Bill to help make more California university classes available online nationwide advances in Senate

Sacramento (April 21, 2025) A bill by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon that aims to make it easier for California universities to offer their courses online to out-of-state students passed its first committee Monday.

Members of the Senate Business, Professions, and Economic Development Committee voted 11-0 in favor of SB 790, which authorizes the governor to join an interstate reciprocity agreement with other states to offer classes virtually to students in those states. California is currently the only state that does not belong to the existing State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement.

This disconnect means students in other states often don’t get to take advantage of the world-class instruction offered by California’s UCs, CSUs, and private universities. Today, California schools have to pay a fee to each state for every course they offer. 

“For just five programs, it can cost $250,000,” said Julie Greenwood, Dean of Continuing and Professional Education at the University of California, Davis. 

In California, out-of-state institutions must register with the Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education, but they are not subject to most state regulation. Joining a reciprocity agreement would ensure that California students who are enrolled in an online program with an out-of-state institution have basic consumer protections.

For California universities, maximizing online enrollment is especially important post-pandemic, when most college students in California take at least some classes virtually and a third of those take classes from an out-of-state university.

At the same time, some California schools, particularly in the California State University System, are significantly under-enrolled and struggling to maintain their course offerings.

 “Those online registrations can make the difference in whether a course is offered at all,” Sen. Cabaldon said. 

SB 790 is part of a package of bills to assist California’s universities authored by Sen. Cabaldon, a former Community College Vice Chancellor who also worked as a consultant to the Assembly Education Committee and taught at a CSU. His SB 640 would establish automatic admission to at least one CSU campus for qualified students, and SB 744 would require California Community College system to establish standardized criteria for awarding academic credit to students for previous training and experience.

SB 790, which now heads to the Senate Education Committee, enjoys broad support from higher education systems, including the University of California, California State University, and the Association of Independent California Colleges & Universities. 

It requires the governor to designate a state agency, department or office as the state’s main operating and coordinating body for higher education, including for purposes of entering into a reciprocity agreement for online education.

The bill specifies that by joining a reciprocity agreement, California could not give up its right to enforce its own student protections, nor could the agreement interfere with the authority of the Attorney General (AG) or any other state or local agency to enforce laws protecting against consumer fraud.