California wants to give degrees based on skills — not grades. It’s dividing this college

California’s community colleges are experimenting with a radical new model of education, but some professors are pushing back. Faculty at Madera Community College have become the most vocal opposition, though issues with the new education model have popped up across the state.

In the new model, known as competency-based education, students don’t receive grades and they don’t have to attend class. They learn at their own pace and can finish the course whenever they can prove that they’ve mastered the requisite skill or “competency.” Advocates, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have called for more competency-based learning, saying that it’s an opportunity to help employers and get older adults who lack a college degree back to school. Similar models already exist in other states, at Calbright College, the state’s all-online community college, and at many private and for-profit institutions.

Starting these programs isn’t easy. In many cases, it means changing a college’s accreditation, its employee contracts, and its financial aid system. Those changes require faculty input, and some professors say it’s too much, too soon.

In 2021, California lawmakers approved more than $4 million to expand the competency-based model to eight community colleges, including Madera Community College, by the 2024-25 academic year.

In a resolution last year, the Madera Community College Academic Senate said it was “deeply concerned” about the new model after pointing out problems with the volume of work it requires and alleging that faculty weren’t part of the decision-making. The program has been on pause ever since, said Madera Community College President Angel Reyna. This spring, the faculty group, which determines academic matters for the campus, said it wants the school to withdraw from the experiment altogether.

These faculty members have stoked the ire of the college’s leadership, members of the town’s business community, the former mayor of Madera, Santos Garcia, and Madera County Supervisor Leticia Gonzalez, who all defended the program at a public meeting.

Last month, the state approved another influx of cash to each of the colleges participating in the skills-based program, putting the total budget at nearly $9 million. Initially, all eight colleges planned to begin offering new coursework by the 2024-25 academic year, but the state granted an extension until the end of 2027, since only one school, Coastline College in Orange County, is poised to meet that initial deadline.

Speaking broadly of the program, Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, said “there were a couple of delays in meeting our self-imposed deadlines” and pointed to challenges with accreditation and financial aid. Madera Community College is “making progress…albeit at a slower pace,” she said. Madera Community College was the only college not to receive an additional award last month, but Villarin said that it will still be eligible for the money in the future.

A vote of ‘no confidence’

The new program at Madera Community College will focus on one major, business administration, and enroll just a handful of students. Compared to the school’s total enrollment — more than 10,000 this academic year — it’s a drop in the bucket.

But for faculty, it’s an existential threat. They say competency-based education has created an overwhelming amount of work for some faculty — who are largely responsible for designing the new curricula — and they worry the model is so different that it could be hard for certain employers or four-year universities to interpret, according to statements made by members of the Madera Community College Academic Senate.

Last month, the group issued a vote of “no confidence” in the college president, citing the competency-based education program as a key reason why.

The other seven schools have faced their own roadblocks. “It’s a big challenge,” said Leticia Barajas, the president of the academic senate at East Los Angeles College. “You’re trying to completely change systems in a relatively short period of time.” She said the faculty senate recently decided to move the focus of the college’s program from technology and logistics to biotechnology because the biotechnology department had more staff who were able to assist.

Starting a competency-based program is “quite a bit more daunting” than faculty initially expected, she said, but insisted the program would still continue with her support. “We’re going to keep going. It’s going to take us a while, but we’re still going to get there,” she said.

Reyna said he’s asking for the same approach from faculty in Madera. “The seven other colleges are all moving forward. They hit bumps and they persevered, but for whatever reason, our folks don’t want to,” he said.

Faculty leaders in Madera say the issues extend beyond competency-based education. “It’s a participatory government problem and it’s a leadership problem,” said Lynette Cortes Howden, the president of Madera’s academic senate. In various resolutions, the academic senate has said that the president and other college leaders violated state and college policy by failing to consult with faculty before pushing for new programs or staff. Though the academic senate occasionally points to other examples, competency-based education is the primary source of tension.

Before Cortes Howden assumed her position, the previous president of the academic senate, Brad Millar, signed a proposal agreeing to launch competency-based education at the college. But Cortes Howen said the proposal was supposed to include a full resolution from the academic senate and a description of all the people who would work on the pilot. Since the proposal lacked those attachments, she said it’s invalid.

While Merced plows forward, Madera stalls

In a number of tense meetings this fall, Reyna said the faculty are jeopardizing the college’s reputation and its goals. He pointed to an oft-cited statistic — 6.8 million adults in California who graduated high school but lack a college degree — and said this program aligns with the governor’s goal to increase the number of adults with college degrees. “This is our mission.”

In addition to the eight-college pilot, Madera is also part of a federal grant to support the expansion of competency-based education in agriculture. Merced College, which is just under an hour’s drive north of Madera, has already launched its version and enrolled 25 students, according to a blog post on the school’s website. The students must demonstrate 14 different skills, at which point they’ll receive an “Ag Systems” certificate.

It’s a point of pride for Merced College, which says in the post that the program is a “a boon for students and for the ag industry as a whole.”

But at Madera Community College, the curriculum committee within the academic senate has yet to approve the agriculture program.

In a September meeting with the college’s academic senate, Reyna said that these competency-based initiatives are about educating underserved communities, such as farmworkers. “It’s shameful that we would ignore this student population,” he said. College administrators then accused the academic senate of violating the state’s Brown Act, which requires public access and comment during government meetings, and of using its ability to issue votes of no confidence to target Latino leaders.

The last word in that meeting came from one faculty member, William Mask II, who disagrees with the college’s academic senate and supports competency-based education. “You shamed this institution today. You shamed it badly,” he said and exited the room. Shortly after, Reyna and other college leaders followed him out.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

By ADAM ECHELMAN/CalMatters
CalMatters