Month: October 2015

Saving Native Fishes from Extinction

Native fishes have been hit hard by the drought, with 18 species—including many salmon runs—at high risk of extinction if warm, dry conditions persist. But there are actions we can take now to avert what could be the largest loss of native freshwater fish biodiversity since the arrival of Europeans in California.

The state and federal fish agencies entrusted with preventing these extinctions face formidable challenges. The species at risk cover a very large geographic area and in many regions the options for emergency management actions are limited. Additionally, the total amount of funding allocated to managing the environment during this drought is very modest: $66 million, or roughly 2% of total state drought spending. (We showed this in our report What If California’s Drought Continues? in Table 1.)

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has taken many actions despite limited resources (see this summary), with more than 30 projects underway. But more can—and should—be done now to prepare for continued drought. Here are some suggestions:

  • Initiate an emergency conservation hatchery program. This should start with fish at risk of extinction that are not already the focus of intense conservation. These efforts can be as simple as building temporary holding tanks or as elaborate as temporarily converting production hatcheries to rebuild these populations.
  • Establish a robust environmental water emergency fund. This would enable fisheries managers to purchase or trade water to maintain adequate flows and water quality for at-risk fish. It could be modeled after projects by The Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. These initiatives use temporary water transfers to flood farm fields in key locations to create waterbird habitat. During times of high stress for native fishes—usually due to low flows and high temperatures—strategic investments that temporarily return water to streams can help keep fish healthy.
  • Develop a reservoir drought-operations plan. State and federal agencies should conserve cold, fish-friendly flows at strategic reservoirs next summer. A margin of safety should be built into these allocations to address unusually warm conditions and modeling uncertainties, such as those that decimated winter-run Chinook salmon below Shasta Reservoir the past two years.
  • Develop a drought biodiversity management plan. The state should harvest the lessons from management successes and failures during this drought to develop this plan. Environmental management will be more efficient and effective if we have a plan in place before a drought that sets priorities for emergency actions intended to improve species’ resilience. We need to start on this now, while the lessons are fresh.

Many more actions can be taken (examples are outlined in California Species of Special Concern). However, it’s essential that some actions be taken now to prepare for continued drought. While it’s tempting to hope that the record El Niño now building in the Pacific will solve our drought problems, the only sure thing about El Niño is that it is not a sure thing.

Learn More

Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s ecosystems resource page
Read “Extinction Risk for Native Fish if Drought Persists” (PPIC Blog, September 10, 2015)

Proposition 47 and Crime

Last November, voters approved Proposition 47, which reclassified a number of drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. As a result, inmate populations have dropped in California’s capacity-challenged state prisons and county jails. Reports of increases in violent crime in some areas have raised concerns, and the significant drawdown in the jail and prison populations—by roughly 17,000 inmates so far—certainly carries the risk of increased crime. But it would be premature to blame Proposition 47 for the uptick.

Proposition 47 helped bring down the prison population by about 8,000 inmates, below the mandated target of 137.5 percent of design capacity (the number of inmates that facilities were designed to house). The target was set by a federal court in 2009 in the wake of lawsuits over prison conditions; at the time, it meant a reduction of almost 40,000 prisoners. The prison population has remained below the target since January 2015. This is a key requirement for the state to regain control of prison health care, which is currently overseen by a court-appointed receiver. The total prison population has dropped by slightly more than 45,000 inmates since it peaked in 2006.

Proposition 47 also helped bring the jail population below the statewide rated capacity (here again, the number of inmates facilities are designed to hold), after three years of increases that were driven by public safety realignment. In stark contrast to the increase of about 11,000 inmates between September 2011 and October 2014, the county jail population dropped by almost 9,000 inmates, or 10.7 percent, between October 2014 and March 2015 (the most recent month of available data).

As we noted above, reports of increased crime in a number of cities and counties in 2015 have fueled concerns about the impact of these population reductions. Between January and August, violent crime in Sacramento was up by 24 percent compared to the same months in 2014. In Riverside County, violent crime was up almost 11 percent in the first six months of 2015. In the City of Los Angeles, it was up almost 21 percent in the same time period.

