Raising Postsecondary Attainment Could Add $210,000 Per Working-Age Californian

$4.4 trillion. That’s the projected economic opportunity California could unlock if we hit a 70% postsecondary attainment rate and do it across every community, not just in the places that already have the most options. We dig into new work created with the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and we ask the question underneath the headline: what changes when more working-age Californians earn credentials of value that the labor market actually rewards?

We walk through the real mechanics behind the number with Georgetown’s Jeff Strohl: how lifetime earnings drive most of the gain, how tax revenue and public coffers benefit, and why ripple effects matter when wages rise and spending follows. We also face the investment side directly, including the estimate of roughly $198 billion in additional spending on top of what California already invests through UC, CSU, community colleges, Cal Grant, and workforce education and training.

Then we widen the lens to the stakes that don’t fit neatly in a spreadsheet: economic mobility, attainment gaps by zip code and background, adult learners who need flexible pathways, and a state that can be both one of the richest places on earth and home to the nation’s highest poverty rate. If the California Dream is going to mean something again, we can’t keep designing education around a learner who no longer exists, and we can’t keep accepting luck as the default system.

If this conversation hits home, subscribe, share the episode with someone who cares about California’s future, and leave a review with the one change you think would make the biggest difference.

https://collegefutures.org/our-golden-ticket/

eloy@4leggedmedia.com

Transcript

Why Attainment Drives Economic Power

0:10

Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and welcome back to the Rant Podcast, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies, and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, we're talking about economic impact, economic impact to the state of California. Recently, the College Futures team partnered with the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce to dig into the numbers in California and find out what would be the economic impact if the state achieves the 70% attainment goal that Governor Gavin Newsom set for the state of California. That's 70% attainment for all working age Californians having some credential of value in the marketplace, whether that be a certificate, an associate's degree, or a bachelor's degree, meaningful credentials that allow an individual to improve their economic mobility here in the state of California. Currently, California sits at around 54% attainment. So we asked the question to Georgetown, what would it mean for the state of California to actually hit that target of 70%? And not just hit the target generally, but to hit the target across all demographic groups, whether that be age, ethnicity, gender, whatever that might be, zip code, the various regions of the great state of California, to ensure that all communities have access to a seventy percent attainment goal. And so working with the Center on Education and Workforce, with Jeff Strohl and his team there, they dug into this from an economics point of view, and what they found is amazing. Four point four trillion dollars of economic impact is what the state of California would achieve if we can reach that seventy percent attainment goal across all groups in California. Think about that. Four point four trillion dollars of economic impact. Four point four trillion dollars of economic opportunity. That equates to two hundred and ten thousand dollars in additional income for every working-age Californian. That's a tremendous economic lift. California already sits as the fourth largest economy on the planet, one of the most prosperous places on the planet. Yet California also has the highest poverty in the nation. So moving Californians to increase economic mobility, to increase economic impact through investing in post-secondary education and aligning the workforce in post-secondary education could reap tremendous benefits for the state of California. And given that this is a gubernatorial election year, this opportunity will sit right in the lap of the next governor So it's something that we wanna draw attention to, something that I want people to focus on, and something that also relates to all of the other forty-nine states in the country. Each state is working on this, trying to better align supply and demand of talent and jobs, trying to improve the relevancy of post-secondary education, and trying to ensure that more people throughout every city and county and every state in the nation has access to opportunity. And so while this is focused on California, this four point four trillion dollar number is focused on California, Think about what this would mean if all 50 states moved access to a postsecondary credential up by 10, 15 percentage points. It would be a tremendous benefit to every American And so this number, $4.4 trillion, may seem abstract, but it would not require that much more investment than the state of California is already making in postsecondary education. As a matter of fact, it would require about another $198 billion. And I know that sounds a lot, but in the state of California, it is definitely something that can be accomplished. If we think about all the investment that's already going into postsecondary education, into the University of California, the California State University system, the community colleges, the private nonprofit postsecondary institutions, all the financial aid that flows through Cal Grant, and all the support for workforce education, all that is a tremendous investment already. And if we can just realign and increase and support those areas, we can get to that $4.4 trillion number. And if you wanna argue over some semantics, I'll give you a half a billion dollars on either side of that number. It's still a big number and a tremendous impact. It would move California from being the fourth largest economy

