From the Dean of Extended Education

From the Dean
Doing More with Less:  Offering Degree Programs at Cost to the Community

One of the challenges of starting a new university is to try to meet the pent up needs of a community for new degree programs.  Lacking a public four-year university, residents in Ventura County for years have been forced to either attend independent universities, or travel out of the county to seek public institutions.  The drive for the creation of CSU Channel Islands came from this gap in service citizens in the county felt for decades.  However, from the start it was also apparent that the new university would come into the world in a new environment of reduced funding for public higher education.  In fact, the trend nation-wide since the 1970s has been flat or reduced spending on public higher education.  This reality combined with the downturn of the economy meant that when the University opened its doors in fall 2002 that the leadership would need to be especially creative and innovative to find ways to meet the higher education needs in the community.

One way we have tried lacking funding to be inventive is through offering degree programs to the public at cost without taxpayer money.  California State University policy allows individual campuses to offer degree programs to the public if the cost of the degree is beyond what can be supported by the State, the degree aligns with the overall CSUCI institutional purpose, and a tangible need is demonstrated for the degree in the community.  Currently we have six such degrees including the MBA, MA Education (for principals), MS Math, MS Computer Science, MS Biotechnology, and a BS in Information Technology.  In some cases, we have been able to offer the degrees below our cost through finding outside funding sources.  For instance our new Bachelor of Science in Information Technology program was developed using funds from the National Science Foundation in collaboration with CREATE, a consortium of regional community colleges.  This is a ground-breaking new degree and is a prime example of one of the advantages of developing degree programs without taxpayer support—it gives us more flexibility.  Another degree developed in this manner is our new Master of Science in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics which was also developed partially by seeking alternative funding sources (the Sloan Foundation and the CSU Chancellor’s Office).  This is a cutting-edge degree program, part of a trend towards professional science degrees combining advanced science education with management training.  In both cases, the degrees were developed collaboratively with industry and the community colleges to make sure that we create something of the highest quality aligned with professional trends and needs.  Additionally, in order to maintain our commitment to providing access to all, we’ve begun a full scholarship program specifically for these Extended Education degree programs.

While we always hope that the financial support for the University is strong, rather than wait we’ve decided to act as best we can to serve Ventura County right away.  We are planning as State funding becomes available to move some of these degrees to State-support so that we can offer them at lower fees to students.  For now we are doing what we can to develop innovative programs, find additional funding sources, and sustain the mission of the university through all means possible.

Gary A. Berg, PhD
Dean of Extended Education