There are good reasons to be cautious about attributing these upticks to Proposition 47. Crime trends fluctuate frequently and widely and it is challenging to pinpoint specific causes. The first year of realignment provides a good example of this. After a long decline, both violent and property crime in California increased in 2012, the year after realignment was implemented, and many blamed the reform. However, as our careful analysis has shown, there is no evidence that realignment led to more violent crime, and the only uptick that can be attributed to the reform is auto theft. Another reason to be cautious is that other states have seen increases in crime this year—the New York Times recently reported that violent crime, as represented by murder rates, has gone up noticeably in a number of US cities. With all this in mind, at this time we urge against drawing any firm conclusions about Proposition 47’s impact on crime.

Chart sources: (TOP) California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, monthly population reports. (BOTTOM) Board of State and Community Corrections, jail profile surveys.

Do You Know Where Your Water’s Been?

The twin challenges of water quality and quantity are leading to creative thinking and interesting solutions in California and across the west. David Sedlak is helping find innovations in water re-use and treatment in his various professional endeavors. He’s a professor of environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center, deputy director of the ReNUWIt program, and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network. We talked to him about the state’s water quality challenges and efforts to create more sustainable water systems.

PPIC: What might a lay person find surprising about water quality in California?

David Sedlak: Most people don’t realize the extent to which to we use water over and over again in the state. The water that’s flowing down a river might have recently been in a farm field or flowed over a city’s streets. Water picks up different contaminants depending on where it’s been. If it was used on a farm it might pick up salts or pesticides; if it came from a sewage treatment plant it might pick up pathogenic microbes or chemicals used in homes; if it ran off city streets it could pick up metals or oils. It’s still 99.99% water, but that .01% can make all the difference in the world—it’s this tiny amount of contamination arising from human activities that could make it unsafe to drink, spread disease, or kill fish.

PPIC: How does the quality of our drinking water supply constrain California?

DS: During the 20th century we created a system for moving extremely clean mountain snowmelt into our cities. The drought, population growth, and competition among water users have complicated things. New technologies enable us to make use of water resources that were previously thought to be unsuitable for drinking. These advances have allowed us to make major progress in reinventing the water system our grandparents built by making use of diverse sources they weren’t able to tap.

Nonetheless, these impaired water sources are more expensive to treat and deliver than the pristine sources that we relied upon in the past. We have the means to remove many of those contaminants, but it can be expensive. The cost of treatment depends on the source of water. We can turn seawater into drinking water, but that’s probably the most expensive source available to us. We can turn sewage treatment plant effluent into drinkable water for about half the price of desalination. We could also harvest the rain that falls in cities, but we don’t have a lot of experience in scaling it up. Los Angeles is starting to make progress on urban rainwater harvesting but this approach is still in its infancy, and it will require time to figure out if this is a good investment. Our Mediterranean climate means that many of our cities get the bulk of their annual rainfall in a few big storms. So if we’re serious about capturing rainwater we might have to build some pretty large structures, which would make the process expensive.

PPIC: What do you think needs to fundamentally change in our relation to water in the urban environment?

DS: Ultimately, members of public, community leaders and elected officials all need to step up and take responsibility for our water supply. We can’t leave it to the utilities to figure out alone. I’m very optimistic—we’ve already seen great progress. The water suppliers are starting to recognize that the public has to be part of the discussion. We’re definitely seeing positive behavioral changes now that the public is paying attention to the fragility of the water supply. It seems we’re becoming more willing to make sacrifices to pay for a modern water system that we want to leave to our grandchildren’s generation and those that follow them.

Learn More

Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s water supply resource page
Read our factsheet California’s Water Quality Challenges

How the New FAFSA Can Help Californians

Last month the Obama administration unveiled a revamped Free Application for Federal Financial Student Aid (FAFSA). The new FAFSA is available in October rather than January, so high school seniors won’t have to wait until their spring semester to apply for aid. This means that students can factor their federal grant and loan eligibility into their college application process, instead of getting information about aid after they apply or even after they are admitted. The FAFSA will also be easier to fill out. In the past, students had to wait until their parents filed taxes in January (or later) and then fill out the FAFSA, but the updated form allows families to electronically transfer their tax data from the previous year’s IRS returns, which means that many income-related questions can be filled in automatically. This will drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to fill out the FAFSA.

