SACRAMENTO – California taxpayers spend more than $10.billion a year on higher education. For the first time, they might be able to get a clear picture of how well that money is working, under legislation introduced Wednesday.

"We'll have the ability to measure systems and campuses so we can point the finger of blame and praise," said Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher, R-Brea, a co-sponsor of the bill.

The bill, which is being sponsored by Democrats and Republicans in both branches of the Legislature, seeks to set up an across-the-board accountability system for public and private colleges.

Among the questions it seeks to answer:

• How hard is it to transfer from community colleges to universities?

• What is the earning potential of graduates of different schools?

• Are student fees and tuition fair? Annual tuition ranges from $468 at community colleges to $4,984 at the University of California.

The goal is to make the system better serve students and taxpayers at a time when higher education is feeling the brunt of the state budget crisis - a proposed $967 million cut in next year's funding offset by a 59 percent increase in student fees.

A central goal of the accountability program is to make statewide higher education more consistent and efficient, the bill's authors said.

One target is to increase the number of credits students transfer from a community college to a four-year school. It takes as little as 120 credits to earn a bachelor's degree from California State University, but the average student who moves from a community college to a Cal State school ends up with 157 credits by graduation because they can't transfer all of the courses, said Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-La Cañada-Flintridge.

"If you reduce the number of units they need to repeat, you can increase capacity," Liu said.

But community college administrators say that's not the real problem.

Cheryl Arnold-Jupiter, transfer director at Orange Coast College, said community colleges are constantly working to update undergraduate coursework to ensure they are compatible with universities. Last year, OCC transferred 1,705 students into the UC and CSU systems, making it the third biggest "feeder" college in the state.

"The counselors are good at guiding you to which courses you need to take," said OCC student Maria Velasco, 21, who plans to transfer to California State University, Long Beach.

Where transfer credits get tricky is in the courses that students take for their major, like engineering and biology.

"You should be able to identify certain core courses for a biology class that can be accepted at any UC or CSU, but that doesn't happen," said Bruce Cary, who helps draft transfer guidelines at OCC.

Another target of the bill's sponsors are students who take forever to graduate, vastly exceeding the 120-credit graduation requirement while attending school at subsidized rates. Some of the bill's sponsors suggest charging them out-of-state tuition.

"We want to give sufficient flexibility for people to change their minds," said state Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena, a former president of Cypress College. "But there's a legitimate question if someone's a professional student and they're taking money and space from someone else waiting in line."

Some students worry that such a limit would kill the spirit of experimentation that colleges traditionally promote.

"It feels like they want you to take your classes and get out, and they are forgetting the roots of what education is: learning," said Danny Vivian, 25, a Cal State Long Beach senior studying international business and finance and a board member of the California State Student Association. "It also doesn't factor in that students switch majors, which puts them behind. You're asking an 18-year(-old) college freshman to decide what they want to do and get out."

Among other topics, the bill calls for state colleges to report annual data on the incomes of graduates, alumni employer satisfaction, student success by ethnicity and socioeconomic background, and degrees awarded in nursing or engineering and other high-demand fields.

Although the plan seeks more efficiency, it does not propose to set learning benchmarks or tell colleges what to teach - as K-12 accountability plans do.

"I don't think there's any attempt in this legislation to dictate curriculum," Scott said. "There's nothing in this bill that says because a major doesn't have immediate outcomes, they'll be punished."