The California Community College system could extend its program to include four-year degrees, with students covering the cost of expansion.

A study group led by Vice Chancellor Brice Harris argued careers that once required just an associate’s degree now raised the standard, increasing the need to include baccalaureate degrees. A recent amendment to the bill stated some colleges can offer four-year degrees as long as they are not offered in four-year universities.

Sophomore family and consumer sciences major Olga Voytsekhivska avoided the transfer student route and went straight to Sacramento State instead. She said creating non-duplicate degrees would be confusing and defeat the purpose of a major with a broad range of hiring aspects.

“I think it would be a mess if they did that, because employers would look for a specific major,” Voytsekhivska said. “With those new majors, to find a job would be much harder.”

California Community College Vice Chancellor of Governmental Relations Vincent Stewart said the pilot program would allow 15 colleges to participate, one campus per district. The system is in support of the bill drafted by Sen. Marty Block.

Stewart said the Board of Governors would have to develop a funding and fee structure for the baccalaureate program to cover the costs of expanding.

“The idea is to provide students with a high quality education at an affordable cost to the state and one that is acceptable to the students who may not have access to a four year college,” Stewart said.

Sacramento State Academic Senator Christine Miller said there are worries within the California State University about the effectiveness of the senate bill.

“If you extend the number of baccalaureate degrees, state funding will go instead of the CSU and UC, will instead go to the community colleges,” Miller said. “Our position is if there’s going to be state resources devoted to baccalaureate degrees, we ought to go ahead and fund the UC and CSU for offering those degrees.”

Miller said the CSU and UC have the proper infrastructure necessary to provide four-year degrees, like the library or student center on campus.

“One of the reasons why the CSU philosophically opposes this is because once you start to blur those lines, then our mission starts to get blurred,” Miller said. “We wonder whether if it is an efficient use of state resources to fund baccalaureate degrees at community colleges when those degrees are already offered by the CSU and UC.”

Having a bachelor’s degree from a community college would not be worth as much as a degree from an actual four year university because it would create a question of “who’s better,” Voytsekhivska said.

“I think they shouldn’t do it,” Voytsekhivska said. “Throwing in those new majors would make choosing much harder for students. I think it’s better for students to have broad majors that offer a wide variety of opportunities.”

The cost of attending community colleges is an unknown factor if the bill is passed because the study group said it is a topic that needs to be investigated, Miller said. The study group did not look at the issue specifically.

“Those funding issues need to be studied before proceeding with this kind of pilot program,” Miller said. “We need to know if it’s going to cost taxpayers more to offer these degrees. If it’s going to cost them more, we need to be thinking about that.”