These changes can benefit Californians in multiple ways. A streamlined FAFSA that families can fill out earlier may induce more students to complete the application, which is likely to lead to an increase in Pell Grants. According to nationwide estimates, 6 to 10 percent of college students from families with incomes under $48,000 fail to fill out the FAFSA; this suggests that many students in California and elsewhere are currently missing out on Pell Grants.

For Californians, the FAFSA is not just a federal aid application; it is also a prerequisite for participating in many state and institutional aid programs for students from low-income families. Cal Grants, the largest source of state aid, can cover up to the full tuition at a UC or CSU for students who qualify. UC’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Program combines federal, state, and local aid to ensure that students from families making less than $80,000 per year do not pay any tuition. But students who do not fill out the FAFSA are not eligible for any of these programs. National data show that about 20 percent of families who make from $48,000 to $75,000 do not fill out the form and therefore are potentially paying more than necessary for college.

Increased FAFSA completion rates may also benefit students from higher-income families. As PPIC has noted, the increases in tuition between 2007 and 2011 primarily raised the cost of attending a UC or CSU for many students from middle- and upper-income families. Filling out the FAFSA can help these students qualify for California’s Middle Class Scholarship, which covers a portion of the tuition and fees at UC and CSU for students with family incomes of up to $150,000 per year. In addition, FAFSA completion can help students qualify for federal loans and decrease their reliance on private loans, which can be more expensive and potentially riskier than federal loans.

Lastly, students who get financial aid—and who find out about it earlier in the application process—are better able to assess their college options. For instance, a student who knows that financial aid is available might apply to a four-year university instead of a two-year college. While the four-year school may be more expensive, research suggests that students who begin at a four-year institution are more likely to get a bachelor’s degree than if they begin at a community college with the intention to transfer to a four-year school. In other words, making the FAFSA process easier may not only help students afford college and take on less debt; it may also lead to higher baccalaureate degree completion rates.

Building a Better Water Safety Net

California’s poor rural communities have been hard hit by the current drought, which has brought drying wells and reduced water quality. Laurel Firestone is co-director of the Community Water Center, where she focuses on advocating for safe, reliable and affordable water supplies for vulnerable communities in the San Joaquin Valley. She was a speaker at an event to launch the PPIC Water Policy Center report What If the California Drought Continues?, which found maintaining safe rural water supply to be one of the biggest challenges of ongoing drought. Here she describes some of our water inequities, and ways to solve them.

PPIC: What are some successes arising from this drought?

Laurel Firestone: I think some of the biggest successes have been at the state level. First of all, the voter-approved water bond included half a billion dollars for small disadvantaged communities. The budget includes a lot of money for emergency drought response. Additionally, the drinking water program at the State Water Board has made huge strides in getting money to the communities. Bigger picture, the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was essential. About 90 percent of communities in the San Joaquin Valley rely on groundwater, with many households using shallow wells that have gone dry as commercial wells have been drilled deeper.

On the local level, people are stepping up, too. Some cities have reached out to neighboring communities whose wells are running dry—for example, the city of Farmersville hooked up close to 100 homes whose wells were about to go dry. Some amazing volunteer and local service providers have been going door to door in some of the hardest hit areas. They’re helping get water to people who were already in dire circumstances and now also have to deal with turning on the tap and figuring out how they’re going to shower, feed their children, meet basic sanitation needs.

PPIC: If the drought continues, what needs to be done to improve water supply for poor, rural communities?

LF: There are a few main areas we’ll need to focus on. The first is that we have inadequate information on where households are going dry. We really don’t have a handle on this problem, particularly for private wells. The state’s plan for identifying vulnerable private-well communities and funding solutions to this problem is completely inadequate. We’ll have to quickly come up to speed to address this.

Renters have not been able to get state assistance to buy emergency water tanks. They have been able to get bottled water delivery, or have gotten help from private charities or churches. But we have millions of dollars in emergency drought funding, and it needs to get to people whether they own property or not. I know the state has been trying to get better at this, but there’s an urgent need for better coordination between the state and locals to make sure that the money is getting to those who need it most and in the most effective ways.

As part of our emergency response, we should address inefficiencies in areas that are most acutely impacted by the drought. For example, installing water meters will let people know how much water they’re using and help local water systems find leaks more quickly.

