Tag: California community colleges

Video: Top Goals of Higher Education Leaders

California’s higher education system is not keeping up with the economy’s changing needs, PPIC research has shown. Falling behind in creating a skilled workforce could curtail economic growth, limit economic mobility, and increase inequality in the state. The leaders of the California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU), and University of California (UC) are essential in the effort to increase the number of educated workers, because the vast majority of the state’s college students attend public colleges and universities.

Hans Johnson, director of the PPIC Higher Education Center, summarized this research, and the three leaders of the higher education system sat down last week with Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO, to talk about their goals before a large Sacramento audience.

The first question: What are your top goals in the next decade?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, CCC chancellor, said it is a critical time for the 113-campus system. “We connect with so many Californians at a time when the economy is changing before our eyes, and the default to get into the workforce is no longer a high school diploma. Some sort of post-secondary credential is essential. That is our focus.”

He said he is working with the other higher education branches and the K–12 system to integrate them into “one public system of education, not four separate systems.”

Timothy White, CSU chancellor, had a similar focus on results. “Our number -one priority in the years ahead is to improve the success rates of our students,” he said, adding that just 20 percent of CSU students earn their degrees in four years. He said he wants to make sure CSU students have access to courses when they need to take them, as well as sufficient faculty and academic support.

Janet Napolitano, UC president, said, “My vision is that the University of California remain the top public university in the world.” Citing the recent growth in enrollment of in-state students, she said that sustaining academic excellence, increasing diversity, and producing students who will be the next generation of California’s leaders are all key parts of this vision.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Bridging Equity Gaps in Health Career Training

California’s community colleges are the largest providers of workforce training in the state, offering a wide variety of career technical education (CTE) programs. Career training in health is particularly promising for students, as the health industry offers many in-demand, well-paying jobs for Californians with less than a bachelor’s degree. Health programs have higher completion rates than other CTE programs and attract a large and diverse student population. But gaps in achievement across student groups are a persistent problem.

PPIC’s latest report on career technical education in health provides detailed insights into the nature of equity gaps in student achievement. African American students are nearly 12 percentage points less likely to complete a health credential than their white peers. Latino students are about 6 points less likely.

To better understand racial/ethnic achievement gaps—and identify potential solutions—we examined three possible explanations: socioeconomic factors, program choice, and course-taking patterns. Individual demographic factors like age, immigration status, and economic disadvantage do matter, but cannot explain away the achievement gap. A student’s choice of health program also matters—that is, African American and Latino students are less likely to be enrolled in the health CTE programs with the highest completion rates, such as registered nursing and dental hygiene. But even after for controlling for socioeconomic factors and program choice, the racial/ethnic achievement gap persists (7 percentage points for African American students and 3 percentage points for Latino students).

By far the most consequential factor driving the racial/ethnic achievement gap in health programs is course-taking patterns—in particular, course progression patterns that are linked to student success. African American and Latino students are less likely to enroll full-time or in consecutive terms—these two patterns are strongly related to college completion. In addition, they are less likely to complete 30 or more units before entering the health program, another factor linked to future success. Finally, compared to white students who are otherwise similar, African American and Latino students are less likely to receive financial aid. Simply put, we find that if students entered similar programs and made similar progress course by course, the racial achievement gap would disappear.

These results suggest that there are many steps community colleges can take to alleviate completion gaps. In fact, systemwide efforts to support full-time attendance to and to guide students on choosing a program of study are among the reforms implemented through the Student Success effort in recent years. Our results suggest that efforts to enable underrepresented students to devote more time to their courses of study and pick up momentum toward their educational goals will do the most to reduce completion gaps. More information about the programs with the best completion rates and earnings potential can empower students to decide which career pathways to pursue. By identifying and addressing the drivers of inequity in CTE—in health as well as other programs—colleges can help more students take the crucial first step of earning a credential and then move along well-paying career pathways.

