The Progress Report: Fight for Four-Year Community College Degrees Continues

For years, San Diego City College has been cooking up something new: a bachelor’s degree.  

City’s cyber defense and analysis degree, the first bachelor offered by the community college in its 110-year history, was approved last year, despite opposition from the California State University system. And earlier this month, it finally welcomed its first class of students.  

Now, the San Diego Community College District is setting its sights on a new bachelor’s degree at City College. There’s just one problem: under current state law, community colleges are barred from developing it. That may change soon, but mimicking past skirmishes, public four-year universities aren’t on board. 

What Else San Diego Community College District Has Cooking 

AB 927, the law passed in 2021 that allowed 30 California community colleges per year to develop bachelor’s programs if they met certain stipulations, is now old news. A new bill is moving through California’s assembly and senate that will continue to reshape what degrees community colleges can offer. 

The bill, SB 895, would open the door for a limited number of community colleges to create bachelor’s degrees in nursing. It’s a significant change. Thus far, community colleges have only been allowed to create bachelor’s degrees not already offered by public four-year-universities in California.  

That non- duplication stipulation is why City College’s cyber bachelor’s faced such stiff opposition from CSU’s — they felt like it duplicated degrees they already offered.  

That provision, which is meant to stifle competition for students between community colleges and public four-year-universities, has frustrated many in the community college world. It’s meant community colleges have had to create brand new degrees they hope will speak to the needs of the workforce.  

As part of the application process, colleges are required to show their new degrees would meet workforce demands. Still, that process doesn’t change the fact that graduates of those new programs will enter the working world with an untested degree. 

It’s also meant that community colleges haven’t been able to step in to provide degrees that are badly needed in the workforce and whose programs are too full at four-year-universities. Nursing bachelor’s programs, which for years have been impacted at pretty much all CSU schools, have long been at the top of that list.  

Currently, most nursing students in California turn to more expensive private colleges to earn their bachelor’s degrees because of that enrollment crunch. The bill doesn’t include tuition costs for community college nursing degrees, but bachelor’s programs already offered by community colleges are by law limited to about $10,500.  

If those prices were to carry over into community college nursing programs, they would cost just a fraction of what students pay at public four-year universities or private colleges. CalMatters found the average cost for a nursing degree at California’s private colleges was around $130,000. 

San Diego Community College District’s Next Phase 

Since City’s degree was greenlit, Miramar College also put forth a proposal for a bachelor’s in public safety management. The program will build on associate degrees already offered by Miramar like emergency medical response, firefighting and policing and provide a comprehensive understanding of the region’s public safety and emergency response systems.  

The chancellor’s office of California Community Colleges approved the degree back in October and it’s slated to launch in fall 2025. Also granted provisional approval in October was a proposed physical therapist assistant bachelor’s program at Mesa. 

With that new state law potentially opening the door, City College and the San Diego Community College District is betting on nursing for its next bachelor’s degree, Chancellor Greg Smith said.  

“City College would be a really strong candidate, because the [nursing] program has the second highest pass rates for the exams in California, third highest in the nation,” Smith said.  

But like with many fields, an associate degree just isn’t cutting it anymore. Smith said many employers have told them they’re looking to hire nurses with bachelor’s degrees. Given the high cost and low availability of nursing programs, Smith said a bachelor’s degree at a community college would give students who didn’t otherwise have the chance to earn one a shot. 

“This is an equity issue and we look at equity of healthcare outcomes for different communities and the lack of diversity among healthcare providers. We are essential to addressing that,” Smith said. 

City College’s cyber defense degree isn’t the San Diego Community College District’s first bachelor’s degree and it won’t be its last. Mesa College developed a degree in health information management in 2015, as part of a pilot program for community college bachelor’s degrees.  

The program, which costs about $10,500 for all four years, has grown in the years since its implementation. For graduates of the programs approved during the original pilot program, the financial impact has been significant. Some have reported earning as much as $28,000 more than before they earned their degree, according to a report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.  

Old Feuds 

But not everyone’s stoked on the prospect of opening the door to bachelor’s of nursing at community colleges. While community colleges support it, CSU’s, including San Diego State University, oppose it.  

In an email, SDSU officials wrote that “university leaders continue to develop and implement tangible solutions to address the critical nursing shortage in the region,” by launching a new accelerated program at its Imperial Valley campus.  

Amy Bentley-Smith, a spokesperson for the CSU’s office of the chancellor wrote in an email that SB 895 just isn’t the answer to expanding the number of nurses in the workforce. Other constraints, like a lack of available clinical placements and faculty at nursing programs would still limit the number of graduates. Instead, community colleges and CSU’s should be working to develop more streamlined transfer pathways. 

“These partnerships streamline pathways have no waiting lists, move students through their degree programs faster and are often taught either online or at a community college with CSU support,” Bentley-Smith wrote. “SB 895 runs the risk of only constraining resources and creating unnecessary competition between existing public nursing programs.”  

San Diego Community College District’s chancellor doesn’t put much stock in the competition argument. Smith points to a recent UCLA study that found little evidence of competition between community colleges with bachelor’s programs and public four-year universities in states like Florida and Washington, which have allowed community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees for years. The study also found that community college bachelor’s degrees are “the best vehicle to transform who accesses and succeeds in California’s higher education and labor market.” 

Smith jokes that no one ever comes to them saying they got into the University of California, San Diego but that City College was their first choice. 

“That’s not a thing, right? If you can afford to, and you get into those programs, that’s the pathway you want. We serve a different learner with a different pathway,” Smith said. 

That includes adult learners, working students who may have to fit classes in between shifts and people with children who can’t up and move to a new city. Besides, he doesn’t foresee community colleges offering degrees where needs are being met, like history for example. 

“But … heavily impacted programs that aren’t meeting local workforce needs, where we have residents who don’t have that socioeconomic upward mobility pathway because the four-year colleges universities don’t meet their needs, here we are.”