California Community Colleges May Offer Bachelor's Degrees

Two-year schools in California could begin offering students four-year degrees under a proposed change to state law.

Community colleges could begin offering bachelor's degrees -- and remove students' needs to transfer to a second college -- under legislation proposed by state Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Only a few community college districts would have the ability to offer four-year degrees, the newspaper reported.

But any "one-stop" shopping would be seen as an improvement over the current offering of only associates' degrees, which are seen as "insufficient for [jobs in] some fields," the newspaper reported.

Community colleges in 21 other states across the country offer bachelor's degrees, the newspaper reported, leaving a South Bay school administrator to pine for a future when "California [can] catch up with the rest of the nation."

There is still worry that the state won't adequately fund such an effort -- and previous efforts to offer more college for less have "gone nowhere" in Sacramento, the newspaper noted.