Learn more

Read the report Career Technical Education in Health: An Overview of Student Success at California’s Community Colleges
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Moving up the Health Career Ladder

Upward mobility is inextricably tied to educational attainment in today’s economy. How do California’s educational institutions foster upward mobility for their students when developing their programs of study? One way community colleges across the country are working to do so is through the development of training pathways that allow students to “stack” multiple credentials. The idea is that students can earn certificates or degrees sequentially and move up a career ladder—upward mobility in action. For example, a student who completes a certificate in medical assisting can return to complete additional training and earn a degree in registered nursing—an occupation that offers large wage returns.

Despite the promise of “stackable credentials,” our analysis of students enrolled in health programs at California’s community colleges finds that among those who earn one credential, most don’t go on to get another. We followed the 85,000 students who earned their first health degree between 2000 and 2009. Only 13 percent completed a second health credential within six years. This isn’t terribly surprising since about half of health students in California’s community colleges initially earned an associate degree—the highest level award that is offered. Many associate degrees in health lead to well-paying jobs such as registered nurse or dental hygienist. But even among students who earned a shorter-term, lower-return credential, only 20 percent returned to earn another health credential.

However, the evidence suggests that students who do stack multiple health credentials see sizable economic returns eventually (see figure). Median earnings are similar across the two groups of students before starting their health training programs and while they are in school. The wage trajectories diverge, however, after degree completion. Students completing a single award—most often an associate degree—earn more than $15,000 per quarter just one year after finishing their health degree. In comparison, those completing multiple awards—a shorter-term, lower-return certificate is the most prevalent first degree—earn only $8,000 a year out. This difference narrows considerably over a five year period when students completing a second health credential see a larger gradient in their earnings.

Currently, most students who “stack” health credentials ultimately attain an associate degree in nursing—one of the highest value awards offered in the community college system. It’s plausible to imagine building pathways that allow students to meaningfully stack credentials to other high-value, in-demand careers. But to do so, colleges must carefully align program curricula to ensure that skills gained along the way are sequential or complementary, while at the same time making sure that each credential has standalone value in the labor market. This is not an easy task but one our community college system is currently focused on, given state and federal investment in growing career pathways.

At the same time, community colleges are investing in ways to support students as they explore pathways to well-paying careers. All of these efforts, taken together, hold promise for increasing the number of students who improve their economic standing through engagement with training pathways available through California’s community colleges.

Learn more

Read the report Health Training Pathways at California’s Community Colleges
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Equity and Remedial Education at Community Colleges

PPIC research has shown that students from groups that are historically underrepresented in higher education are more likely to take a remedial—or developmental—course at some point in their college career. Our research also shows that these students are less likely to complete a college-level course in math or English—and less likely to meet their educational goals. At a time when California faces a shortfall of college-educated workers, this has profound implications for the state’s future. Given that more than half of Latinos and African Americans who pursue higher education attend community college, policymakers need to focus on closing access and achievement gaps.

A recent PPIC report found that 87% of both Latino and African American community college students took at least one developmental math or English course, compared to 70% of Asian and 73% of white students. Likewise, 86% of recipients of fee waivers from the California Community Colleges Board of Governors (BOGW) or Pell Grants—our proxy for low-income status—took at least one developmental math or English course.

A closer look reveals that Latino, African American, and low-income students are likely to be placed in developmental education at lower levels than other groups of students. This requires students to take a longer sequence of developmental courses—up to four semesters’ worth—and dramatically alters college trajectories. African American and Latino students make up 61% of students who enter the developmental math sequence four levels below college ready, but only 41% of students who begin one level below. Similarly, the share of low-income developmental math students who start four levels below college ready (82%) is significantly higher than the share that begin one level below (64%). This means that Latino, African American, and low-income students are more likely to spend valuable time and financial aid on courses that do not count toward a degree or transfer.

