VISALIA -- Spending $300 a month on gas while traveling to Fresno was getting to be a pretty common event for Visalian Stephen Reid.

But he wasn't commuting to a job there. Instead, he was trying to get an education at Fresno State so he could get a better-paying job near his Tulare County home.

Reid and dozens of other college students from Tulare and Kings counties face the same problem. "I think a lot of people are going outside the community, and outside the Valley, to get an education because they have to," Reid said. "They're going to other communities, and they're not coming back."

Local educators, politicians and business leaders, frustrated in their attempts to get a public four-year university to the area, are trying to increase the hodgepodge of public university classes and programs offered in the area by becoming partners with community colleges and other institutions.

State Assembly Member Bill Maze, R-Visalia, has introduced a bill to study the concept of allowing community colleges to offer bachelor's degrees in some majors. And College of the Sequoias hopes to construct a building where space could be leased to universities to hold upper-level degree courses not offered there.

Money for the project would come from Measure N, the $95 million bond that's on the March 2 ballot.

If both ideas become reality, they would increase education opportunities in an area where the low rate of educational attainment has been blamed for the lack of high-paying jobs.

Educators say Kings and Tulare counties make up one the largest populations in the nation not directly served by a four-year university. The closest universities are in Fresno or Bakersfield, which are both about an hour's drive away.

"Historically, if you are from the larger metropolitan areas, it's been easier to get new universities approved by the Legislature than it has in the Central Valley," said Carol Cairns, assistant city manager for the city of Visalia.

The city has formed a panel to increase options for local students who want a university education. "The population here has really grown," she said. "We've caught up with the times, but the times haven't caught up with us.

Maze's bill, if passed by the Legislature, would start a pilot program to offer some bachelor's degrees at COS in Visalia and Porterville College if the panel deems the project feasible. The panel would then bring the proposal back to the Legislature for final approval, Maze said.

Important issues such as who would teach the baccalaureate courses and how they would be accredited would have to be worked out by the panel, but Maze said a community college in Florida is already offering such a program.

He doesn't see why the concept can't work in California, especially for much-needed majors such as nursing. The bill will be forwarded to the state Assembly's Higher Education Committee for review.

According to statistics from the California Post-Secondary Education Commission, only 13% of the population in Maze's district, which covers parts of Tulare, Kern, Inyo and San Bernardino counties, have a bachelor's degree or higher. The state average is 27%.

But Maze's proposal is not the only cross-pollination project in the works.

COS's Sequoias Center, which would cost $7.5 million to build, could add even more university-level classes to the area.

California State University, Fresno, has been invited to participate in the building if the bond passes, said COS President Kim Badrkhan. The university already has a center on campus.

"The problem is a lot of people don't know it's there," said Jim Vidak, the Tulare County Superintendent of Schools, of Fresno State's Visalia operation.

The university hasn't always marketed the Fresno State COS Center as it should, acknowledged Jim Forden, a Fresno State administrator who oversees the university's Visalia center.

But he said the university is increasing the number of courses offered there. Forden said the university will add more classes in criminology and business majors to the liberal studies program already in place.

COS officials said they welcome Fresno State's participation in the proposed Sequoias Center, but the school wouldn't be the only game on campus. Other universities also could lease space in the center.