Lisa Roebbelen said the best years of her life were spent learning to care for the dead.
“The combination of science, and art, and anatomy, compassion, and ethics and service … having it all together was in a very meaningful way,” said Roebbelen, a licensed funeral director, cemetery manager and embalmer. “I was really drawn to that.”
Roebbelen said she started out at a small funeral home and through research, discovered the mortuary science program at Cypress College, a community college in Orange County. She completed an embalming apprenticeship and graduated with an associate degree in mortuary science, she added.
Roebbelen wanted to progress in her field by pursuing a bachelor’s degree but said she found no California university that offered relevant programs.
However, starting in 2017, Cypress College – Roebbelen’s alma mater – began piloting a bachelor of science in funeral services.
State legislation from 2021 allowed the degree program to become permanent.
Assembly Bill 927 authorizes California community colleges to develop and confer bachelor’s degrees in addition to associate degrees. These programs have several requirements: the bachelor’s degree must respond to regional vocational needs, it cannot duplicate any existing degree at a California State University or UC and it must build upon the school’s expertise and resources.
Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, a professor of education and the department chair of UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, said community college bachelor’s degrees support students who are traditionally overlooked in education, such as lower-income students, adult learners and foster youth.
“There is not just an economic benefit attached,” Rios-Aguilar said. “There’s these very different outcomes – health, civic engagement, voting – that also we have to talk about.”
Roebbelen considered out-of-state universities for her bachelor’s degree but ultimately decided to return to Cypress College, where she said class sizes were smaller, education was cheaper and she felt more comfortable.
“I wanted to go back to where I knew I got a solid education before,” she said.
While attaining her degree, she made lifelong friendships, took science and history courses she said she loved and studied under “incredibly intelligent” professors. One of her professors flew from Cypress to northern California – where Roebblen was living – to sign off on her competency exams.
Roebbelen said she still marvels at the amount of anatomy she and her classmates learned.
“Our minds were elevated,” she said. “I’m so proud of myself for the amount of information they put into our brains.”
The Bachelor of Science in Funeral Service at Cypress College is one of 42 approved bachelor’s degree programs currently offered by CCC schools. Southern California community colleges confer bachelor’s degrees across disciplines, ranging from medical fields and science to electronic music production.
Some schools have proposed other degrees – such as cloud computing, cybersecurity and nursing – but have faced opposition from the CSU or UC, which claim these degrees are duplicates.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 1400, which planned to start pilot programs for bachelor of science degrees in nursing at 10 community colleges in October 2025. The bill’s author, Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, said in a committee hearing that she believed the program addressed statewide health care shortages while increasing affordable and accessible pathways into nursing careers, particularly for students in rural areas.
Both the UC and CSU sent statements opposing AB 1400 to the state legislature. The UC statement said the proposed program would increase competitiveness of clinical placements, poach qualified faculty from universities and mirror existing nursing degrees.
Jennifer Chase, the legislative director of the UC Office of the President, wrote a letter of opposition to AB 1400 to the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee in August, which highlighted that UCLA and UC Irvine already provide BSN programs.
“AB 1400 would result in the duplication of degree programs and would remove a guardrail in current law that prevents segments from duplicating degrees without addressing the issues constraining the nursing education pipeline,” Chase said in the letter.
Newsom vetoed the bill Oct. 13, saying in a veto message that the 2024 state budget agreement included $60 million in funding yearly from 2025-26 to 2028-29 for the Rebuilding Nursing Infrastructure Grant Program, expanding access to BSN programs at the CSU and UC for community college students. He added that, while the state authorizes the CCC system to expand their program offerings, the system does not have the authority to reproduce existing programs.
The UCLA Joe C. Wen School of Nursing, where 484 students are enrolled for the 2025-26 school year, offers an undergraduate nursing degree, a master’s degree program and two doctoral programs. The California Master Plan for Higher Education, adopted by the state legislature in 1960, says that only the UC can offer doctoral and professional degrees.
The Master Plan also states that each public higher education system in California should have different missions. According to the plan, the UC focuses on research and public service, and the CSU has the state’s primary responsibility for Teacher Credentials – and that both can offer bachelor and master degrees.
The plan says that the CCC system should offer associate degrees, non-credit classes and vocational and adult education.
Rios-Aguilar, who has researched community college bachelor’s degrees, said the Master Plan was written too long ago to reflect modern conditions.
“Each system was supposed to accomplish something,” Rios-Aguilar said. “Things have changed drastically labor-market-wise, ecosystem-wise.”
Rios-Aguilar added that, while there are existing nursing programs, there are restrictions on who can access them or get off long waiting lists.
“What we’ve been asking is, ‘Let us pilot strategically and carefully in some places where there is need,’” she said. “There’s a lot of need of nurses across the state in certain regions, in certain places. There’s a lot of interest of students, but there’s bottlenecks.”
Roebbelen graduated with a BSFS from Cypress College in 2024. She is currently studying for the LSAT and planning for a career in health equity law while also trying out mortuary law .
Roebbelen said she takes from what she learned in mortuary school to address complex emotional situations, manage client expectations and focus on ethics. While her college’s mortuary science program is nationally accredited and respected, she added she believes some people do not give two-year colleges the respect they deserve.
“It’s a heavy program. It’s incredibly heavy,” she said. “I’m proud of myself for getting through it. I loved it.”
Comments are closed.