Jerry Brown proposes new online-only public college to help working adults succeed

Gov. Jerry Brown reveals charts to present highlights of his proposed $131.7 billion budget for 2018-19 at the State Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018. Gov. Jerry Brown reveals charts to present highlights of his proposed $131.7 billion budget for 2018-19 at the State Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Jerry Brown proposes new online-only public college to help working adults succeed 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

California should create a public college entirely online to help millions of working adults gain the skills they need to work in the new economy and raise their pay, Gov. Jerry Brown said Wednesday as part of the $132 billion state budget he proposed for 2018-19.

Brown, who has long urged the California State University and University of California to rely more on online courses to reduce costs and raise graduation rates — and has often been frustrated in the process — has now turned to a method he believes will be more successful: a community college, dedicated to helping adults without a college degree improve their job prospects, that would even enable students to take classes through their phones.

“This is targeted to several million people who can upgrade their skills by taking online courses and maintaining their employment, which they certainly need,” Brown said, in presenting his proposed budget at the state Capitol.

Although anyone could enroll, the college would focus on adults age 25 and older. The idea is to work with employers in a range of careers: health care, home support services, and child development to begin with, then add more in time, said Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the state’s community college chancellor.

Under Brown’s proposal, which has broad support among community college leaders and advocates — though not among faculty union leaders — the state would spend an initial $100 million to get the college going, then spend $20 million a year from voter-approved Proposition 98, a pool of money in the general fund that already supports California’s community colleges and K-12 education.

If approved by the Legislature, the online school would seek accreditation and open in fall 2019 as the state’s 115th community college. The state community college Board of Governors would serve as the school’s trustees, at least at first.

“It is an aggressive timeline,” Oakley said. “But we’ve learned a lot about how to deliver online instruction” in the last five years, as each community college has begun offering online courses — including tutoring, counseling and orientation — to a growing number of students. One in 3 now takes at least one class over the Internet, Oakley’s office reports.

Brown also offered an 11-page “white paper” in which he justifies his idea and refers to 2.5 million Californians aged 25 to 34 who are “economically and educationally stranded” because work and family obligations hamper their ability to travel and participate in traditional classrooms.

Private, for-profit colleges have also swooped in the last few decades and recruited students to take expensive courses that community colleges could provide at far less cost to students, Brown argued.

The governor said 100,000 students, many of them low-income, pay seven to nine times more per academic unit at for-profit colleges than public community colleges charge — and then take on “burdensome levels of student debt.”

He said he thinks community colleges are ready to take back the role of helping adults complete or improve their education.

Brown’s Department of Finance produced a fact sheet suggesting that the state community college system’s Online Education Initiative has turned educators into experts at this kind of instruction, and that evolving technology has made it easier for students to take advantage of it.

Nearly all households in the state, 95 percent, are wired for high-speed Internet, while the state has recently made available $645 million to improve access in underserved areas, the finance department said. It even suggested that the targeted population could take classes over the phone because “Americans with less than a bachelor’s degree, and low-income Americans are more likely to rely on smartphones for Internet access.”

The arguments have done little to persuade labor leaders representing community college faculty, who have traditionally argued in favor of maintaining and improving face-to-face classroom instruction. It’s a sentiment widely shared across California’s public universities, from the CSU to the UC.

“I don’t want to say that online is categorically bad,” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, which represents thousands of community college instructors. “It probably has its place. But generally, we feel that what makes education work well is when an instructor is interacting with students.”

In brick-and-mortar classrooms, he said, “Students can ask questions and can work with other students.”

Other college advocates, however, lauded the proposal as a way to improve college access and job skills across the state.

“California must expand access to college to improve the lives of its residents and meet the challenges of the future economy,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, which regularly polls residents on social and political issues. “The community college system is ideally situated to pioneer and rigorously evaluate this concept of online education.”

Michele Siqueiros, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign for College Opportunity, called the idea “a lifeline for the millions of working Californians.”

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov