Take action on higher ed
Earlier this year, the Public Policy Institute of California issued a warning about a looming collision between California’s demographic and economic trends.
Baby Boomers are retiring in droves. By 2030, the vast majority will not be working.
Meanwhile, the state’s economy is continuing to evolve, creating an ever-increasing demand for well-educated workers.
“In 2030, if current trends persist, 38 percent of jobs will require at least a bachelor’s degree,” PPIC said. “But population and education trends suggest that only 33 percent of working-age adults in California will have bachelor’s degrees by 2030 — a shortfall of 1.1 million college graduates.”
However, while the need for action is obvious, the state is stuck with a half-century-old “master plan” for higher education that is woefully outdated.
It assumes that the three collegiate sectors — the University of California, the California State University system and the locally governed community college system — will collaborate seamlessly. But in fact, they compete fiercely for capital and operational funds and incessantly wage turf battles over course and degree offerings.
As a result, students face daunting hurdles to get the degrees they — and the state — need to prosper, not to mention ever-rising costs even when they nail down the courses leading to those degrees.
For decades, governors and legislators have refused to update the master plan, unwilling to take on the systems’ entrenched bureaucratic, political and union stakeholders.
A promising approach — one widely adopted in other states — is to break down artificial barriers that separate the systems. But it’s been a tough slog in California.
UC resisted efforts by the California State University system to gain authority to issue some doctorate degrees, for example, while CSU objected to community colleges’ offering four-year baccalaureate degrees.
The latter is an especially critical element in higher-education reform, because it would allow more students, especially those in rural areas, to gain professional degrees without the expense of going away to college.
Three years ago, the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown finally approved a very limited experiment, allowing 15 community college districts to offer one four-year degree each in a field that UC and CSU ignored.
Ten of those programs are up and running, mostly in technical fields. The remaining five districts will begin their baccalaureate programs this year.
State Sen. Jerry Hill, a Democrat from San Mateo, introduced a bill to expand the experiment to 25 districts and give it longer to prove itself. And the state Senate agreed.
However, Senate Bill 769 faced tough opposition from UC, CSU, the California Faculty Association and the California Teachers Association, and last week Hill dropped the expansion, leaving only a five-year extension of the current 15-district authorization.
We’ll never know how many students will be denied educational opportunities by that retreat. But we do know that without decisive action, California’s higher education deficit will worsen. And we should know that artificial lines of collegiate turf are hurting students and the state’s economic future.