Transferring from community college to California State University can be a confusing process for students, but a recent report published in January by the Legislative Analyst’s Office suggests changes to the system, including standardizing transferable classes.

The analyst’s office, which provides fiscal and policy advice to the state Legislature, released a report recommending uniform general education and pre-major requirements across all CSU campuses.

The author of the report, Anthony Simbol, a principal fiscal and policy analyst, said individual CSU campuses would still have the authority to set upper-division requirements for campus majors.

However, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies at Sacramento State Greg Wheeler said the absence of flexibility might be detrimental to students; he hopes Sac State will not adopt the policy.

“To carry it to the extreme that’s proposed, there’s the potential to have to redesign programs at the upper-division level to get students prepared for their major,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said he likes the current practice, which is called the Lower Division Transfer Pattern, because within majors and departments schools have the flexibility to have different strengths they wish to maximize.

The suggested policy from the analyst’s office would help transfer students like Matt Jones, a government major who applied for transfer to San Jose State and Sac State, by streamlining lower division requirements, making them the same at all CSU campuses. As the transfer policy stands now, each CSU campus can have up to 15 units of pre-major class requirements that vary from the system-wide norm, Simbol said.

However, the new proposal would remove uncertainty that exists for students like Jones because under the current system they must wait until their transcript is evaluated before they know whether they have successfully met all of Sac State’s lower division demands. “The counselors seemed sure that my classes, qualify but I’d like to know sooner that it’s happening,” Jones said.

A similar process at San Jose State took one year to complete for Jones’ mother when she recently transferred there, he said.

The recommendations wouldn’t affect community colleges outside of California, so transferring to the CSU system would still contain its share of hardships.

Jones said since he has out-of-state units, which he said are troublesome to transfer, he still has to wait for the evaluation process to be completed to find out whether he’s a junior or a senior.

Suzi Aten, a senior math major, encountered a problem transferring a University of Phoenix critical thinking class to Sac State after attending American River College.

Aten said that ARC counselors told her that the class satisfied a lower-division requirement at Sac State, but when she went through degree evaluation, she discovered that the class actually filled an upper-division need here on campus.

“It was annoying taking an extra class,” Aten said. “I probably could have taken it at ARC where it would have been cheaper and the classes there are easier too.”

Mike Letson, who worked in admissions at Sierra College before transferring to Sac State, has different complaints about the process.

“I think it’s weird that you have to send official paperwork to admissions and an unofficial transcript to the Business Department,” said Letson, who is pursuing a business degree in marketing.

Not much can be done about this duplication, Wheeler said, because, much like being accepted to Sac State, one also must also be accepted into certain programs on campus. Letson said the biggest difference between Sierra College and Sac State is that more counseling resources are available at Sierra College.

“I need a person to sum up the process for me because I’m overwhelmed by the inches-thick catalogues, and at Sierra College there is plenty of staff to help you, even when it’s busy,” Letson said.

Wheeler said he is sympathetic to this situation and that the university is making every effort to lessen the time that it takes for advice and evaluations to occur.

He cited the recent hiring of five new evaluators as being a significant positive step.

Norm Erickson can be reached [email protected].