The Huffington Post reported last week that UCLA will provide transfer credit for the six courses (18 credit hours) that will be offered at a reduced rate to illegal aliens anywhere in the country by the National Dream University, a partnership between UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education and the National Labor College. However, a spokesman for UCLA stated today that these credits “are not automatically transferrable to UCLA.”
In an email to Breitbart News, Ricardo Vasquez, a senior public informations representative in UCLA’s Media Relations Department, stated:
In response to your question, the 18 credits of coursework that you mentioned are offered through the National Labor College. These are not UCLA courses, and they are not automatically transferrable to UCLA. It is up to individual colleges and universities, including UCLA, to determine what credit (if any) a student would receive for each course he/she submits. The National Labor College is an accredited institution. As such, UCLA will judge their courses using the same criteria it applies to courses from other accredited colleges and universities from across the country.
In other words, the Huffington Post report that UCLA will definitively provide transfer credit for all six courses (18 hours) is incorrect. The courses are not “automatically transferable” to UCLA, which will “judge [National Dream University] courses using the same criteria it applies to courses from other accredited colleges and universities from across the country.”
UCLA officials have promised to answer this question tomorrow:
Do the UCLA criteria for accepting courses from other accredited colleges allow the granting of transfer credit from colleges that apply political ideology as a condition for acceptance to their institutions?
As Breitbart News reported yesterday, National Dream University has set commitment to a left wing pro-union political ideology as a condition for acceptance to its program, as its website specifies (emphasis added):
To be considered for admission to National Dream University you must:
(1) have graduated from a U.S. high school;
(2) a minimum cumulative 2.7 GPA;
(3) demonstrate commitment to immigrant/labor rights and social justice; (emphasis added)
UCLA officials have also promised to explain tomorrow whether Kent D. Wong, Director of UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education, acted entirely on his own initiative in establishing the National Dream University partnership with the National Labor College, or if he secured the authorization and approval of his superiors at UCLA before announcing the collaborative project.
Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.