Equity issues are apparent not only in students’ participation in developmental education, but also in their outcomes. When we examine the completion of college-level math and English courses among students who started out in developmental education, we find that rates are lower for most underrepresented groups. For example, 39% of Asian students and 30% of white students who took a developmental math passed a college-level math course, compared to 24% of Latino and 14% of African American students. The same pattern holds true for English, where 59% of Asian students and 49% of white students successfully completed a college-level English course, compared to 42% of Latino and 28% of African American students. However, low-income students who enrolled in developmental education courses completed college-level courses (26% math and 45% English) at about the same rate as developmental students overall (27% math and 44% in English).

It is also important to look at the assessment and placement policies that place students into developmental courses. Our research found that these policies vary widely across the state’s 113 community colleges. As a result, some Latino and African American students may be enrolling in developmental education at higher rates, especially in math, simply because they attend colleges that set higher cut-off scores for placement into college courses.

Our recent findings suggest that developmental education, which is intended to help students succeed in college, may actually be contributing to college achievement and completion gaps. A multipronged approach that improves developmental education courses and streamlines assessment and placement policies can lead to more equitable student outcomes.

Learn more

Read Preparing Students for Success in California’s Community Colleges
Read Determining College Readiness in California’s Community Colleges: A Survey of Assessment and Placement Policies
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Improving College Placement Policies

Assessment and placement policies govern where students begin their college trajectory. This is a high-stakes issue for students, affecting how quickly they achieve their educational goals. Too often, it affects their likelihood of reaching these goals at all. Students who are placed in developmental, or remedial, courses end up spending significant portions of their limited financial aid packages—and sometimes take on debt—to pay for courses that don’t usually count toward a degree.

Findings from a PPIC survey on assessment and placement policies show that California’s community colleges vary in how they identify college-ready students. First, colleges use different assessment tests. Second, even those that use the same test apply different cut-off scores, which are the minimum scores that a student must get to be designated college ready. While over half of colleges reported using the Accuplacer test to assess college readiness in math, cut-off scores ranged from 25 to 96 out of 120. Students with the median score of 58 would be deemed college ready at only half of these colleges, while at the other half, they would be placed into developmental math. This lack of consistency means that access to transfer-level courses is determined not only by students’ performance on the test, but also by placement policies at the institution where they enroll.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy fix to this problem, as opposing forces are at play. On one hand, the current approach of setting local assessment and placement policies allows for considerable academic freedom and institutional autonomy, giving colleges flexibility to respond to the local needs of the population they serve. This is particularly important for placement into developmental coursework, the structure of which varies significantly across colleges. On the other hand, locally determined cut-off scores into transfer-level courses lead to inconsistent standards and can send a confusing message to high schools around the state about what it means to be college ready.

Accordingly, placement into transfer-level courses should be uniform across the community college system. Having clearer and more uniform policies for accessing introductory transfer-level courses (e.g., college composition, college math, and statistics, among others) is critical because these courses are considered equal in the eyes of four-year institutions accepting them for transfer. Variation in the standards used to access these courses dilutes this presumed equality.

California State University (CSU) presents a compelling case study for a statewide system that has consistent assessment and placement policies for determining college readiness. Across the 23 universities in the CSU system, a common assessment and common cut-off scores are used for placement into transfer-level math and English. Yet individual campuses maintain flexibility regarding how they structure developmental education sequences and placement into these courses.

Systemwide assessment and placement policies at California’s community colleges could yield multiple benefits:

  • Eliminating barriers for students who transfer from one college to another. Clear and uniform policies for accessing transfer-level courses would begin to make students’ assessment results more portable across colleges, especially those in the same region.
  • Improving programs and support for students in developmental education. Currently, the lack of comparable data across colleges has prevented the system from measuring the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase student success in developmental education.
  • Sending a clear message to high schools about college readiness standards at community colleges. This would be akin to the uniform policy used by high schools and colleges across the state to determine college readiness as part of the Early Assessment Program (EAP).

