Letter: Beyond community college

San Francisco Chronicle 2/20/07

Re "Access is not enough," editorial, Feb. 14: The California State University has a number of initiatives in place to assist community college students to transfer to its system. Traditionally, community college upper division transfers have been the highest priority admissions category to the CSU. In fact, three-quarters of all students who transfer from a California community college come to the CSU.

Our 23 campuses regularly staff transfer centers at community colleges, and systemwide we hold annual counselor conferences for community college staff. We provide community college students popular Internet portals through which they may plan their transfers (www.assist.org and www.csumentor.edu). We are also working hard to improve the transfer process by letting community college students know which classes to take for each of many different majors in order to fulfill their lower division requirements and transfer to a CSU.

We agree that more needs to be done to help college students navigate the transfer path to a four-year institution. In terms of academic achievement, we know transfer students do just as well as incoming freshmen once they get here.

- Gary W. Reichard, Long Beach

Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer, California State University