The $4.4 Trillion Headline Number

5:20

on the planet to the third. Think about that. So, we wanna continue to dig into this number, dig into this opportunity. I will ensure that in the notes section of this podcast, you can access the link to the website that gives you all the information about the Golden Ticket Report. But in addition, we also wanna better understand that $4.4 trillion number. So in this episode, I'm going to highlight some comments that Jeff Strohl made about the report, uh, at a recent event in San Diego. He talked about the report and what that $4.4 trillion number entails. There's also more information on our website, and I hope you dig into that number and ask questions about that number. And at the end of Jeff's remarks, I'm also going to highlight the remarks I made at the same event in San Diego, which highlights the importance from a broad democratic equity-focused point of view, why this is important to California and to the rest of the country. We are living in a moment where learners, policymakers, Americans of all backgrounds are questioning our institutions, are questioning the value of a postsecondary education, and they're questioning the relevancy of workers in the economy today. This is our moment to bring all these areas of interest together on behalf of the American people, and to build a system that aligns workforce and education, that gives people of all backgrounds numerous on-ramps toward a good postsecondary experience, that simplifies the process, makes it more transparent for the learner, the consumer, and holds institutions accountable for delivering economic outcomes for each and every learner. This is the moment to get that done, and so we hope that this report begins to lead us down a path of a meaningful conversation about how we lift that impact and make the changes necessary to reimagine our postsecondary and workforce systems to achieve this kind of outcome. And for California, it's about reimagining the California dream so that every Californian feels that they have an opportunity to live in this state and prosper in this state, every Californian. So with that backdrop, enjoy the comments from Jeff Stroll at our recent event in San Diego, and then my comments about the golden ticket opportunity and the opportunity to reimagine the California dream for everyone College Futures has chosen to take on a challenge which is pretty steep.

Jeff Strohl Breaks Down The Math

8:15

which if you look at some of the lowest attainment in the, the state, you're talking 30, 40 percentage point gains to get everyone to 70%. Uh, but to what Eloy had said, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't take on the challenge. Because not taking on that challenge means leaving people behind. So now to talk about 4.4 trillion. How in God's name do you comprehend 4.4 trillion? A quote came to me this morning, I was trying to see how we could play with it, was Rockefeller said, "If you can count it, you don't have a billion dollars." Well, he didn't get to a trillion on this one, and so that's kinda the thinking we have. So I've been conceptualizing the 4.4 trillion sort of like an onion, right? We need to unwrap this, but we need to remember at the core of that onion, that kernel, is a human individual in this state, right? So what we're thinking about is using post-secondary education to build human capital. It's investment model into strict rational terms, right? And so we apply human capital, we get people more productive, wages go up, people's livelihood g- uh, increases. So in that aspect of the 4.4 trillion, about 3.3 of the 4.4 are individual gains in attainment over the life cycle. Uh, there's about 745 in change in, uh, the public coffers and tax and, uh, to the state and the federal, and then there's some subsidiary, uh, ripple effects. So when you have, uh, uh, uh, every time you have a consumption, you create more economic activity, so there's a ripple effect. Things that aren't in this data that I think are important back to that human individual is how it impacts mobility. So if you look at the data today, someone whose parent only has high school has a 27% chance of getting a college degree, a BA. Someone whose parents have a professional degree, they're about 83% chance. So as we do this, one thing not in these calculations are the impacts it's gonna have in the communities and the lives of the people in the next generation, even within that generation it'll, it'll transmit. So what we've done here, in the report is a basic cost investment analysis. You've got a state needs to put in about an additional shy 200 billion on top of what they'll already be spending to get, uh, to- toward, to the 66. That's gonna, uh, so there's cost. But after I think the first five or seven years, that begins to pay itself back and then so the rest of the accrual, uh, of this return on the investment happens across that life cycle. And as we think about this, the challenge, right, that there's groups that, uh, that we need to reach into that aren't traditionally reached into. Adults, right? There's so many adults who don't have a degree, who are, who are grinding themselves in, and by using post-secondary education, we hope to enable them to have uplift. Uh, and so this is what, that 4.4 trillion, if we remember, it's humans and, and it's really helping the people of the state move forward. And that's one thing I like working with College Futures, 'cause I work with a lot of education groups, and they think only from the education side. This is challenging us to think about the other side. How is it that we're going to help people not only get the education, but use it as a gateway to opportunity? Because if you're out of alignment, and I d- done, uh, work a long time ago with Vaughn in this area of t- of thinking about alignment and thinking about how wage pull, uh, you know, happens. We want to ensure that the treatment, the education, actually leads to a result and just not- unemployment, 'cause if you're out, if you're out of whack, it just won't work. good

