Students participating in Cal Poly’s newest transfer program will pay full Cal Poly tuition but won’t be taught on the university’s campus.
New partnerships between Cal Poly, Cuesta College, and Allan Hancock College will allow students in specific programs to earn a bachelor’s degree on their community college campuses. According to Hancock President Kevin Walthers, many students from the Santa Maria community college want four-year degrees but can’t move closer to Cal Poly’s campus or make the drive each day.
For the 12 years Walthers has been with the school, he has tried to work with the California State University System to better serve the needs of these students at Hancock.
“I’ve been down to Long Beach, to the system headquarters, and, you know, it just felt like they were giving me a little pat on the head and sending me back to Santa Maria,” Walthers said. “They really weren’t interested in serving the students in our community.”
Cal Poly developed new 2+2 programs with Cuesta and Hancock, where instead of transferring to the university’s campus to earn their bachelor’s degree in liberal studies or sociology, respectively, students will stay on the community college campuses. Students in the programs will be considered Cal Poly transfer students, and the classes they take will be taught by Cal Poly professors.
As transfers, the students on Cuesta’s and Hancock’s campuses will be expected to pay Cal Poly’s full tuition and fees, which vary depending on residency status and the program. According to Cal Poly’s undergraduate costs website, in-state transfer students will pay at least $12,000 for the academic year.
“Our college is actually invested in providing support for those students,” Walthers said. “We’re giving them library access, computer access, things like that. You know, we hoped that because we were going to provide some of those things that the fees would be lower for the students, but that’s not the way that it worked out.”
Cal Poly Vice President of Strategic Enrollment Terrance Harris said that students will be able to apply for financial aid and be given access to Cal Poly facilities, including the Recreation Center and future library. Virtual resources will also be available for those who can’t make it to campus.
Cuesta’s campus is roughly 13 minutes from Cal Poly, while Hancock’s is about 35 minutes away. Because this distance might hinder some students’ ability to use the facilities at Cal Poly, both Cuesta and Hancock will continue to offer all of their services to these students.
The purpose of this program, Harris said, is to meet students where they are and give them the chance to earn a Cal Poly degree.
Over the last several years, students from Cuesta and Hancock who’ve met the minimum requirements have successfully transfered to Cal Poly, according to Harris.
However, Walthers said that for students who are place-bound and can’t move, the cost of tuition coupled with commuting every day is prohibitive, which means that about 25 percent of students accepted to Cal Poly from Hancock end up not enrolling.
With the new 2+2 program in place, 20 sociology students from Hancock began taking classes toward their bachelor’s degree on the community college’s campus starting this fall quarter.
“Twenty students is great, but that doesn’t solve the problem,” Walthers said. “I mean, that doesn’t address the need that we have in our community for additional programs.”
Anais Diaz graduated from Hancock with two associate degrees, one in sociology and the other in liberal arts. She applied for Hancock’s first 2+2 program but was not selected as one of the 20 students.
The Santa Maria native works as the outreach program manager for the Good Samaritan Shelter and is vice president of the House of Pride and Equality, which creates safe spaces in Santa Maria for LGBTQ-plus community members.
“It just doesn’t make sense to move somewhere else, when I was born and raised in Santa Maria,” Diaz said. “I’m a local. I’m a native. I’m very embedded in my community.”
If given the opportunity to speak to a Cal Poly admissions officer, Diaz said she would tell them that she hopes they make the cohorts bigger, add more majors to the program, and really consider local students in neighboring towns who are invested in their education but can’t relocate.
Hancock recently applied for a baccalaureate program through the California Community Colleges system to give more local students access to four-year degrees. According to Walthers, if approved, students could earn a bachelor’s degree in applied professional studies, which would give them the skills needed for entry-level careers.
“We know that’s controversial with the Cal State University system, but you know, right now the message that we’re getting from Cal Poly is, ‘Well, we’ll wait and see how this works, and if this one works, then we might add another one,'” Walthers said. “That just doesn’t have the urgency that we need for our community.”
Harris with Cal Poly said they “hope to continue to grow these opportunities, and potentially have some additional 2+2 programs” in the future.
The 2+2 program between Cal Poly and Cuesta will start in the fall of 2025 for liberal studies students who are pursuing careers in teaching. Currently, the program is limited to students on the elementary teaching pathway.
Cuesta President Jill Stearns said this program is especially important because local schools hire an average of 200 new teachers each year.
“This is an incredible opportunity for our students who desire to go into teaching, and it also aligns well with a large workforce need in our region between Northern Santa Barbara County and San Luis Obispo County,” Stearns said.
On the transfer application, students can choose to apply to study on Cal Poly’s campus or to the 2+2 program on Cuesta’s campus.
Cal Poly currently has eight concentrations for liberal studies majors, but according to Cuesta’s faculty lead for the 2+2 program, Cherie Moore, the program starting in 2025 will be geared toward the child development concentration.
“Our team is hoping we can grow it, that it’s successful, it gets teachers into the district, and then we’re also hoping to align our curriculum for those that want to go directly into Cal Poly and do STEM, or mathematics, or physical sciences pathways because those are other concentrations within the liberal studies degree,” Moore said.
Transfer applications for Cal Poly opened on Oct. 1 and will close at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 2 for the 2025-26 academic school year. All applicants will know their admissions status by April 1, 2025. Δ
Reach Editorial intern Emma Montalbano at ntintern@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 10-20, 2024.