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.
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.
