By Dr. George R. Boggs, President & CEO Emeritus American Association of Community
Colleges & Superintendent/President Emeritus, Palomar College

and Dr. Sonya Christian, Chancellor, California Community Colleges

Urgent problems: An emerging skills shortage and inequity in the workforce.

The United States—including California—must accelerate educational attainment to meet the need for more advanced employment skills. By 2031, 72 percent of the jobs in the US will require postsecondary education and/or training, and 42 percent will require a bachelor’s degree. The fastest-growing industries, according to the recent report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, require workers with disproportionately higher education levels compared to industries with slower growth (Carnevale, A. et al., 2023).

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) predicted in 2017 that if current trends continue, California will face a large skills gap by 2030, one that requires more education to close, including 1.1 million more bachelor’s degrees.  Over time, if California’s workforce does not have the skills that employers need, firms may close, relocate to other states or countries, or operate with lower productivity (PPIC, 2017).  If these challenges remain unaddressed, the standard of living for Californians will decline, and the state will fall into a downward spiral of decreased tax revenue to pay for needed services.

Accompanying the skills gap is a serious employment equity issue.  The infographic shown below, prepared by the National Center for Inquiry & Improvement shows the current degree of racial inequality in the California workforce.  Californians who identify as Black or Latina/o/x are overwhelmingly working in the lowest-paying jobs in the state and are significantly underrepresented in the highest-paying professions. 

Meeting the Challenges: Leveraging state investments and policy reforms

Addressing the challenges of a growing skills gap and inequity in the workforce will require planning, vision, and foresight, especially given the bleak revenue forecast from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4819).  The significant revenue shortfall might result in education funding cuts; at the very best, there will not be much new funding to address the skills gap and equity challenges until the state’s fiscal problems are resolved.  In the meantime, leaders will need to be creative and leverage state policy reforms and investments that have already been made.  Many of those are summarized in Governor Newsom’s Career Education Executive Order. 

Dual Enrollment.  

Vision 2030 approaches equitable access to college courses in high school through the ninth-grade strategy of completing 12 college credits in four years.  This calls for all high school students in the ninth grade to be introduced to college by enrolling in at least a one-credit college course. With the guidance provided in this class, students could explore potential careers and develop a preliminary college education plan that includes a minimum of 12 college credits during their four years of high school.  The student’s college plan will evolve as they mature and take more classes.  Many high school students already complete an associate degree by the time they finish high school.   The strategy does not impose a ceiling for the accumulation of college credits but rather insists on a floor of 12 college credits.  For all students to have access to college courses those courses must become part of the mainstream schedule; i.e., the default high school instructional day must include college classes. The pathways could be transfer pathways, career/technical pathways, or pre-apprenticeship/apprenticeship pathways.

Apprenticeships towards a college credential:

On December 14, 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor proposed a rule to strengthen labor standards and worker protections and better promote apprenticeship pathways.  The rule also includes a program called the “registered career and technical education apprenticeship” that is designed to make it “more seamless” for full-time high school and community college students to enroll in the apprenticeship system.  (Moody, K., 2023).

California has invested significant resources in the expansion of apprenticeship programs – the California Apprenticeship Initiative (CAI), Apprenticeship Innovation Fund (AIF), California Opportunity for Youth Apprenticeship (COYA) just to name a few.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) launched an Apprenticeship Pathways Demonstration Project as a Vision 2030 initiative.  The CCCCO is partnering with Rancho Santiago Community College District, the Labor Agency and Go Biz on the project.

Goals of the project include:

• providing community college credit for apprenticeship classroom instruction and prior learning experiences through credit for on-the-job training; and
• encouraging participants to continue their education in community colleges from pre-apprenticeship in enhanced noncredit certificate programs—to credit programs offering associate degrees—to a community college baccalaureate in career technical education or applied learning.

Credit toward a college credential for prior learning: 

Texas State University offers a Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) course in which students learn about PLA and use the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network as a guide to document their outside learning, expressed as competencies, to receive academic credit (Sherron et al., 2019).  

Make it Count: Recognizing Prior Learning for Workforce Development discusses two examples of institutions that implement PLA in interesting and valuable ways. First, Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College created a degree specifically for students with PLA credits and streamlined statewide policy to increase the efficiency of PLA in that state. Second, Dallas College partnered with StraighterLine, a non-traditional education provider, to create pathways with guaranteed transfer in business and criminal justice (Bray, J.B. & Beer, A. (2020).

The Success Center for California Community Colleges identified the significant benefits of the expansion of credit for prior learning (CPL). (Success Center for California Community Colleges, n.d.).  The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges issued a discussion paper in November of 2020 calling on senates at the 116 colleges to engage in the establishment of CPL at their local campuses.  Palomar College has been a pioneer in the Success Center’s CPL initiative, informing the California Community College Chancellor’s Office CPL toolkit on Credit for Prior Learning. 

