2023-123 California's Systems of Public Higher Education

Audit Recommendations Disclosure

When an audit is completed and a report is issued, auditees must provide the State Auditor with information regarding their progress in implementing recommendations from our reports at three intervals from the release of the report: 60 days, six months, and one year. Additionally, Senate Bill 1452 (Chapter 452, Statutes of 2006), requires auditees who have not implemented recommendations after one year, to report to us and to the Legislature why they have not implemented them or to state when they intend to implement them. Below is a listing of each recommendation the State Auditor made in the report referenced and a link to the most recent response from the auditee addressing their progress in implementing the recommendation and the State Auditor’s assessment of auditee’s response based on our review of the supporting documentation.

Recommendations to California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office

Recommendation 1

To assess and improve the State’s efforts to help community college students transfer, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should establish by September 2025 a goal transfer rate and a process for measuring and reporting that rate as it applies to the statewide system and to individual community colleges. The process for measuring the transfer rate should include identifying the proportion of transfer-intending community college students who ultimately transfer successfully by using a methodology that the Chancellor’s Office determines best captures students’ intent to transfer and allows for timely analysis. The Chancellor’s Office should also incorporate this goal into any key strategic plans for the system.

Recommendation 2

To help community colleges improve their transfer rates, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should establish a process by September 2025 for identifying any specific best practices at community colleges that have had a measurable impact on the colleges’ transfer rates and sharing these practices with all colleges.

Recommendation 10

To ensure that a lack of course articulation is not a barrier to transfer, the three systems should collaborate by September 2026 to analyze articulation data and develop a plan for addressing the gaps in articulation that most negatively affect community college students. For example, the analysis could identify the articulation gaps that are most likely to reduce students’ chances of admission or to add to students’ total number of units or amount of time to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree.

Recommendation 13

To help close existing gaps in the ADT’s availability and impact within its system, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should document a process by September 2025 for requesting and analyzing specific rationales from community colleges that have decided not to offer the ADT for a particular transfer model curriculum. This process should also include taking the following actions:

Review a selection of the rationales for not offering the ADT, with a focus on the areas in which it would most benefit students to have an available ADT pathway.
Using criteria such as whether other community colleges are able to offer the ADT, and consulting with the systemwide academic senate or other faculty as necessary, determine whether the selected rationales are reasonable and make recommendations to the colleges as appropriate.
To the extent its reviews identify specific challenges in offering the ADT in certain subject areas, notify the appropriate committee or group so that it may consider those challenges when revising transfer model curricula.

Recommendation 16

To help community colleges provide students with the information they need to transfer, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should disseminate guidance to districts and colleges by September 2025 that includes the following:

Specific actions that districts or colleges should take to ensure that as many transfer-intending students as possible receive counseling and have a current, comprehensive education plan. For example, these actions could include routinely identifying and reaching out to schedule counseling appointments with the specific students who do not have a current, comprehensive education plan.
Guidance about the format and content of education plans, including how districts or colleges can ensure that the plans are accessible online and contain a student’s potential transfer destinations. The guidance should also include any ways in which online education planning systems could assist districts or colleges in meeting the objectives we include in this recommendation.

Recommendation 17

To help evaluate and improve colleges’ efforts to advise students about transfer, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should develop a method by September 2026 for community colleges to monitor and report the percentage of their transfer-intending students who have a current, comprehensive education plan and the percentage who have received timely counseling services. For example, the Chancellor’s Office could refine the data that it collects and publicly reports to ensure that it shows these types of metrics. Further, the Chancellor’s Office could consider following up with districts or colleges that have low percentages of such students to help them improve.

Recommendation 18

To help ensure that community colleges have the staffing necessary to assist transfer-intending students, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should establish a process by September 2025 for identifying community colleges with staffing levels that are insufficient to provide necessary transfer-related guidance and taking follow-up action when warranted. For example, using existing staffing criteria and information it already collects, the Chancellor’s Office could identify colleges that lack sufficient transfer center staffing or have inadequate counselor-to-student ratios. It could then notify or follow up with officials at these colleges to help advocate for increasing their staffing levels or to support the colleges’ efforts in other ways.