Reimagining The California Dream

11:47

morning, everybody. Buenos dias. Great to see you all here in this amazing space. Big thank you again to the entire College Futures team and everybody who helped pull this event together. I think they did it on purpose because bringing a Dodger fan to be right here right across from Petco Park, I think they tried to throw me off. It may have succeeded for the first 15 minutes, but I'm good now. I'm I wanna thank all of you for being here. This is, an amazing space. You are all here for a reason. And thank everyone who is joining us online, Let me start with something simple, hopefully what you think is something simple. I wanna start by thinking about dreams. Envisioning yourself in a different place, in a better place, a place of opportunity. Those are the kinds of dreams that I know I enjoy having. And I believe that dreams are shaped by what you can envision. If you can see yourself in a different place, if you can see yourself choosing different opportunities, then you can make those into reality. You can manifest those into reality. That's what the California dream has been about for decades. This dream, this vision, that if you come to the Golden State, you can realize your dreams. You can be who you wanna be. You can enjoy the abundance of opportunity that the Golden State professes to provide individuals coming here, coming west to the sunshine, from the mountains to the sea, and every other marketing campaign you wanna talk about. But we have to ask ourselves, do Californians today still actually believe in that California dream? Can they actually see themselves on a path toward whatever the California dream means today? I would argue that most can't. We believe that millions of Californians today don't believe that the California dream is within reach. Think about the 20-year-olds or the 30-year-olds you run into, some of them my kids, who just don't see California as a place that includes them, and certainly not this California dream. For them, the California dream is nothing but a marketing campaign or something that's steeped in nostalgia from the past, a different California, a California of the '60s, not today's California. And I've certainly lived that in my personal and professional life. And as Elizabeth mentioned, I also grew up in Southeast LA in a very traditional working class Mexican and Mexican American household, Mexican American neighborhood, in a place called the Florence Firestone District, zip code 90001. And so that was my world, that was my universe. And it was also... It also shaped what I could envision myself to be. It narrowed the universe of possibilities because I only saw what was in front of me, and my parents, and my neighbors, and my friends only saw what was in front of them. What was within the walls of that zip code, where we hung out, where we played, where we went to school. And I was fortunate that my parents worked hard in order to provide myself and my brother and sister a Catholic education. But it wasn't until my early in my senior year of high school that I even began to think about going to college. And that was only because, you know, I got decent grades, and I played a lot of football. So I wound up getting letters from Brown University, from Pitzer College with offers of an athletic scholarship. But of course, at seventeen, I thought, Br- what is Brown University? What is Pitzer College? I had no clue what that even meant, and what going there would even mean. Of course, today, I know the opportunity that exists at a Brown University, or the opportunity that exists at a Pitzer College. But at seventeen, I didn't know. And how could you expect anybody in my family or my neighborhood to know? If they don't understand, how can they articulate the value to their children or to their friends and their family in that neighborhood? And that's still true about 90001 today.