We also must accelerate long term solutions. We need to fundamentally shift how we’re delivering water to rural communities and look at ways we can build resiliency and get economies of scale. That means not having individual homes or small neighborhoods rely on a single well, which makes them incredibly vulnerable to any changes to that water supply. I think there’s a lot of promise with the way the state is looking at drinking water and pushing for consolidation and shared water supplies. More needs to be done to make sure there is diverse water supply in these areas.

The water bond brings a large chunk of capital and technical assistance; we need to invest it in solutions that are sustainable and affordable, and supply safe water to our most vulnerable even in future droughts.

Learn More

Watch a video of the panel discussion What If California’s Drought Continues? (August 2015)

Commentary: California Leads in Voting Reform

When Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed Assembly Bill 1461, the New Motor Voter Act, he ushered in a new chapter of California electoral history. The law seeks to boost California’s recent record-low election turnout rates with a new system of automated registration.

Under existing law, citizens must register to vote before they can cast a ballot. The new law all but eliminates this step by registering anyone who applies for a new driver’s license, renews an old one or updates an address with the DMV, unless they opt out. With the stroke of a pen, California is now at the vanguard of American voting reform.

(Continue reading on sacbee.com.)

Video: Higher Education & Our Economic Future

“The world is radically changed,” Gavin Newsom, California’s lieutenant governor, told a Sacramento audience this week.

“We’re competing against billions and billions of people, not just competing against cheap labor now, but against cheap genius,” he continued.

Newsom—who is also a University of California regent and California State University trustee—spoke in a conversation with Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO. PPIC’s new report Will California Run Out of College Graduates? provided the context for the discussion. The report concludes that California will fall 1.1 million college graduates short of economic demand by 2030, if current trends persist.

Newsom said that “there is not a major industrialized nation in the world that is not focusing with intention on radically transforming their education system. One of the remarkable things about California is that we do not have a plan.”

He summed up: “We need goals. And we need to be able to measure those goals. And those goals must emanate from the state itself.”

Newsom was not the only speaker at the PPIC event to use words like “radical” and “revolution” to describe changes needed in higher education.

At a subsequent panel discussion, state assemblymember Catharine Baker said she is concerned that the state is falling short of the workforce needed even now. She noted that there is bipartisan agreement in the legislature that higher education is important but not about the need for major change. “There is a lot more focus on issues around the margins, that is, on how many students are we admitting, what few changes we can make in the community college system.”

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, superintendent-president of the Long Beach Community College District, said, “We almost need a revolution in our system. We started to get there when we were in crisis mode.”

“During the recession, we saw more creativity than ever before in the community college system and we began to focus,” he said. “I fear that post-recession that focus will start to dissipate.”

Hans Johnson, coauthor of the PPIC report and PPIC senior fellow, said the big challenge for the state is replacing the retiring baby boom generation with young, well-educated workers.

“I think there is a very clear path to closing that skills gap,” he said. “We need to have more students going to colleges—especially four-year colleges. We need improve completion rates—that opens up room for more students. We need to improve transfer rates from community colleges to the four-year colleges. And if we do all of those things—and these are all decisions we can make, as policymakers and higher education officials—we can actually close that skills gap.”

Timothy White, California State University chancellor, said CSU can do its part to fill the workforce skills gap—with the help of its educational and funding partners. He called the PPIC report “a very sobering clarion call that is of crisis proportion— not for the CSU or for the University of California, or the community colleges, but rather for California. And I hope we take it with the seriousness that it deserves.”

New Water Laws Address Groundwater, Marijuana

As the California legislative session came to a close, Governor Brown signed more than 20 bills that address different aspects of water policy, ranging from water conservation and measurement to water quality. Two bill packages took important steps toward improving groundwater management and reducing the negative environmental impacts of marijuana farming.

