly what it is that we currently need, which we have an idea based, but where we're heading in the future. So in my opinion, based on what I've heard from the leadership and the Workforce Department, both private and public, there is an urgency on that end. So that's just my personal opinion.

Based on the conversations that I've had and seen and based on what we have right now, it's actually very encouraging as far as our potential to be able to meet those challenges that we have. So thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Chair Newman, and thank you to our panelists. I think we've heard a lot of comments and insights about greater coordination and really appreciate the comments of the faculty and really making sure that we have the resources necessary to clarify transfer pathways to reduce duplication and other efforts.

I think the work that we can do to continue to support faculty collaboration and to help development and the development of joint academic programs to allow students to transfer seamlessly is the critical work that you're doing here and to really make sure they're meeting their goals and objectives. So I think, as I've heard also, I think there's some opportunities and challenges at the same time, but there's an opportunity here to really have greater collaboration with a coordinating body that would help really on these transfer pathways.

We know that with the prior presentations and different reports, sometimes students transfer with additional 13 extra credits from the community colleges to our higher education systems. So I think with this panel, really any additional comments you'd like to make around this? But I think with the opportunity to have greater collaboration amongst the faculty. Thank you.

Well, we do have common course numbering coming up that we're looking at aligning the courses so that there's less unnecessary repetition when students transfer from community college to a four-year institution. And within the community colleges as well. We have momentum now to get this work done, and I think the time is now to support this work we're moving.

Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you to you. I guess what I'm hearing is yes, to more resources. Total skepticism as to the need to create kind of a re-create seatback. And that is actually, I think, very useful. Right? Because you folks, more than anybody in your systems have the best sense of kind of day-to-day life in each of the segments. So I do appreciate your testimony. Thank you, each of you, for being here today. And with that, thank you to the panel. Thank you to all the panelists.

Let's now move on to anyone in the hearing room wanting to provide public comment as part of today's proceedings. Please proceed.

Hi. Thank you so much. I'm not sure if the mic is on. Are you able to hear me?

Yes.

My name is Elizabeth Boyd, and I am a faculty member at Cal State Chico. I'm also the Vice Chair of the Academic Senate of the CSU. And I wanted to thank you for holding this hearing, first off, and also just to comment on a couple of the points that were made earlier by both our administrative partners and our segment partners.

First off, the resources is, of course, I'm sure you all hear this over and over and over again, but those systems that we do already have in place for collaboration do desperately need the resources to do the job well. Second to the unintended potential consequences, one of the things that the CSU is most concerned about is the success of our students, the retention of students once they come in as transfers or as first year students coming into the CSU.

Many of our students, as you know, are first-generation. They're coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and we specifically have catered a portion of our general education to helping those students succeed. This is our area e lifelong learning course in our general education breadth, and these courses are specifically set up to enhance financial literacy, to help students in their financial aid and other lifelong skills that they may need in their careers going forward.

And we unintentionally ended up through the AB 928 work, losing those off of our uniform transfer. So I wanted to just mention that, because one of the things is, if you do go forward with a coordinating body, it would be incredibly helpful if we could be pulled to the table alongside as partners in the authorship of any such legislation so that we could help navigate around those.

And I just wanted to offer that we're willing and able to be at the table and volunteer our services to do that. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Boyd. Appreciate that. Anybody else in the room like to offer public comment? Welcome.

Hi. Thank you. I'm Adam Swenson. I'm also a faculty member. I wasn't going to speak, but fortunately, my colleague just said all the things I was going to say to the Senator's point earlier. Yes, we have a lot of the systems we need. We just need the resources, and it lies a lot with the faculty. We do a lot of this work already.

Our friends in the system offices do incredible and important work, and a coordinating Committee could help, I suppose, at the sort of General planning level. But I think what we see over and over is a lot of unintended consequences.

And what Vice Chair Boyd just mentioned is one of them, that because of the way the negotiations around the Cal-GETC package played out, given the different systems, sort of, shall we say, authorities, we ended up not having the student success packages or courses the area e in the Cal-GETC package. And so that means our transfers are at least going to lose it. And it's looking likely that the CSU is going to remove those classes altogether. And that's an unintended consequence.

Well, I assume it's an unintended consequence, but it's problematic and it's something that we're working with our friends in the system office to try to navigate. And there is another thing I wanted to say. Oh, I'm from the humanities, and I just wanted to make sure that the role of higher education is to prepare the workforce of California, but it's also there to educate a citizenry. And workforce needs change, and as we've seen lately, they've changed rapidly.

I mean, AI is going to destroy a lot of low-level programming jobs that students in computer science were getting into to do. That can all be done with GitHub's copilot now. So there's going to be massive shifts.

And so when we think about how to prepare our students for the workforce, we do need to keep an eye on the sort of more holistic education in addition to preparing for targeted workforce areas, because students, graduates are going to move around in their lives, and I just hope the Committee will keep that in mind. So thank you so much for your time. And sorry, this is a little rambly.

No, it wasn't rambling at all. Thank you. Mr. Swenson, I do appreciate your comment with respect to the humanities, as a humanities, as an underachieving former history major, but point well taken, and I think we often lose sight of that when we talk about workforce alignment. Anybody else in the hearing room would like to offer public comments. Seeing none, I want to thank everybody who participated in today's hearing.

If you were not able to testify, please submit your comments or suggestions in writing, the Senate Education Committee and the Assembly Higher Education Committee, or visit our websites. Let me give my Co-Chair a chance to close.

Thank you so much, Chair Newman, and thank you to all our panelists, to all our fellow colleagues, and to everyone who has participated in today's robust hearing. We know there's also been a lot of comments about workforce development and career technical education, and with the governor's plan for career technical education, emphasizing partnerships and collaboration as well.

And then really with all our segments here today talking about collaboration and how we're only one of two states in our nation that does not have a coordinating Commission, I really appreciate all the feedback here today and all the comments, and we look forward to future engagement as well. And with that, thank you so much again, to everyone who's participated in today's hearing and made today's hearing possible. Thank you, chair Newman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair again, to anybody who'd like to add to the record. Your comments and suggestions are important to us. We want to include your testimony in the official hearing records. With that, thank you again to everyone for your patience and cooperation. Today's hearing, particularly staff, and we have now concluded the agenda for today's hearing. The joint informational hearing on the State of public higher education coordination and collaboration is hereby adjourned.