Southwestern College in Chula Vista might become the first public community college in the state to get permission to create four bachelor’s degree programs — a move that could help lead to the establishment of South County’s first full-service university. The state Assembly’s Higher Educati on Committee approved the proposal by a 9-1 margin Tuesday and passed it on to the Appropriations Committee for review next week. The only legislator voting against it was Carl DeMaio, who represents East County. If the bill, known as AB 664, is approved by Appropriations next week, it will be reviewed by the full Assembly, which has until the end of January to act. Southwestern President Mark Sanchez told the committee Tuesday that his school and its collaborators need to introduce an array of bachelor’s degree programs to help meet the needs of students and employers in South County, home to 500,000 people. “Employers say they need everyone from teachers to health care professionals to forensic scientists to speech pathologists,” Sanchez said in a phone interview. “Many of these programs in the University of California and California State University systems are impacted,” he said, “and students can’t get in.” UC San Diego drew a record 45,087 students last fall, while San Diego State University broke the 40,000 mark for the first time. Under California’s 66-year-old Master Plan for Higher Education, the UC and CSU systems were once the only public schools allowed to offer bachelor’s degrees. That began to change in 2014 when a handful of community colleges were given permission to do so in a pilot program. Additional schools later gained the same right. Nearly 40 of these bachelor’s programs now exist, including three in the San Diego Community College District. Southwestern has been a major, and creative, contributor to this change. Sanchez and Assemblymember David Alvarez, who represents South County, persuaded UCSD, Cal State San Marcos and SDSU to introduce six public bachelor’s programs at Southwestern this fall, and as many as four next fall.The subject areas range from public health to cybersecurity to business administration to arts in psychology. The number could rise to 14 in about two years if Southwestern is ultimately given permission to independently offer bachelor’s programs in forensic studies, allied health education and leadership, teaching English to people who speak other languages, and interaction design, which mostly involves software and digital design. Southwestern has said that it would also like to get the University of Southern California — a power in business administration — to offer an on-site bachelor’s program on its campus. South County civic leaders and educators believe this synergy could convince a major institution — possibly UCSD — to eventually establish a branch campus on land owned by the city of Chula Vista. “These new programs could be the burning embers of the type of programs we need to be able to offer,” Sanchez told the Union-Tribune. Alvarez said such expansion can’t come soon enough, noting in a statement, “South County is one of the largest regions in California with limited access to public bachelor’s degrees. Hundreds of thousands of residents — many of them working adults, place-bound students, and transit-dependent families — are being left without a pathway to the credentials our regional economy increasingly requires.” Representatives for the UC and CSU systems expressed a different viewpoint Tuesday, telling the committee that major expansion by the community colleges could lead to a duplication of their courses. ...read more read less