Luck Should Not Be The System

16:18

And so I chose a different path. I chose to enlist in the United States Army, where I proudly served for four years. I became a dad early on in my life. And when I left the Army and packed up my duffel bag and, was given a few hundred dollars to go back to California, I had to come back and figure out what the path forward for me was going to be. I had to ask the same questions that millions of Californians ask every day. What is the path forward, and how in the world am I going to access the California dream? And so it wasn't until a couple of years later where a random act changed my life. I just happened to be driving through Huntington Beach, and I just happened to stop at Golden West College. I picked up a class schedule, I enrolled in college, and my life is different today That was a random chance, luck. Fortunately, I ran into a couple of people who actually helped me articulate what the path forward could look like. And so if you think about what that means, what that means is the system wasn't designed to support me. The system was designed to support random acts of luck, and that shouldn't sit well with any of us. Folks, we live in at least two Californias. That's certainly true in my life. Growing up in nine zero zero one zero zero zero one to today living in nine two six two five, those two worlds couldn't be more different. They are worlds apart. They were then, they are now. We, in California, are the fourth largest economy on the planet. We are one of the wealthiest places on the planet. We are certainly one of the most prosperous states in the, in America, yet we have nearly an eighteen percent poverty rate. Eighteen percent, that is the highest poverty rate in America. At the same time, we are both the most prosperous economy in America, and we have the largest poverty in America, and you see that every single day. We become numb to it. You see it when you walk out of this room. You will walk past a homeless person. You will walk past a panhandler. You will see people in line trying to get food. You see it every day, and we become numb to it, and that's something that we should not accept going forward. That's a vision of California where we accept leaving millions of people behind. And at the center of all this is a conversation that we don't have enough urgency around, post-secondary education. You know, in the next decade, three out of every four jobs that are created will require some sort of education or training beyond high school, yet California's falling behind. And we're falling behind not because there's a lack of talent or ambition, there is talent in every neighborhood in California. It is a lack of creating accessible, transparent pathways for Californians. Right now, fifty-six percent of working age Californians have a post-secondary credential. As you heard, the state's goal is seventy percent, yet even that seventy percent doesn't account for all communities coming together at the same time.

Building Pathways For Today’s Learners

19:27

So even if we reach that today, we would still leave millions of Californians behind, which is something that we at College Futures feel is not the way to measure success. And we still risk having attainment gaps by race and eth-ethnicity, gender, geography, and certainly zip code. So we are not just falling short of a number. We are making a choice. We are choosing to leave millions of Californians behind. Just think about the logic of even having a seventy percent attainment goal. We're still choosing to leave at least thirty percent of Californians behind. That's a choice that we make every single day, and that's a choice we need to stop making Right now, instead of meeting this moment, we continue to design a version of our higher education system around a learner that no longer exists, that doesn't match the reality of today. It may match the reality of nineteen sixty or perhaps nineteen seventy, but not today. And yes, the higher education master plan got us to where we are today, but it will not lead us to where we need to go tomorrow. So here at College Futures, we've listened to learners across California, and what they're telling us time and time again is, "We need you to build accessible pathways, flexible pathways, and pathways that are designed around my life." Our learners don't lack the will, they lack the way toward, uh, economic prosperity here in California. And so what does that mean? E-essentially, we have been tinkering around the system for years. How many times have you heard the term, "If we just fix the system, everything will be good"? I've heard that a million times, "If we just fix the system." Folks, we need to admit that we've been avoiding some hard truths. The system that we have today cannot absorb the kind of attainment that we need in order to reach the seventy percent attainment goal, a goal that should lead every Californian to a better economic future. We have to think differently about pathways, about new models, about different ways to reach people at scale, because when we ignore this reality, it shows up in unintended consequences. It shows up in our workforce, our economy, and it certainly shows up in our democracy. We see that every day that we turn on the news. So we have to be clear about the choice that we're making because we are making a choice, and we have to be clear about the magnitude of that choice, which brings us to why we're here today, our partnership with Georgetown University.