Recommendation 19

To ensure that colleges are making effective efforts to close equity gaps in student transfer rates, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should update its equity plan template or its related equity plan annual report template by September 2025 to require colleges to report outcomes related to their established goals. The Chancellor’s Office should also provide guidance to help colleges address the root causes of their transfer-related equity gaps and to evaluate the effectiveness of their initiatives designed to reduce those gaps

Recommendation 20

To improve outreach efforts and help students transfer, the three systems should establish formal agreements by September 2025 to share information for outreach and recruitment purposes about transfer-intending students in a manner permitted by FERPA and any other applicable privacy laws. The agreements should:

Ensure that the information that CCC shares with CSU and UC is specific, detailed, and timely enough to allow CSU and UC campuses to conduct tailored outreach to students to help them transfer. In particular, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should evaluate its options for determining students’ intent to transfer and work with CSU and UC to ensure that the data it shares is useful for their campuses’ outreach purposes.
Specify that CSU and UC will also regularly share information with CCC about their students who successfully transferred, in a format and level of specificity that allows community colleges to assess the effectiveness of their transfer efforts.

Recommendations to California State University

Recommendation 3

To ensure that its campuses and degree programs adequately prioritize transfer students, the CSU Chancellor’s Office should establish and begin implementing procedures by September 2025 for monitoring and publicly reporting the ratio of community college transfer students to other undergraduates in its system, campuses, and specific disciplines, programs, or majors. The procedures should establish the following:

A specific goal for adequate representation of transfer students among all undergraduates, such as a goal that transfer students represent at least one-third of new enrollees or graduating degree-earners. The system should work toward meeting this goal at the system level and, where feasible, at the campus level and at the level of campuses’ specific disciplines, programs, or majors.
A formal and documented method to identify when campuses or their specific disciplines, programs, or majors are below the goal and, when appropriate, to work with those campuses or programs to determine the possible causes for the low transfer representation and document plans for increasing it. For example, these plans could include the campus or program enrolling additional transfer students by expanding its upper-division capacity or adjusting its enrollment targets, if doing so is feasible. In carrying out this process, the CSU Chancellor’s Office should prioritize following up with the campuses or programs whose admissions processes may be denying qualified transfer applicants.

Recommendation 5

To best position the CSU system to admit and enroll more transfer students into its preferred degree programs, the CSU Chancellor’s Office should establish a formal process by September 2025 for identifying the specific disciplines, programs, or majors where capacity increases at campuses would be most valuable. It should then prioritize those areas for future capacity increases. For example, the CSU Chancellor’s Office could use transfer representation data or data from its redirection process to identify majors in which additional capacity would enable more transfer students to enroll.

Recommendation 11

Recommendation 14

To help close existing gaps in the ADT’s availability and impact within its system, the CSU Chancellor’s Office should document a process by September 2025 for requesting and analyzing specific rationales from CSU campuses that have decided not to accept the ADT for a particular transfer model curriculum as similar to their related majors or concentrations. This process should also include taking the following actions:

Review a selection of the rationales for not accepting the ADT, with a focus on the areas in which it would most benefit students to have an available ADT pathway.
Using criteria such as whether other CSU campuses are able to accept the ADT, and consulting with the systemwide academic senate or other faculty as necessary, determine whether the selected rationales are reasonable and make recommendations to the campuses as appropriate.
To the extent its reviews identify specific challenges in accepting the ADT in certain subject areas, notify the appropriate committee or group so that it may consider those challenges when revising transfer model curricula.

Recommendation 21

To improve outreach efforts and help students transfer, the CCC Chancellor’s Office and the CSU Chancellor’s Office should establish a formal agreement by September 2025 to share information for outreach and recruitment purposes about transfer-intending students in a manner permitted by FERPA and any other applicable privacy laws. The agreement should:

Ensure that the information that CCC shares with CSU is specific, detailed, and timely enough to allow CSU campuses to conduct tailored outreach to students to help them transfer. In particular, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should evaluate its options for determining students’ intent to transfer and work with CSU to ensure that the data it shares is useful for CSU campuses’ outreach purposes.
Specify that CSU will also regularly share information with CCC about its students who successfully transferred, in a format and level of specificity that allows community colleges to assess the effectiveness of their transfer efforts.

