If that was happening in my state I’d definitely be writing my representatives to take action and change that- transferability to a university while being able to live at home and pay less was quite explicitly one of the points of having a community college system when I was growing up.
Many state universities changed those transfer policies when states made deep higher ed budget cuts during the great recession. The alternative in our state was closing branch campuses (thereby making college even less accessible for most of the state).
Lots of universities in the US are lavish and expensive. Our state's branch campuses are the definition of utilitarian. Tuition is some of the lowest in the country. Salaries for professors at the branch campuses are lower than what we pay our high school teachers. Very little admin overhead. There's simply not much to cut.
Anyways, not saying it's right. But if you cut higher ed budgets, higher ed will get more expensive to the end user. Especially if the system was already hyper-efficient. Limiting transfer credits is pretty much the only way to make things more expensive to the end user without increasing tuition.
Sounds like the set up in your state is to have branch campuses try to serve many of the needs that community colleges serve (or used to serve) in my state.
Whatever the setup, I think it is access to higher education at as local level is important.
A number of states ended up enacting laws to solve this exact problem. Lawmakers had to force the big state universities to accept transfer credits from community and regional colleges.
