Too Far Away: Distance is a barrier to bachelor’s degrees for rural community college students
Larry Gordon / EdSource
Karla Magana, student at Barstow Community College
When information technology comes to transferring from Barstow Customs Higher to the nearest public university seventy miles away, Karla Magana is more worried near the commute than the academics.
The 32-year-former mother of 4 is concerned about the distances and driving expenses to CSU San Bernardino, where she hopes to transfer to earn a bachelor's degree and teaching credential. She is steeling herself for weather barriers through the mountains and the infamously clogged Cajon Pass.
"If information technology snows or there are fires, that will cease you from going to schoolhouse. So aye, it would exist nice to take a academy nearby," she said.
The same wish can be heard at many other rural community colleges across California. Across financial and family unit obligations, altitude to country universities keep many students in rural areas from transferring to those schools, officials say.
Rural California: An Didactics Divide
This article is part of an EdSource special study on the challenges facing schools and students in California's rural communities. This report details how fewer students from rural areas transfer to the state's universities and how the land is considering edifice a new California Country University. Search the transfer rates of the land'south community colleges and view possible locations for a new CSU.
Produced by EdSource: Larry Gordon, reporter; Julie Leopo, photographer; Jennifer Molina, videographer; Yuxuan Xie, information visualization specialist; Daniel J. Willis, information analyst; Rose Ciotta, project editor; Denise Zapata, co-editor; Justin Allen, web designer; Andrew Reed, social media.
Statewide, nearly ii in 5 community college students transfer to the state'due south university organisation. In rural areas, nearly customs colleges' transfer rate to a California State Academy, Academy of California or private campus to pursue a bachelor's caste is well below that level, an EdSource analysis of land data show.
"Nosotros accept then many students who take great potential and could get that degree if not for the transportation consequence and not being able to move abroad from family," said Barstow Customs Higher English professor Susan Nylander, who herself made the 65-mile drive from Barstow to CSU San Bernardino when she earned her master'southward degree after a career in radio.
A wish for a local university
Her dream is for CSU to build a new campus in Barstow's High Desert region, halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. She fifty-fifty has a proper noun for it: Cal State High Desert, which would serve the relatively isolated region that is punctuated by stunning vistas of the Mojave Desert, high poverty and low college attainment rates.
It'due south unlikely anything volition come of her dream fifty-fifty though the wider expanse, known equally the Inland Empire, the region of San Bernardino and Riverside counties that includes Barstow, has a depression rate of adults with college degrees: 21 percent compared to 34 pct statewide, according to the U.S. Census.
Interactive Map: California community colleges' path to bachelor'due south degrees
View EdSource'due south interactive map showing what percent of students transfer for a bachelor's degree within six years at each of California's 114 customs higher campuses.
"If we were able to become a university hither, it would really help people with up mobility, with jobs then much nosotros are trying to do here," she said, later delivering a class lecture about the ways that advertising seeks to appeal to consumers.
Any the chances, her dream is timely since the CSU system, with a push button from the Legislature, is starting a $four million study on where it might build a new, 24th campus. It is looking at such factors equally pupil demand and futurity population trends. Lawmakers have asked that the committee specially look at 5 areas with strong potential enrollment and some political musculus — Stockton, Silicon Valley, Concord, Chula Vista and Palm Desert — forth with other locations thought to exist underserved by public higher education.
All that may non help the High Desert. In that location probably aren't enough potential local students and the location is likely besides remote from other parts of the state, despite plenty of bargain-priced land.
Many students are place-leap
At Barstow Community Higher, only 32 percent of students who enroll in classes with the intention to transfer actually move on to a available's degree-granting college or university inside 6 years. That includes many who enroll in online programs from out-of-state schools.
Some urban customs colleges that enroll large numbers of low-income students, such as Compton and Los Angeles Southwest, also report low college transfers.
In dissimilarity, the College of Alameda, located next to Oakland, sends one-half of its students on to colleges or universities in pursuit of four-yr degrees. At Irvine Valley Higher, in an flush Orange County neighborhood, 61 percentage of students successfully transfer.
"The testify is actually compelling that many of our students are place-bound," said Stacy Fisher, senior director of strategic projects at the Foundation for California Customs Colleges.
Many students who attended community college in the Inland Empire, the Far North and parts of the Central and San Joaquin valleys are stuck across reasonable commuting distance to universities and unable to motility to a residential campus for a bachelor's degree considering of family and job responsibilities, she said.
The dilemma facing the CSU arrangement and state legislature is whether to build a new multi-billion campus, if at all, in a rural region "that however needs to exist served or to serve a lot of students who demand to be served but may not be in rural areas." Fisher said she did not know the best solution.