Continuing to let community colleges determine placement into developmental education while standardizing placement policies into transfer-level courses will preserve local autonomy and help to bring about the benefits that come with systemwide uniformity.

Learn more

Read the report Determining College Readiness in California’s Community Colleges: A Survey of Assessment and Placement Policies
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Video: Grading the Higher Education System

Californians give positive grades to the three branches of the state’s public higher education system—the community colleges, California State University, and the University of California. But the PPIC Statewide Survey on higher education shows that they have big concerns about affordability. Most California adults—regardless of political party, income, or age—see it as a big problem. And when Californians are asked to name the most important issue facing the state’s public colleges and universities, affordability leads the list.

“This is really the issue that’s at the forefront of people’s minds when you’re talking about higher education,” said PPIC researcher Lunna Lopes, who presented the findings at a Sacramento briefing last week.

Two out of three Californians say state funding of public colleges and universities is inadequate. While most would support a state construction bond to fund higher education projects, there is much less consensus on other ideas to increase revenue.

Learn more

Read the December PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Higher Education
Find out more about the PPIC Statewide Survey

Commentary: Boosting Success in Community College


This commentary was published in EdSource on December 8, 2016

Most students entering California’s community colleges – especially Latino, African American and low-income students – start their college journey in remedial courses in math, English or both. These courses seek to prepare students for college-level work. But remedial education, also known as developmental education, is lengthy, attrition is high and outcomes are poor.

Read the full commentary on edsource.org.

Video: Strengthening Pathways to Health Careers

Health programs at California’s community colleges hold particular promise for helping students enter in-demand careers and addressing the state’s workforce needs, new PPIC research shows. These career technical education (CTE) programs, also known as vocational education, attract a large and diverse set of students. The state’s community colleges offer a broad range of programs—including nursing, respiratory therapy, medical and dental assisting, and health IT—that are linked to growing job opportunities in health services, a generally well-paying industry for Californians without a bachelor’s degree.

PPIC researchers presented two reports on the topic in Sacramento. Among the key findings summarized by report coauthor Shannon McConville: many students who have earned career tech credentials in health care have seen sizeable wage gains, and completion rates in these programs are relatively high. More than 70 percent of students who begin a program either obtain a degree or transfer to a four-year college within six years, while only about half of the overall CTE student population obtains a credential within six years.

But there is room for improvement. Completion rates vary substantially across health programs, ranging from 93% in dental hygienist programs to 44% in emergency medical services. And there are racial and ethnic achievement gaps across programs.

After the research presentation, an expert panel took up the topic. Anette Smith-Dohring, manager for workforce development at Sutter Health, underscored the need to diversify the health care workforce.

“We want our front-line health care providers to reflect the communities we serve because those are our patients,” she said. “We want them to come from [the] communities we serve—we don’t want to import health care providers.”

Linda Collins, executive director of the Career Ladders Project, which has worked with community colleges, said it is important both to expand career awareness of the range of allied health professions and to improve science proficiency in middle and high school. If a student has “a basic grounding in math and science from the high school level, that will allow a student to take almost any allied health occupation program and be successful,” she said.

All of the speakers provided examples of small-scale programs in community colleges that have improved student success rates—and expressed frustration that the funding has not been consistent enough to expand them.

Linda Zorn, statewide director of the California Community Colleges Health Workforce Initiative, summed up: “Programs that provide structure and clarity about what students need to take, and integrate both proactive and embedded student supports in the instructional experience, are critical.”

Learn more

Read Career Technical Education in Health: An Overview of Student Success at California’s Community Colleges
Read Health Training Pathways at California’s Community Colleges
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Preparing Community College Students for Success

Each year hundreds of thousands of students entering California’s community colleges are identified as unprepared for college work and placed in remedial courses, also known as developmental education courses. Colleges vary widely in the way they assess and place students—for example, even colleges that use the same test base their placement decisions on different cut-off scores.

