Tougher Standards at Two Year Colleges

Proposal Would Toughen Standards at 2-Year Colleges in Calif.

Faculty and staff members at California’s 109 community colleges are debating a proposal to raise the academic standards required of students to receive associate degrees, The Sacramento Bee reported today. The community-college system’s Academic Senate recommended last year that the minimum requirements be stiffened in both English and mathematics. Critics of the plan say the colleges’ open-admissions policies and increasingly diverse enrollments, including many students for whom English is not a first language, would make it extremely difficult to raise standards without having a major, unfair impact on students’ ability to move on to a job or a four-year institution. Defenders of the plan say the current standards are so low that students can graduate with few of the skills needed to succeed in whatever they do next.