While California has made gains in expanding access to college, the state remains well short of Governor Gavin Newsom’s goal of 70 percent postsecondary attainment by 2030, according to a new report.
The report, from Complete College America and the Campaign for College Opportunity, found that California’s postsecondary attainment rate—which includes certificates, associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees—stood at 56 percent in 2023, requiring the state to produce more than 1.3 million additional college-educated adults in the next five years to meet Newsom’s target.
Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, said reaching the goal will require not only increasing enrollment across the state’s public higher education systems but also significantly improving completion outcomes.
“The 70 percent attainment goal is ambitious, but I would argue that our students and families deserve nothing less,” Ryan said.
The attainment goal is both a higher education benchmark and a workforce and economic imperative, the report argues. Labor market projections indicate that more than two-thirds of annual job openings in California between 2021 and 2031 will require some form of postsecondary education or training, with the strongest growth expected in high-demand sectors such as health care and STEM fields.
Ryan noted that more than 6.4 million Californians under 65 have some college credit but no credential, while completion rates across the state’s public systems have remained largely flat.
“When we talk about how we can move the needle on that ambitious 70 percent attainment goal, we first have to recognize that we cannot do so unless we do more to re-engage those students with some college and no degree,” Ryan said. “It’s not just an economic imperative but it’s also a moral one.”
The approach: To address these challenges, the report outlines several strategies aimed at improving completion—including strengthening coordination between the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges systems.
“One of the biggest challenges we’ve had in California is that we have lagged the rest of the country in terms of coordination between our K–12 systems, our higher education systems and our workforce,” Ryan said. “As any student will tell you, having an opportunity to access their college dreams also has to come with a clear road map to a meaningful career.”
“What that means is standing up California’s first education interagency council. We are one of the only states in the country that hasn’t had that infrastructure, and it’s really been to the detriment of our students,” she said. She noted that Newsom and the State Legislature recently invested in developing such a council, which she described as a “tremendous opportunity to align and create more streamlined, student-centered systems.”
Ryan also pointed to improving transfer systems through common course numbering and clearer articulation agreements, as well as creating stackable credentials and structured academic maps to reduce excess credits and time to degree.
“There is nothing more discouraging than a student taking coursework, hitting their point of transfer and learning that not all of those classes are actually going to be seamlessly articulated to a four-year university,” Ryan said. “That often is the decision point between whether or not a student continues on or stops out, derailing their college dreams.”
Ryan cited Shasta College as an example of an institution using data to identify students who were eligible—or close to eligible—for a certificate, an associate degree or a transfer pathway, ensuring degrees are awarded when they are earned. In particular, Ryan said the institution contacts “students who were close to that critical momentum point and offers them an opportunity to re-enroll and even retroactively award hundreds of degrees.”
“Why does that matter? Because in many cases those students didn’t even know that they were eligible for that degree,” Ryan said, noting that past state legislation that would allow students to receive retroactive degree audits was deemed too costly to implement.
The report also calls for a renewed focus on funding structures that support transformational reform at scale, including a potential shift toward “completion goals funding,” a model designed to provide institutions with up-front resources tied to clear attainment targets.
“The total cost of attendance in California can be really prohibitive for students and families,” Ryan said. “One of the things that I think is powerful under a robust and aligned coordinating entity in California is that there’s an opportunity to open up the college affordability conversation in a way that moves away from fees and really recognizes some of the structural barriers preventing students from being able to access and complete their college dreams.”
Those barriers, she added, include food insecurity, housing instability, transportation challenges and access to mental health services.
What’s next: Ryan said stronger coordination between the state’s K–12 system and higher education institutions will be critical for improving student pathways and meeting California’s college attainment goal.
Above all, she said state lawmakers should prioritize policies that make it easier for students to receive credit for coursework they have already completed.
“We need to remove the burden from students and instead place the burden on institutions to demonstrate where credits aren’t aligned to learning outcomes,” Ryan said. “That would be transformational, and that would send a clear message to students and families that college is not only accessible, but that we’re removing a structural barrier to a timely path to a degree.”
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