New tools for groundwater management

Our recent report What if California’s Drought Continues? noted that improved management of our groundwater resources is critical to weathering droughts now and in the future. The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) seeks to ensure long-term viability and reduce over-pumping by setting deadlines for local agencies to develop and implement plans for basin sustainability. Before SGMA, groundwater users in some Southern California basins recognized the need to balance their groundwater use and went through a legal process called adjudication, in which courts determine individual rights to groundwater and appoint an entity to oversee its use. By clarifying pumping rights, adjudication makes it much easier to manage basins. But the time and cost of some adjudications have discouraged the use of this tool in other regions. Two new bills will make adjudication more suitable for managing the state’s groundwater resources:

  • AB 1390 streamlines adjudication by expediting the identification of groundwater use in a basin, giving courts new power to quickly resolve disputes among pumpers, and other procedural improvements. The goal of the bill is to create a more affordable, easier, and faster adjudication process that is applicable to any groundwater basin in the state.
  • SB 226 is designed to ensure that streamlined adjudication doesn’t conflict with SGMA by requiring severely over-drafted basins to comply with its provisions and deadlines regardless of ongoing adjudication actions. The bill also is intended to provide guidance for courts to align adjudications with SGMA requirements such as groundwater sustainability plans and groundwater sustainability agencies.

Marijuana regulation

Another challenge highlighted by the current drought is the impact of marijuana cultivation on our water resources and environment. The State Water Resources Control Board and the Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) are running a joint pilot project to address these issues in the North Coast region. The Cannabis Pilot Project evaluates potential policy solutions for reducing the environmental impact of cultivation practices and managing illegal use of stream water for irrigation. The medical marijuana bill package —AB 243, AB 266, and SB 643—creates a foundation for making this pilot permanent and building a statewide program to regulate the impact of marijuana on water and the environment.

For example, AB 243 and SB 643 direct the Water Board and DFW to take statewide regulatory actions that protect instream fish spawning, migration, and rearing from the damaging impacts of marijuana cultivation.

Questions remain about how to fund this new effort, however. The Cannabis Pilot Project is funded for just three years, and covers just a small portion of the state. Additional funding will be required to expand regulations to cover California’s estimated 50,000 marijuana growers. AB 243 proposes a $10 million loan from the state’s general fund to jumpstart the new Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation in the Department of Consumer Affairs, but these funds will not support the environmental programs run by the Water Board and DFW. A fee on all marijuana cultivators is the best way to fund these programs over the long term, and the Water Board has authority to establish such fees.

Learn More:

Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center drought resource page

State Struggles to Enact More Robust Climate Targets

California’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions thus far have made the state a national leader. But the momentum may be slowing. A struggle over recent climate legislation resulted in a less-ambitious version of the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act (SB 350) being signed into law by Governor Brown last week and the deferment of a bill (SB 32) that would have strengthened the state’s 2006 climate law.

The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) established the foundation of California’s plan to address climate change by reducing GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The state is on track to meet the 2020 limit, and now policy efforts are shifting to longer term goals. Emission-reduction targets of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050 are already set forth in executive orders (former Gov. Schwarzenegger’s S-3-05 and Gov. Brown’s B-30-15) but have not yet been incorporated into law.

SB 350 is seen as a major step toward reducing GHG emissions in the longer term. It mandates that half of the state’s electricity come from renewable resources and that buildings double their energy savings by 2030. But a third piece of the original plan, which proposed to cut petroleum use in cars and trucks by half over the next 15 years, was dropped. Since the transportation sector is a major contributor to GHG emissions (37% in 2013), this is could make it more challenging to meet long term emissions reductions. To make up for the loss, the Air Resources Board adopted a modified version of its Low Carbon Fuel Standard that requires a 10 percent reduction in carbon intensity of transportation fuels by 2020.

The second slowdown was the deferment of SB 32 until at least next year. The bill would amend the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 to include the 2030 and 2050 emission-reduction targets from the executive orders. It failed to pass in the assembly.

Our July PPIC Statewide Survey found that solid majorities of Californians (69% adults, 62% likely voters) favored the proposal to reduce GHG emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. When asked about the original goals of SB 350, 82 percent of adults supported the increase of electrical generation from renewables, 70 percent favored doubling energy efficiency in buildings, and 73 percent supported reducing petroleum use in cars and trucks by 50 percent by 2030. Although Democrats are more likely than Republicans to support these goals, majorities of Republicans support the goals of increasing renewables and energy efficiency. Overwhelming majorities who favor these policies also view global warming as a serious threat to the economy.

