The EconAlliance of Northern Santa Barbara County is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting, supporting, and encouraging economic development. One major element of economic development is an educated and literate workforce. In cooperation with other nonprofit organizations like the United Way and People Self Help Housing, we are engaged in literacy programs at the school level and for working adults. Increasing literacy by 1 percent will result in a 1.5 percent increase in gross national product.
Allan Hancock College is our only post high school college that is accessible to students in northern Santa Barbara County. When students finish their AA degree, there is no college for them to attend for a four-year degree. Most “first-in-their-family” college students need to live at home to attend college. One-third of my undergraduate college classmates were the first in their family to attend college and they were all commuters. Most were first or second-generation Americans. Fifty-plus years later, this is still true. There is no four-year CSU in our area where commuting is possible. Cal Poly is about an hour or two away, depending where one lives. The closet CSU is Channel Islands, which is 111 miles from Santa Maria. Our granddaughter lived with us when she was attending Santa Barbara City College. When she graduated she tried to attend Channel Islands, but the two-hour drive each way was too much and she completed only one semester before transferring out of the county.
The current CSU legislation prohibits community colleges from offering duplicate degrees with CSUs. This makes sense in major metropolitan areas where there are multiple easily accessible CSUs. It makes no sense in northern Santa Barbara County, which is often described as a “higher education desert.” The California Legislature is presently considering CSU legislation and the lawmakers need to find a way to permit Allan Hancock College to offer four-year degrees so our students can live at home while they complete their college education. The ability for first-in-their-family college attendees to commute to college is often the difference between attending college or not.
This article appears in Jul 6-13, 2017.