Recommendations to University of California

Recommendation 4

To ensure that its campuses and degree programs adequately prioritize transfer students, the UC Office of the President should establish and begin implementing procedures by September 2025 for monitoring and publicly reporting the ratio of community college transfer students to other undergraduates in its system, campuses, and specific disciplines, programs, or majors. The procedures should establish the following:

A specific goal for adequate representation of transfer students among all undergraduates, such as a goal that transfer students represent at least one-third of new enrollees or graduating degree-earners. The system should work toward meeting this goal at the system level and, where feasible, at the campus level and at the level of campuses’ specific disciplines, programs, or majors.
A formal and documented method to identify when campuses or their specific disciplines, programs, or majors are below the goal and, when appropriate, to work with those campuses or programs to determine the possible causes for the low transfer representation and document plans for increasing it. For example, these plans could include the campus or program enrolling additional transfer students by expanding its upper-division capacity or adjusting its enrollment targets, if doing so is feasible. In carrying out this process, the UC Office of the President should prioritize following up with the campuses or programs whose admissions processes may be denying qualified transfer applicants.

Recommendation 6

To best position the UC system to admit and enroll more transfer students into their preferred degree programs, the UC Office of the President should establish a formal process by September 2025 for identifying the specific disciplines, programs, or majors where capacity increases at campuses would be most valuable. It should then prioritize those areas for future capacity increases. For example, the UC Office of the President could use transfer representation data or data from its transfer referral process to identify majors in which additional capacity would enable more transfer students to enroll.

Recommendation 12

Recommendation 15

To streamline and simplify campuses’ lower-division course requirements for transfer applicants in the most popular UC majors, the UC Office of the President should work with its Academic Senate and campuses to develop and begin implementing a plan by September 2026 for reviewing and updating the UC Transfer Pathways. Specifically, the plan should include the UC Office of the President taking the following actions for each UC Transfer Pathway:

For pathways in which related ADT transfer model curricula exist, identify and publicly post which UC campuses agree to accept the ADT as sufficient coursework to be competitive for admission and to be able to earn a bachelor’s degree within a specified amount of time or units after transferring.
For the UC campuses that do not accept the ADT as sufficient coursework, and for those pathways in which no related ADT transfer model curricula exist, update the pathway by establishing the community college courses that a student must complete before transferring to be competitive for admission and to be able to earn a bachelor’s degree within a specified amount of time or units after transferring. The Office of the President should limit the pathway to those courses that all participating campuses agree are reasonably necessary, and it should consider aligning these courses with any relevant ADT transfer model curricula.
Regularly monitor articulation for pathway courses at participating UC campuses to ensure that the articulated pathway courses are available and consistent across community colleges.
Require and evaluate rationales from any UC campuses that neither accept the ADT as sufficient coursework nor participate in the pathway.

Recommendation 22

To improve outreach efforts and help students transfer, the CCC Chancellor’s Office and the UC Office of the President should establish a formal agreement by September 2025 to share information for outreach and recruitment purposes about transfer-intending students in a manner permitted by FERPA and any other applicable privacy laws. The agreement should:

Ensure that the information that CCC shares with UC is specific, detailed, and timely enough to allow UC campuses to conduct tailored outreach to students to help them transfer. In particular, the CCC Chancellor’s Office should evaluate its options for determining students’ intent to transfer and work with UC to ensure that the data it shares is useful for UC campuses’ outreach purposes.
Specify that UC will also regularly share information with CCC about its students who successfully transferred, in a format and level of specificity that allows community colleges to assess the effectiveness of their transfer efforts.

Recommendations to the Legislature

Recommendation 7

To help create transfer pathways for students in majors that require a large number of units, the Legislature should amend state law to allow certain transfer model curricula for the ADT, such as in STEM fields, to exceed the existing lower-division 60-unit requirement, if both the CCC and CSU systems agree. The Legislature should include conditions for this unit expansion, such as when many community colleges or CSU campuses have demonstrated an inability to fit courses within the 60-unit requirement for that particular transfer model curriculum.

Recommendation 8

To ensure that community college students can centrally access the information they need to prepare for transfer, the Legislature should require all CSU campuses—and should request all UC campuses—to publish their existing articulation agreements and transfer requirements on ASSIST rather than only on their own external websites. Further, articulation agreements for preparation in each major should use a standardized format or common language to describe lower-division requirements so that it is clear to students whether taking specific courses will impact their chances of admission or the time it will take them to earn a bachelor’s degree after transferring.

Recommendation 9

To ensure that CSU, UC, and CCC continue to make progress on streamlining transfer requirements for students, the Legislature should consider appropriating funding and requiring annual status reporting for the following efforts:

Developing or revising transfer model curricula and expanding the ADT’s use.
Aligning CSU and UC transfer requirements.
Identifying and reducing barriers to further articulation between community college courses and CSU and UC transfer requirements.