BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    �




                   Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
                            Senator Kevin de Le�n, Chair


          AB 2610 (Williams) - California State University: Special  
          Sessions
          
          Amended: July 2, 2014           Policy Vote: Education 6-0 
          Urgency: No                     Mandate: No
          Hearing Date: August 4, 2014                                 
          Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez                       
          
          This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File. 
          
          Bill Summary: AB 2610 defines "supplanting" for purposes of  
          special session instructional programs offered at the California  
          State University (CSU), and expands oversight and reporting  
          relative to special session instructional programs.

          Fiscal Impact: Significant ongoing General Fund costs to the CSU  
          to comply with the course tracking and data reporting  
          requirements, and to provide guidance to each campus on  
          compliance with this bill.

          Background: Existing law authorizes the CSU to require and  
          collect tuition fees from students enrolled in each special  
          session adequate in the long run, to meet the cost of  
          maintaining special sessions. "Special sessions," at the CSU are  
          defined to include, but not be limited to, career enrichment and  
          retraining programs. Existing law also declares the intent of  
          the Legislature that these programs, offered on a  
          self-supporting basis by the CSU during summer sessions, may be  
          provided throughout the year. Existing law prohibits these  
          courses from supplanting state-supported course offerings during  
          the regular academic year.  (EC � 89708)

          Proposed Law: This bill defines "supplanting" for purposes of  
          special session instructional programs offered at the CSU, and  
          makes the following changes:

             1)   Prohibits a campus from requiring a state-supported  
               matriculated student to enroll in a special session course  
               to fulfill graduation requirements. 

             2)   Authorizes a campus to, with approval from the CSU  
               Office of the Chancellor, add a self-supporting section of  








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               a course in a state-supported undergraduate degree program,  
               add a self-supported undergraduate degree program, or  
               increase the number of self-supporting sections of an  
               undergraduate course offering only if certain conditions  
               are satisfied. 

             3)   The bill would require the CSU Chancellor to provide  
               guidance to each campus on how to comply with the  
               requirements of this bill. The bill would, commencing in  
               the 2016-17 academic year, require the trustees to receive  
               an annual report at a noticed public meeting on the status  
               of undergraduate self-supported courses and programs, as  
               specified. The bill would make conforming and technical  
               changes.

          Staff Comments: The costs of this bill are driven by its new  
          requirements on the CSU to "prove" its campuses are not  
          supplanting regular session course or program offerings with  
          self-supporting special session offerings. Existing law already  
          prohibits supplanting, but there are no statutory standards for  
          demonstrating that campuses are complying with the requirement. 

          Among the requirements, this bill provides that campuses "shall  
          not reduce the number of state-supported undergraduate course  
          offerings while increasing the number of state-supporting  
          versions of that course." The CSU Chancellor's office has  
          indicated that this is problematic, because it does not  
          currently count course sections at each campus. This bill would  
          functionally require course section counting, because it makes  
          the CSU Chancellor's office responsible for providing guidance  
          to campuses and ensuring their compliance with the prohibition  
          on supplanting. 

          The requirement to count state-supported courses, and compare  
          them to special session offerings will likely result in  
          significant new workload for each of the campuses, and for the  
          CSU Chancellor's office. The Chancellor's office has estimated  
          that it will incur $200,000 to upgrade its central system and  
          that each of the 23 campuses will incur $50,000 in systems  
          upgrade costs (for a total of $1,150,000). The Chancellor's  
          office also believes that it, and each of the 23 campuses, will  
          require a dedicated full-time position to collect this data, and  
          part time-positions dedicated to ongoing system maintenance, for  
          an additional cost of $2.3 million ongoing. It is unclear,  








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          however, with technological upgrades for data collection and  
          staff time to maintain those systems, why each campus would also  
          require a full-time dedicated staff person to manage course  
          section counting.