Tucson, Arizona Sunday, 6 July 2003
| LOCAL ANGLE Arizona's community colleges are an increasingly popular route into the state's three public universities, and the University of Phoenix, among other institutions. "If you come to a community college in the state of Arizona, we can guarantee you'll transfer into a university if you complete the Arizona general education curriculum," said Dave Padgett, Pima Community College's director of curriculum and articulation services. Students must complete 35 credits of general education, maintaining a C or better in all transfer courses. Students earning an associate's degree can transfer up to 64 credits and enter the University of Arizona as a junior, he said. However, transfer students aren't guaranteed admission into specific university programs or majors. The number of students completing that general education curriculum at PCC has doubled since May 2000, from about 300 to nearly 600 last May, he said. "We have a very, very good relationship with the University of Arizona," Padgett said. A full-time Arizona resident taking 15 credits at PCC will pay $1,092 for this fall's and next spring's semesters, while a UA undergraduate will pay $3,593 in tuition and fees. "Our students have very little trouble transferring credits to other institutions," Padgett said. ARIZONA DAILY STAR By Anne Marie Chaker |
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Suzanne Miller had good grades at her all-girls high school in Los Angeles,
but knew they wouldn't be enough to get her into a top University of California
campus. So, she made an unusual strategic move, leaving high school a year early
and enrolling at a local two-year college.
The payoff? Next fall, she'll be transferring to UCLA.
As the fight to get into a top university intensifies, community colleges are
emerging as a surprising backdoor route to admission. Long maligned as places
for students who can't cut it at a more-rigorous campus, two-year colleges in
a number of states are becoming official "feeder" schools to highly
competitive public universities. Others are raising their academic standards,
making it less of a leap for elite universities to consider their graduates
when they apply for transfers.
Special honors programs
Miami-Dade College in Florida, for instance, last year started an honors program
for high-school seniors with SAT scores of at least 1,200 or a grade point average
of at least 3.7. A couple graduates have already been accepted to Columbia,
and one each to Yale and Georgetown.
A number of community colleges are striking agreements with top universities
to make transferring easier. At Blinn College in Brenham, Texas, some students
are guaranteed admission to Texas A&M University if they make certain grades.
Some universities promise to give transfer applications extra attention. The
University of Virginia says it gives less weight to the high school transcripts
of applicants who complete two years at a community college.
These ties serve the needs of both schools. For community colleges, getting
more students into brand-name universities raises their profile. For universities,
transfers help fill enrollment and revenue gaps left by students who drop out.
In some cases, applications from local community-college students are actually
accepted at a higher rate than those from high schoolers. Some 33 percent of
applicants to UC Berkeley from California community colleges were accepted last
fall, compared with only 26 percent from in-state high schools.
Schools more selective
All of this comes at a time when it is trickier than ever to get into a top
university out of high school, mostly because of a huge spike in applications.
While the Ivies have always been extremely competitive - and are getting even
more so - flagship state schools such as Ohio State University and UCLA are
also getting much more selective.
Some universities explicitly tell students who didn't make the admissions cut
to try again after attending a community college. Texas A&M in College Station,
for instance, has begun offering an alternative to waitlisted students who don't
end up getting in: Attend Blinn College, a two-year school, while also taking
classes at A&M. Students on the "Blinn Team" are automatically
admitted to A&M if they have a B average in their classes at both institutions
at the end of two years. This year, 1,200 students asked to be on the team,
up 71 percent from last year.
Some states - California, for instance - have long had such arrangements in
place. But to accommodate a growing number of high-school graduates, it is now
setting even higher targets. The University of California system is hoping to
increase by 50 percent the number of transfer students from California community
colleges by the 2005-06 school year.
In some states, the backdoor route also includes second-tier campuses of flagship
universities. Ohio State University now asks students what their second-choice
campus would be. Students who finish a full-courseload year on a regional campus
with at least a C average are then guaranteed admission to the main campus.