College leaders talk about student challenges during pandemic.

UC, CSU and California community college system leaders spoke about the challenges during the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic, calls for racial equity and police reforms will reshape the college experience for students across California.

During a broad conversation hosted by the Public Policy Institute of California, the leaders of the state’s three public higher education systems — University of California, California State University and the community college system — urged students and their families Friday to recognize that sweeping changes at colleges and universities will not just a few weeks or months but potentially years.

“This is not a grin and bear it for two or three months; this is a couple-year, three-year issue,” said CSU Chancellor Timothy White, who in 2019 announced plans to retire later this year.

With the number of COVID-19 cases continuing to rise in the Golden State and prompting new shutdown orders, White said the CSU system will offer slightly less than 7% of the classes it offered on campus in the fall of 2019 this fall, and he expects less than 14% of students to be on campus — mostly students who need to do lab or clinical work that can’t be done virtually.

“That is a big, big shift,” he said.

At UC campuses, too, said UC President Janet Napolitano, who also will step down from her position in the coming weeks, “the vast majority” of classes will be online.

But Eloy Oakley Ortiz, chancellor of the state’s massive community college system, which also will offer online courses, warned that such a shift could leave behind many of the state’s most vulnerable students, particularly Black and Latino young people.

“Access to technology is what this new economy is built on,” Oakley Ortiz said. “If we can’t provide our most underresourced students that access, then we are going to continue to widen the income and wealth gaps in this state.”

Napolitano said she would like to see the state “adopt a goal of broadband for all,” to benefit not

only college students, but those in the K-12 system as well.

Police reforms and racial justice

In addition to the challenges brought on by the pandemic, the three systems, like the rest of the U.S., are facing calls to rethink how they approach race and equity, and the role law enforcement should play on campus.

“I think the nation is at a point of racial reckoning,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the PPIC.

In November, California voters will weigh in on whether to allow affirmative action after decades of banning the practice, which would let colleges and universities consider race as one of a number of factors when deciding whether to admit a student. All three leaders said they want to see the ban overturned.

The affirmative action ban, Napolitano said, has placed an “artificial limitation” on the factors used in admissions.

If it is repealed, Oakley Ortiz said, his team also would have more freedom to hire educators that better reflect the student body.

White said overturning the ban would give CSU the

ability to create new retention and scholarship programs targeted at underserved communities.

On the issue of policing, Oakley Ortiz said he wants to see community colleges, which provide education and training to law enforcement officers in the state, improve curriculum on the topic.

“We have a direct role in the culture of policing,” he said. “We have to take that responsibility on.”

The community college system, he said, also is reviewing possible changes aimed at ensuring each district in the system has clear guidelines and expectations for what role law enforcement will play on campus.

Napolitano and White

also said their administrations are rethinking ways to improve accountability and transparency. The CSU police chiefs, White said, have agreed to no longer allow the use of choke holds.

Next week, White said, the CSU board will vote for the first time in 40 years on requiring students to take an ethnic studies and social justice course, noting that race plays a role in everything from health to economic prospects.

At the community colleges, Oakley Ortiz said, he wants to see the work of scholars who have studied these issues for years highlighted.

“It’s now our turn to put those voices up front, to

make sure we give them the microphone,” he said.

Napolitano agreed, suggesting that as “minicities,” universities can “lead by example.”

“It all has to be done through an equity lens,” she said, “and that needs to be imbued across the university, across the curriculum, across all the activities of our campuses.”

Yet as the three systems attempt to move forward, they are doing so at a time of economic turmoil and budget cuts, and serving students and families whose lives have been roiled by job loss and more.

White acknowledged he is concerned that beyond academics, if universities can’t figure out how to offer a vibrant community online — from LGBT centers to veteran support groups — students, especially those who are the first in their families to go to college, will drop out. He and the others urged students to reach out to financial aid offices if they need help.

But they also said they see the coming years as a chance to rethink higher education itself.

“All of the uncertainty we’re feeling right now,” Oakley Ortiz said, “has really created an opportunity to think about how we become more resilient.”