Vision 2030 points to the importance of CPL to prepare the workforce, particularly in the Healthcare, STEM, and Early Childhood Education sectors.  Vision 2030 also addresses the social and economic mobility of low-income workers, calling on colleges to facilitate their onboarding by offering them an easy-to-use process to award credit for prior job experiences.  Serving this population must become mainstream in community colleges; this will require the development of systems and policies to increase support for working learners.

Baccalaureate attainment through transfer:

One of the most promising ways to increase equitable baccalaureate attainment in California is by increasing the number of transfers from community colleges to the state’s public and independent university systems.  Policymakers and leaders of the systems have been working to improve the transfer process and to remove barriers for students.  Senator Alex Padilla’s SB 1440 which established the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) was signed into law in 2010 and AB 928 authored by Assembly Member Marc Berman was legislated in 2021.  Over the last decade, the number of ADT completers has increased significantly, and now systems must be developed to ensure that these Californians, including those who may be place-bound, have a spot at the California State University (CSU), University of California (UC), or one of the four-year institutions represented by the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities (AICCU).  Concerns about capacity at the upper division for increased numbers of transfer students can be addressed through the strategic use of technology to help with information exchange and by increasing the proportion of transfer students in incoming university classes.  

Baccalaureate attainment through the community colleges:

“There are many problems, but I think there is a solution to all these problems: It’s just one, and it’s education.”
– Malala Yousafzai

To address the issues of the need for increased employment skills and greater equity in the workforce, in 2015, California policymakers created a new and more affordable public pathway to the bachelor’s degree through the state’s community colleges.  Senate Bill 850 authored by Senator Marty Block established a pilot program to allow up to fifteen community colleges to offer baccalaureates not offered by either university system in subject areas with unmet workforce needs.  Students can earn a four-year degree for just $10,560 (California Community Colleges, n.d.). The 2022 evaluation of the program by the UC Davis Wheelhouse reported several additional significant benefits of the pilot program.  The two-year graduation rate across all fifteen programs was 67% with three-year graduation rates reaching 78 percent.  (Hoang, H., Vo, D., & Rios-Aguilar, C., 2022).

Data on student enrollment in the pilot community college baccalaureate programs reveal that it provided important access for older adults.  Nearly half of the students in the programs were between 25 and 34 years old.  Only 23 percent were 24 years old or younger.  Across all three graduating classes, 56 percent of the students reported that they would not have pursued a bachelor’s degree if it had not been offered at their community college (Hoang, H., Vo, D., & Rios-Aguilar, C., 2022).

In 2021, the Governor of California signed Assembly Bill 927, Medina, to end the time-limited nature of the pilot community college baccalaureate program, allowing the colleges to continue the programs.  The legislation also provided for up to 30 additional community colleges statewide to develop baccalaureate programs annually.

Conclusion:

California’s community colleges have a unique and important place among the state’s higher education systems.  They are open-access and adaptable.  They are well positioned to provide critical services through offering apprenticeship training, noncredit classes, certificate programs, associate degrees, transfer programs, and applied baccalaureates.  Expansion of dual enrollment programs and credit for prior learning as well as enhanced student support services along with equity in funding support will make it possible for the state’s community colleges to help meet the challenges of closing the skills gap and bringing greater equity to the state’s workforce.

References

Bray, J.B. & Beer, A. (2020). Make it count: Recognizing prior learning for workforce development. Washington, D.C. Association of Community College Trustees.

California Community Colleges (n.d.). Top 10 Reasons to Champion Community College Bachelor’s Degrees.

Carnevale, A., Smith, N., Van Der Werf, M. & Quinn, M. (2023).  After Everything: Projections of Jobs, Education, and Training Requirements through 2031.  Georgetown University, Center on Education & the Workforce.

Hoang, H., Vo, D., & Rios-Aguilar, C. (2022).  Benefits and Opportunities: California’s Community College Baccalaureate Programs. UC Davis Wheelhouse: The Center for Community College Leadership and Research.

Moody, K. (2023).  “DOL rule would promote apprenticeships, tighten program labor standards.”  Higher Ed Dive.

Public Policy Institute of California (2017). Addressing California’s Skills Gap.

Rios-Aguilar, C., Cuellar, M., Bañuelos, N., Lyke, A., & Vo, D. (2023). The Potential of California’s Community College Baccalaureate for Closing Racial Equity Gaps.  UCLA Civil Rights Project.

Sherron, T., et al. (2019). Innovation in Prior Learning Assessment: Program, Course, Model, and Best Practices. ERIC.

Success Center for California Community Colleges (n.d.).  Findings and Recommendations to Expand Credit for Prior Learning as a Vision for Success Strategy. Success Center.

---

Authors