The state’s approach to reducing GHG emissions has achieved important results. The mix of policies has resulted in a cleaner economy, while population and GDP have continued to grow. Looking ahead, a study for the California Energy Commission shows that with the mix of technologies and practices proposed by state agencies, emission reductions of 26–38 percent below 1990 levels could be achieved by 2030 at a cost of $8 per household per month (or $14 if commercial and industrial costs are all passed on to households).

California’s multi-faceted approach to combating global warming has placed it in the vanguard of worldwide policies. Yet 2020 is just around the corner, and clear targets to reduce GHG emissions for the longer term still evade us. To remain on the leading edge of global climate regulations, the state will need to adopt more robust and forward-looking policies. It would also be worthwhile to explore a new narrative to reduce the partisan divide on this issue, given Californians’ widespread support for the state’s energy goals.

Learn More

Explore PPIC’s climate change page.

 

What the New College Scorecard Can—and Can’t—Tell You

Last month, as high school seniors were beginning to apply for college, the US Department of Education released its yearly scorecard to help students and their parents make informed choices. In addition to information on graduation rates, access, net price, this year’s scorecard includes earnings data for former students. The earnings profiles will be especially helpful—until now, students, parents, and the public lacked access to official information about earnings nationwide. They may also help hold colleges accountable for student outcomes.

The new earnings data is exciting—but not perfect—so it is important to determine what it actually tells us. The US Department of Education—which administers financial aid, mostly in the form of Pell Grants and federal student loans—generates the earnings profiles by linking its data on college students who get federal aid with earnings data from the US Department of the Treasury. This covers about 70 percent of students nationwide. Of course, the shares of students receiving federal aid vary across colleges—at some postsecondary institutions, fewer than half receive it. But the scorecard’s explanation of its methodology suggests that, aside from family income, college students who receive federal aid are similar to those who do not.

Another caveat is that the earnings measure for each institution represents all students receiving federal aid who started there—including those who didn’t graduate and those who transferred to other schools or pursued post-graduate degrees.

Still, it is instructive to compare the earnings of former students across institutional sectors. The table shows what you would see if you looked up earnings profiles for different types of California colleges. We chose colleges with median earnings that were closest to the median of each sector.

The median student who started at UC Davis earns about $8,000 more than a student from Azusa Pacific University, about $10,000 more than a student from Sacramento State. The differences among the sectors align with what we know from prior research: earnings of former students of colleges that grant bachelor’s degrees are, on average, higher than those of former students of colleges that grant only associate degrees or certificates. Moreover, research has found that students at private for-profit institutions end up with lower earnings than those of comparable students from public or private non-profit four-year universities.

What the scorecards don’t show is that the difference between colleges is far smaller than the difference within colleges. The figure shows the variation in earnings at the same campuses included in the table above. First, note the tremendous overlap: many students who start at community college end up earning more than some students who started at UC and CSU. The difference in median earnings between the typical CSU and the typical UC is approximately $10,000. But the difference between the 25th percentiles and the 75th percentile of UC Davis student earnings is almost $50,000.

Looking at these differences alone is not enough to judge the quality of an institution. The differences that we observe across colleges might reflect differences in the type of students who enroll in different institutions, or variations in completion rates. They may also have to do with differences in the fields of study that attract large numbers of students. For example, some colleges have high concentrations of students enrolled in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields—these students traditionally go into higher-paying jobs. Other colleges may have a high concentration in less remunerative majors. Similarly, the dispersion that we observe in student earnings within institutions is likely tied to a number of factors, including fields of study and rates of completion.

PPIC research has found that a worker’s wages vary tremendously depending on his or her college major. At the high end, those with engineering degrees earn a median annual wage of $96,000. At the low end, those with degrees in education administration and teaching have a median annual wage of $57,000. The Department of Education plans to include earnings by area of study in future versions of the scorecard, and we think this will make the scorecards much more valuable to students and families.

Californians will find the federal scorecard particularly useful, since the state currently lacks a student tracking system. Many other states have maintained more robust and inclusive student tracking systems for years. These systems allow calculation of more precise earnings information by major and degree for all graduates in a state—and some states are collaborating to track outcomes and earnings of former students who move from one state to another.

In California, only the community college system provides salary information for its graduates. At a time when state and national leaders are urging that colleges and universities be held accountable, the state’s parents, students, and taxpayers would benefit from more and better information about student outcomes.