California is falling short of its own college completion goals, and a new report says the state must act urgently to close the gap.
The report, Set Up to Succeed: Meeting California's Postsecondary Education Attainment Goal by Complete College America (CCA) and The Campaign for College Opportunity, documents a 14-percentage-point gap between California's current postsecondary attainment rate and the 70 percent benchmark Gov. Gavin Newsom set in the FY 2023 state budget — a target the state has pledged to reach by 2030. Closing that gap will require producing more than 1.3 million additional college-educated adults in the next five years.
California's 56 percent attainment rate — documented by the Lumina Foundation's A Stronger Nation report — fell short of Lumina's national goal of 60 percent postsecondary attainment by 2025, a benchmark the foundation had championed for more than a decade. That the state missed even that more modest target makes its own 70 percent goal by 2030 all the more daunting.
The current report has both economic and educational implications for California. According to data from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, more than two-thirds of the roughly 2.2 million job openings expected annually in California between 2021 and 2031 will require some form of postsecondary education or training. Healthcare and STEM fields alone are projected to account for the sharpest growth — 29 percent and 16 percent respectively.
Despite those projections, completion rates across California's three public higher education systems — the University of California, California State University, and the California Community Colleges — have remained largely flat in recent years. As of July 2023, nearly 5.9 million Californians under 65 had some college credit but no credential to show for it.
“At a moment when California's economy is the fourth largest in the world, we have both the responsibility and the opportunity to ensure that higher education works for everyone, not just those who already know how to navigate it,” said Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity. “Too many of our systems still operate in isolation, forcing students to untangle fragmented pathways on their own.”
Community colleges sit at the center of the challenge. Nearly two-thirds of California's public postsecondary students are enrolled in the state's 116 community colleges, but 66 percent attend part time, a key barrier to on-time completion. While 75 percent of community college students report intending to transfer to a four-year institution, only one in five does so within four years.
Racial and ethnic disparities compound the picture. Only 44 percent of Hispanic or Latino high school graduates — who make up 56 percent of the state's TK–12 enrollment — complete the A-through-G college preparatory curriculum required for direct UC or CSU admission. Among Black or African American students, that figure falls to 42 percent.
Dr. Kendrick B. Davis, a professor of research at the USC Rossier School of Education and founding co-director of the USC STEM Center, said the report highlights a dimension of the attainment challenge that enrollment figures alone don't capture.
“The report underscores an important reality: reaching California's 70 percent attainment goal isn't just about enrolling more students, it's about helping them stay and graduate,” Davis said. “With federal support becoming more constrained, states will need to focus on efficiencies within higher education while also addressing the non-academic costs like housing, transportation, and food that often derail students' progress.”
The report directly addresses those concerns, calling for expanded student basic needs support across all three systems. As of January 2024, 100 percent of California community colleges offered services including food, housing, mental health care, and transportation access, backed by a $43.5 million annual state investment. In spring 2023 alone, more than 68,000 students accessed those services.
Dr. Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of Complete College America, said the report is intended to provide actionable guidance, not just a diagnosis.
“This playbook provides a clear roadmap for how California can align policy, practice and funding around proven strategies that work,” Watson Spiva said. “The question is not whether California can reach 70 percent attainment, but how to ensure that state and system leaders can rapidly and effectively scale these reforms to remove barriers and set every student up to succeed, regardless of zip code or background.”
The report’s key recommendations include updating the state's 1960-era master plan, expanding dual enrollment, reforming developmental education through corequisite course models, creating stackable credentials, implementing proactive advising, and strengthening the transfer pipeline through common course numbering and clearer articulation agreements. The report also proposes a shift toward "completion-goals funding", a model that would front-load institutional resources tied to clear attainment targets rather than rewarding outcomes after the fact.
A data accountability framework is also central to the playbook's vision, urging state leaders to leverage the newly launched California Cradle-to-Career Data System to develop 6–10 intersegmental key performance indicators disaggregated by race, income, age, and enrollment intensity.
The report arrives as California's higher education budget faces significant strain, with the final 2025–26 state budget deferring planned increases to UC and CSU while community colleges face a $408 million funding shortfall.
Davis said the fiscal pressures make the report's structural recommendations all the more urgent.
“This report makes clear that California's 70 percent attainment goal will require a more efficient higher education system,” he said. “At a time of tightening federal support and enrollment pressures, the biggest opportunity is helping students move through college with fewer barriers through better transfer pathways, clearer academic roadmaps, and support for the full cost of attending college.”