In the Far North and eastern Sierras, some students leave California to transfer to more than conveniently located universities in neighboring Oregon and Nevada. In fact, nigh every bit many students from Feather River College in Quincy go on to University of Nevada, Reno, well-nigh 70 miles abroad, equally to Chico State or other California public universities.
The Reno campus allows transfers with fewer credits than the CSU system does and reduces out-of-land tuition for Californians who meet academic requirements. Going out of state, nonetheless, means giving up a potential Cal Grant, which tin total every bit much as $12,570 a year and encompass total tuition for eligible students at a CSU or UC campus.
Barstow serves military students
To the south, Barstow Higher'southward tranquility campus, mainly one-story brick structures hugging a central courtyard of palm trees and cedars, overlooks the city of 25,000. To outsiders, the expanse is sometimes known only as a pitstop for Las Vegas gamblers. Students from Los Angeles and San Francisco campuses would marvel at how easy it is to observe a free parking space simply a five-minute walk from form.
Barstow enrolls 2,600 full time equivalent students and many of them are enrolled online part-fourth dimension and some are at a satellite middle for soldiers at the Army'southward Fort Irwin, 37 miles abroad. Park University, a private institution based in Missouri that enrolls many military machine students nationwide, has a small center at Barstow College that offers bachelor'southward degrees in direction, criminal justice and public administration.
Beyond that fort and a nearby Marine base, the railroads, warehouse distribution centers, mining and retail outlets are among the biggest employers in the area. The metropolis's poverty rate, 36 per centum, is double the country boilerplate.
Larry Gordon / EdSource
Barstow Customs College student Emily Torres
Emily Torres, xx, a pupil in Nylander'due south English language course, now juggles school and a most full-fourth dimension retail job. She is intent on earning a available's degree in psychology — and hopes to be the start in her family unit to get a four-year caste.
She plans to commute to CSU San Bernardino, or further, to UC Riverside, where relatives tin can offering a place to stay once in a while if it gets besides late for her to tackle the two-60 minutes bulldoze dwelling house. Those distances deterred many of her high school friends from attending college full time or at all, she said. If there were a Cal Country closer by, "I think it would have been more user-friendly and would have pushed more of my friends to go to school," she said.
Classmate Magana went to cosmetology school afterward high school only to detect she was allergic to some of the hair products. She and then worked a multifariousness of jobs and now has four children, ages nine and younger.
"I e'er wanted to go to college, but I just wasn't gear up," she said.
She began at Barstow Higher a year and a half ago, with child care help from her mother, and wants to transfer next twelvemonth. "I've come this far and I'one thousand this old," said Magana, whose husband works in the construction industry. "And then I meliorate do it."
Partly reflecting its small size, Barstow'due south transfer numbers are tiny compared to schools with high transfer rates similar Santa Monica or Pasadena customs colleges — where the numbers are well above 1,000 a yr. Co-ordinate to Barstow'due south records, 66 of its 2,600 students transferred to a Cal State this twelvemonth, with 35 of those to San Bernardino and the residual scattered effectually the state. Eleven went to a UC, with Riverside the about popular. The other 140 went to private colleges in California or, in bigger numbers, to online schools.
Barstow working to expand guarantee transfer programs
Tanesha Young, Acting Dean of Counseling and Student Success, said the campus is working on improving its transfer rates by expanding associate caste programs that guarantee transfer into the CSU system. The schoolhouse also is trying to eternalize its UC transfer numbers past calculation science courses, such equally physics next autumn, that will fulfill requirements for science majors applying to UC.
Yet, many students start customs college under-prepared and face money issues complicated by the distances.
"Financially they feel they can't do information technology and transportation continues to exist a problem," she said. Some students just can't "commit to going up and downwards the colina" to San Bernardino or elsewhere.
California considers edifice new CSU campus
Population centers have an edge, despite hopes of rural students.
Palm Desert, 120 miles to the south of Barstow, where CSU already has a satellite eye, is thought to exist ane of the most likely sites in Southern California for a new campus. While Palm Desert technically shares the Inland Empire region with Barstow, it is merely too far abroad for Barstow students, Young said.
At Barstow Community College recently, student leaders were hosting an water ice cream social in the small student center.
Taking a break from the party, student government president Maiya Leasau, 22, who is a freshman business administration major, said she hopes to transfer to CSU Long Beach in 2022 and possibly go on to law school. Her blood brother lives in Long Embankment and she might be able to alive with him, fugitive the hassles and extra expenses of finding her own place, she said.
But without such a helping hand, many people in the High Desert region don't want to or tin't move away for pedagogy or jobs, she said.
"It'southward more difficult to go to those universities because of how far we are," Leasau explained. "Information technology's more than wanting to go that pedagogy. It'due south having to establish a secure place without breaking your back."
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Source: https://edsource.org/2019/too-far-away-distance-is-a-barrier-to-bachelors-degrees-for-rural-community-college-students/621189
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