The impact of remedial placement is profound. Most students who enroll in a developmental education class never go on to earn a certificate or degree or transfer to a four-year college. Latino, African American, and low-income students are overrepresented in these courses, raising equity issues at the colleges—the entry point to higher education for most students in the state.

Two PPIC reports document the state of developmental education in California and examine the reforms that have been adopted to change it. Olga Rodriguez, PPIC fellow and coauthor of both reports, presented the findings at a briefing in Sacramento last week, followed by a panel discussion of higher education experts moderated by coauthor Hans Johnson, PPIC senior fellow and director of the PPIC Higher Education Center.

Panelists included Mónica Henestroza, higher education advisor for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon; Myra Snell, math instructor at Los Medanos Community College and cofounder of the California Acceleration Project; and Theresa Tena, vice chancellor of institutional effectiveness in the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

The three panelists emphasized the widespread recognition that reform is needed and under way.

Henestroza said the PPIC reports underscored what she hears directly from students—that they are being sidetracked from pursuing their career goals by developmental education. She also said that the savviest students know that it’s easier to pass placement tests at some colleges than others.

Snell said that when looking at the wide variation in college placement policies and the large numbers of students placed in developmental education, many mistakenly blame high schools for not preparing students. “Really, what we’re beginning to understand is that our definitions of preparedness are problematic.”

She said that student scores on Accuplacer, a commonly used placement test, are not a reliable predictor of college success. Colleges making robust use of multiple measures—including, for example, previous high school work—in placement decisions are seeing higher student success rates, she added.

Snell also pointed to promising reforms elsewhere. Tennessee, for example, enrolls students directly into college-level courses and providing remedial support where it’s needed. In other words, she suggested, reform efforts should focus on bypassing developmental education altogether.

Tena noted that colleges are implementing redesigned courses in developmental education that are intended to improve student outcomes. PPIC is currently conducting research to evaluate these new reforms.

Learn more

Preparing Students for Success in California’s Community Colleges
Determining College Readiness in California’s Community Colleges: A Survey of Assessment and Placement Policies
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Testimony: California’s Future Need for Bachelor’s Degrees


Patrick Murphy, PPIC research director, testified before the Senate Budget Subcommittee Number 1 on Education at San Diego City College in San Diego today (November 1, 2016). Here are his prepared remarks.

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) projects that between now and 2030 California will fall 1.1 million bachelor’s degrees short of workforce demand. Closing this gap will require substantial improvements in access to four-year colleges, transfer rates from community colleges, and completion rates among college students. This testimony describes specific targets for California’s public and private colleges and universities to help ensure that the state will have a sufficient number of highly educated workers in the future. It also briefly describes a recent pilot program in California that offers bachelor’s degrees at community colleges and similar efforts in other states in the context of closing the workforce skills gap.

PPIC senior fellow Hans Johnson, in testimony before the Assembly Budget Subcommittee Number 2, has offered a scenario for how the state might close the workforce skills gap relative to its current baseline. Assuming that college enrollment rates, completion rates, and transfer rates remain at current levels, the state will produce 3.1 million bachelor’s degrees over the next 15 years. Our closing-the-gap scenario charts a course to producing 4.2 million bachelor’s degrees by 2030—a 36% increase over the baseline for the entire projection period. It should be emphasized that this goal cannot be realized unless the state substantially improves the attainment of degrees by currently underrepresented groups, including first-generation college students, low-income students, Latinos, and African Americans.

There are two important issues to note regarding our closing-the-gap scenario. First, successfully reaching this goal requires contributions from all three of the state’s higher education systems as well as private colleges. Our scenario sets the following targets:

  • Access to four-year public institutions will increase, with eligibility increasing 5 percentage points over current levels at UC (the top 17.5% of high school graduates will be eligible for UC, up from the 12.5% set by California’s Master Plan for Higher Education) and 6.7 percentage points at CSU (the top 40% will be eligible for CSU, up from the top third). These new eligibility levels will be phased in over an eight-year period.

