If you harbor any doubts that California must urgently prepare all students for college – and ensure they then graduate with a four-year degree – please spend a minute with this important recent study from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
Hans Johnson and Ria Sengupta, extending earlier work by PPIC, found that California’s economy will inexorably increase its demand for a highly educated workforce, but “the state is unlikely to meet this demand unless decisionmakers implement policies that effect substantial changes in college attendance and college graduation among the state’s young adults.”
In other words, if we want any chance to maintain a world-class economy with well-paid jobs and opportunities for our children, then we must accelerate our production of graduates from four-year institutions. According to Johnson and Sengupta, “California will need to produce many more college graduates if it is to even partially meet its increasing economic demand for college graduates.” In fact, if current trends persist, California will be short one million college graduates by 2025. By then, our economy will demand 41 percent of workers have a college degree, but only 35 percent of adults will be on track to have that degree.
These charts demonstrate California’s competitive weakness among other large states for highly-skilled workers. They drive home our weak position to capture the best jobs in a dynamic world economy.
Our college enrollment rates are low:
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And our college graduation rates are low:
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But this is not just a case of falling short of our economic potential; there are major social consequences to falling behind in our production of college graduates. Our state’s workforce increasingly comprises Latino workers, who have an unacceptably low college participation rate.
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Think this isn’t important to parents? PPIC just released its annual survey of California education issues. They found that at least seven in 10 public school parents across political and demographic groups hope their youngest child will graduate from college, including 75 percent of Latino parents.
There are only three ways to increase production of college graduates in California:
1. Increase enrollment of high school graduates in four-year institutions.
2. Increasing transfer rates from community colleges.
3. Improve graduation rates at UC and CSU. While four out of five freshmen graduate from the University of California within six-years (six years!), only about half of students from California State University do so.
Increasing our college-educated workforce by one million by 2025 is an ambitious, and doubtless expensive goal. However, our standard of living and quality of life are probably more closely intertwined with a highly skilled workforce than almost any other attribute that can be influenced by state public policy.
And it makes any argument over keeping the high school exit exam a no-brainer.