You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
California's three public college systems cannot educate the state's citizens without more help from their private nonprofit and for-profit peers -- and state politicians and regulators should acknowledge the role of the latter, a new report argues. The report, produced by two researchers at the University of Southern California's Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis and funded by the National University System, argues that "the three public higher education systems in California cannot, by themselves, respond to increased demand for higher education," and that "they, and the two private higher education systems, need to be re-engineered to function as five parts of one coherent system, collectively growing in capacity to keep pace with the state’s demand for an educated work force." Among the ideas put forward by the authors, which are certain to face pushback from public college and university leaders at times of state funding cutbacks: allowing "state funding for students to take classes offered by private institutions, especially in high-demand majors such as nursing, science, engineering and math," creating a common course numbering system to allow for easy transfer among colleges of all types, offering "state incentives for nonprofit private institutions to increase student enrollment by up to 10 percent," and changing "the 'quasi-cartel' licensing requirements used to keep some out-of-state programs from competing in California."