Leadership Choices For A New Era

22:08

We've released new research today, and many of you are getting a firsthand look at it today. It shows that if we raise attainment to seventy percent across all groups in California, we will be able to gain four point four trillion dollars of economic opportunity. Four point four trillion dollars. Take a moment to let that sit with you. Wrap your brain around four point four trillion dollars of economic opportunity for the state of California. That's two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars in additional dollars for every working age Californian. And this includes a full range of attainment. It includes bachelor's degrees, it includes associate degrees, and it includes high-value credentials that lead to good-paying jobs and economic mobility. And when you layer AI on top of that- That $4.4 trillion number, the stakes get even higher. given all that, what's at stake here is, and the question for all of us is, are we willing to continue to leave millions of Californians behind just because we're too slow, we're too stubborn, we're too nostalgic, too cautious, or just too comfortable to act? We have to embrace change, massive change at scale. We have to build a system for lifelong learning, a system that supports workers throughout their entire career, and one that leads to a healthy civic society. We actually have to honor the way learners learn today and where they need to learn. The scale of the transformation is gonna require leadership, and it's g- we're gonna require leadership from everyone in this room and everyone online today. You were invited here because of the roles you play in influencing the future of California. That's why you're here. And so what role are we all going to play in moving California forward? And let me also speak to the people who are not in this room, in particular, the candidates for governor, okay? Because this $4 point trillion opportunity is gonna fall in the lap of the next governor, and that will be a choice that the next governor needs to make. Will that choice be, do we lead California into a new golden era of opportunity for everyone, or do we continue to leave millions behind? To our civic leaders, to our regional leaders, are you gonna bring people together and develop plans that focus on the needs of your communities? And to our education leaders, faculty leaders, as well as administrators, this is your moment. This is your moment to break free of the status quo, to actually become more responsive, more adaptable, more flexible, and to use technology in ways that help reach more learners and help them get access to the California dream. We need to deliver an education system in ways that actually fit their lives. So that's what we mean by the golden ticket. That's what it's all about today. It represents a commitment to doing differently. It means that we are done pretending that the system of higher education that we have today actually works. It does not. We have to be honest about that. That doesn't mean that we throw it out. That means that we have to add a new chapter, a brand new chapter of how it's gonna lead us into the future. Our systems should be built around opportunity. They should not be built on having to find luck. This is also a commitment to ensure that there is a direct connection between post-secondary pathways and good paying jobs. This is not- A side issue. This is a real economic strategy for the future of California. So today, I'm not asking you to think about this report. I'm not asking you to put it on your shelf. I'm asking you to join us. I'm talking to all of you in this room, to all of you, who are tuning in online. It's gonna take all of us to commit to doing something differently because you know what? The California Dream wasn't built by people on the sidelines. It was built by people who actually engaged, and we need that kind of engagement today. So we need each of you to join us to make that commitment to thinking boldly and declaring that we are done leaving Californians behind. And so whether you think about that moment where you realized your path forward, or you think about the millions of Californians that are having that thought today, it's time that we actually lean into this and create a future in California that embraces opportunity for everyone. And we have the data now, so change isn't gonna happen because we don't know what to do. We know what to do. And data alone is not gonna change lives. People change lives. You all change lives. So let's commit to making that bold change that we need at scale. If California gets this right, we rebuild the California Dream for

Sign The Golden Ticket Commitment

27:20

everyone. So join us, join me in signing our golden ticket. It's right out there. Make a commitment to doing things differently and to stop leaving people behind and to seize this $4.4 trillion opportunity for California. Thanks for joining us here today and look forward to working with each and every one of you.