  • The number of transfer students from community colleges will grow incrementally to 35% above baseline levels over a five-year period.

  • Completion rates will increase 9 percentage points at UC and 17 percentage points at CSU. At UC, completion rates for students who enroll as freshmen will increase incrementally from 83% in 2016 to 92% by 2026. Completion rates for freshmen at CSU will increase incrementally from 57% in 2016 to 74% by 2030.

  • Private nonprofit colleges, which produce about one-third of all bachelor’s degrees annually, will keep pace with the relative rate of growth, increasing their production of degrees by 26% over baseline levels.

The second notable point is that there is no single solution to closing this gap. Our scenario represents only one path toward reaching the number of bachelor’s-degree holders the state needs. Based on the structure and performance of the current system, our scenario estimates the relative contribution that higher education segments could make in the future. Other combinations are conceivable. For example, a smaller expansion in eligibility and greater improvements in completion rates could also close the gap.

The assumptions underpinning our closing-the-gap scenario are clearly ambitious. Are the assumptions realistic? Is it possible to, for example, raise the completion rate at CSUs by 17 percentage points? Based on recent improvements, we think so. In another PPIC report, my colleagues Jacob Jackson and Kevin Cook observed that, from 2009 to 2015, the CSU system increased its six-year graduation rate 6 percentage points, from 51% to 57%. These increases came at a time when the system was focused on improving completion as part of its 2015 Graduation Initiative. This past September, Chancellor White announced that CSU seeks even greater improvements as part of its 2025 Graduation Initiative. The recently announced goals, including achieving a six-year graduation rate of 70% by 2025, are consistent with our closing-the-gap scenario.

We did not include in our scenario any assumptions regarding the potential for California’s community colleges to produce bachelor’s degrees. Beginning in 2015, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office granted approval to 15 colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in specific majors as a pilot program under Senate Bill 850. At this time, these programs are quite small and it is difficult to predict what impact they may have on the long-term production of bachelor’s degrees. A brief review of the experiences of two other states provides examples of different trajectories this pilot program could take.

Community colleges in Washington State began a pilot program offering applied bachelor’s degrees following legislation passed in 2005. The program, which focuses on fields currently not addressed by the state’s four-year public institutions, became part of the state’s regular programming in 2010. Community colleges currently offer bachelor’s degrees in 30 fields but produced only about 300 (less than 1%) of the more than 33,000 bachelor’s degrees conferred in the state in 2015.

In Florida, legislation authorizing community colleges to begin offering bachelor’s degrees passed in 2001. Florida has been quite aggressive in expanding the programs and schools offering bachelor’s degrees, with 24 of the state’s 28 colleges offering a total of 170 such programs. In 2015, these colleges produced 6,900 (about 7%) of the state’s 100,500 bachelor’s degrees.

As it is currently configured, California’s pilot program resembles the Washington approach. It has the potential to supply applied degrees in specific fields, making a contribution to the demand for skilled labor in some professions. But, due to its small scale, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on the overall workforce skills gap in the near term.

This is not to suggest that community colleges do not play a role in meeting the growing demand for bachelor’s degrees. In fact, about 103,000 community college students in California transfer to four-year institutions each year. Our closing-the-gap scenario assumes an increase in the number of transfers of 35% over five years—which would mean an additional 36,000 students moving on to four-year institutions. Should those students complete their bachelor’s degrees at rates similar to today’s transfer students, this would lead to tens of thousands of additional bachelor’s-degree holders by 2025.

Community colleges, UC, CSU, and private colleges must all play a role in the state’s efforts to meet the demands of a changing economy. Closing the workforce skills gap will lead to better economic outcomes for all Californians, increased state revenues, and reduced social service demands.