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Pima Community College East; Mike Christy / Arizona Daily Star 2018
Tucson.com
Arizona House panel votes to allow community colleges to offer 4-year degrees
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Feb 18, 2020
PHOENIX — A House panel voted Monday to allow community colleges to
offer four-year degrees, calling them a less expensive and more
accessible alternative than universities.
The 7-3 vote by the House Education Committee for House Bill 2790 came
despite objections from the Arizona Board of Regents and the three
state universities they govern. Those universities are currently the
only publicly funded schools allowed to award baccalaureate degrees.
Regents’ lobbyist Brittney Kaufmann questioned the need for the bill,
saying the universities already have partnerships with every community
college to offer four-year degrees, though that can require a student
to complete the program through the university, either on campus or
online.
But Darcy Renfro, representing Maricopa Community Colleges, said it’s
not as simple as that. She said there are some programs that students
cannot get through one of these partnerships.
And then there’s the cost.
Renfro said a full-time student at Maricopa Community Colleges pays about $2,500 a year.
That means the ability to get a four-year degree for as little as
$10,000, she said. By contrast, tuition for a single year at one of the
state’s three universities runs more than that.
The measure goes next to the full House after constitutional review.
It is being pushed by Rep. Becky Nutt, R-Clifton. The issue is “very
important to rural communities where we lose our children often to the
cities,” she told lawmakers. “They don’t have the option in their rural
community to finish that four-year degree oftentimes.”
She emphasized to colleagues that nothing in her legislation would force any community college to expand its programs.
Instead, Nutt said, her measure would allow each governing board to
decide if they want to offer such degrees and whether they have the
capability to do so.
None of this would require additional state aid, she said.
Much of the push is coming from Eastern Arizona College in Safford, the area Nutt represents.
“It is meant to support students,” said Gibson McKay, a lobbyist for
the school. “What we’re attempting to do is allow students to get an
education within their community. A lot of them can’t leave to go to
universities.”
Rep. John Fillmore, R-Apache Junction, said that makes sense.
“The big winners in this are the kids,” he said, “the kids that are
going to benefit from not having to lose their jobs that they might
have had for two or three years during high school and the expertise
they have in the local economy.”
Kaufmann countered that universities have 245 programs leading to
baccalaureate degrees through every community college. The most recent
figures show they served 3,600 students, with a 75% graduation rate,
she said.
Kaufmann did not dispute the cost differential. But she said the universities offer various forms of financial aid.
Some of the universities offer “alternate pricing,” she added, citing
programs through Northern Arizona University where students attending
classes at local community colleges pay just 70 percent of the regular
resident tuition.
Anyway, she said, there are “institutional costs” that make a
university-provided education more expensive — costs that Kaufmann said
may have escaped the community colleges that want to go down this path.
Rep. Jennifer Pawlik, D-Chandler, said the universities appear to be
open to providing programs that perhaps are not offered in local
communities. That makes legislation like this premature, she said.
Rep. Gerae Peten, D-Goodyear, was skeptical that somehow community colleges could start offering four-year degrees.
“It sounds like a great program. The question is, is it feasible?”
Peten asked, noting the need to add faculty, equipment and physical
space. “I didn’t hear anything that convinced me that you could do that
without any additional funding.”
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