In recent decades, community colleges have grown their academic and vocational programs to a competitive level, but to many, it continues to be an affordable, accessible and straightforward stepping stone to traditional four-year higher education.
Assembly Bills 705 (2018) and 1705 (2022) are both concerned with getting community college students into transfer-level courses that will count toward a degree. AB 1705 prevents colleges from requiring students to enroll in remedial classes or repeat courses already done in high school or college, according to EdSource.
In AB 705, unless students are highly unlikely to succeed in transfer-level courses and the pre-transfer course will improve the likelihood of the student completing the transfer-level course within a year, colleges cannot place students into pre-transfer courses, according to a CCC memorandum on AB 705 implementation. It is the college’s duty to offer the students in remedial classes if they would benefit.
The Roundup reported that at the Sept. 17 Academic Senate meeting at Pierce College, three professors discussed the issue of a decrease in students being placed into developmental courses.
“Approximately 60% of Pierce College students would benefit from pre-transfer math and English courses,” English Pprofessor Curt Duffy said. “Courses that Jacqui Irwin’s AB 1705 flexibly made off-limits.”
Duffy said that failure rates in transfer level courses have become higher because students haven’t had the developmental coursework.
“All college students must now enter at the English 101 transfer level… AB 1705 removed developmental courses like our English 28, wrongly assuming that all community colleges’ placement procedures failed them.” English Professor Karin Burns added on.
Community colleges are all about filling in the gaps, providing a wider range of support that might not be affordably or easily found elsewhere.
Academic support services, such as tutoring, are offered on campuses, but the option of remedial coursework should remain as a choice for students.
California community colleges are a place of opportunity for the campus’ surrounding communities, and should continue to offer classes to meet the diverse needs of all students.