Are we shutting her out? Dual degree and transfer agreements between state four-year and community colleges were once an open door to universal access. Now, for many, those doors may be closing

University Business, May, 2004 by Rebecca Sausner

Community college students in Seattle are angry and confused, and it's officials at the University of Washington's Seattle campus that are the target of their ire. The success of the Washington community college system, combined with demographic growth and a shortage of state funding, recently forced UW Seattle to announce plans to limit enrollment by changing the terms of its community college transfer agreement. The old one was clearly defined and based on GPA; the new one is a fuzzier, yet-to-be-defined "comprehensive review" of a student's application and record.

But, "the University of Washington forgot this was a 'joint agreement' when they announced the changes to the press," protests Loretta Seppanen, assistant director of Education Services at the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. "For at least four months, there was huge negative fallout and just plain anger, and there is considerable student angst that has not yet been addressed."

Over-Enrollment Woes

The new transfer changes will not be the only factors thwarting access in Washington State. In fact, quantifying just how much access is currently being denied by the state's funding problems alone, is difficult. For years, Washington state colleges have accepted more students than they receive funding for; Washington state universities combined with the state community college system may be over-enrolled by as much as 16,000 FTEs, says Tim Washburn, assistant vice president for Enrollment Services at UW Seattle.

"Over-enrollment is a significant issue for Washington," he says. "The state has not been able to provide enough funding for the students presently enrolled, much less provide funding for the students in the K-12 pipeline."

Yet it's the size of the bulge coming through that pipeline that most worries higher education supporters in the state. Most states will see a population crest around the end of the decade, followed by a gradual decline, but Washington will experience another crest in 2017, says Seppanen. The current over-enrollment situation has already caused three public universities in Washington to change their transfer policies or more strictly enforce the application deadlines and other requirements.

"The University of Washington Seattle, Western Washington--and probably pretty soon Washington State University in Pullman--are now unable to accept everyone who comes with a Washington state community college degree and a good GPA," Seppanen says. "They now have to engage in selective admission of transfers."

UW's selective admission process has become a necessity, say supporters of the move, because the school had been delaying admission for one or more quarters to those students who had been "guaranteed" seats based on their community college degree and GPA. This has created a backlog of hundreds of state transfer students waiting for admission.

"You could no Longer call it a guarantee if the person was going to have to wait three quarters to get in," Seppanen says. So after years of a GPA-based admission policy, in the winter of 2004 Washington will shift to one that Looks at many aspects of a student's record and will include requirements that students select a major and complete all the prerequisites for that degree. The hope is that they'll be able to graduate two years later instead of staying on for extra semesters. The new review process may also require a personal statement, and oblige students with fewer than 40 credits to submit high school transcripts.

"It's a lot of work, and definitely more expensive than the previous plan," Washburn says.

While the new admissions review process moves into overdrive, the Washington Legislature recently approved a budget that would give an additional $10 million to higher education to pay for new seats, or compensate schools for the over-enrollment. Admissions will remain proportional, however, as the university has opted to maintain its agreement calling for transfer students from Washington community colleges to make up 30 percent of all incoming students each year. In addition, the legislature approved a one-year experiment that creates something of a voucher system in higher ed. Under the plan, private colleges in the state can compete for funding of 324 seats at $11,000 per seat, in high-need fields such as nursing and engineering. This grant would bring Seattle-area private IHEs into the same tuition range as the public schools.

Seppanen believes there's only one true way for Washington to fix its higher ed capacity problems. "More money--it has to be solved that way. Our population growth is way too big not to have it happen this way."

'Terminating' Enrollment

But Washington is not the only state where the relationship between the community college system and senior institutions is under pressure. In fact, nationally, though these relationships had been characterized by increasing cooperation and articulation agreements in recent years, in many places the cooperation between community colleges and four-year IHEs is falling into jeopardy as capacity in both becomes constrained.