July 29, 2020
Bachelor's Degrees Community Colleges Degree Attainment Employment Enrollment Four-Year Colleges Population Race and Ethnicity Regions Sub-Baccalaureate Degrees Ed Equity Adults COVID-19 Workforce

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Postsecondary to Prosperity: Examining California’s Opportunity Landscape

California depends on its strong workforce to drive economic growth, but in the midst of the current pandemic and accompanying unemployment rates, the state must rethink its approach to supporting skilled workers and their future access to higher education. To inform decision making and help prioritize equity in the state’s approach to economic recovery, Postsecondary to Prosperity: Examining California’s Opportunity Landscape highlights critical analyses into educational outcomes, upward mobility in the workforce, and quality of life. With data drawn from California Competes’s new California Postsecondary to Prosperity Dashboard, the report helps assess and address inequitable pathways to higher education and economic mobility throughout California’s diverse regions.

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Key Findings

1

Californians live different experiences based on key factors: race/ethnicity, region, gender, income, level of education, and whether in high school they were homeless, a foster youth, a migrant, an English learner, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or with a disability.

2

Latinx, Black, and Native American and Alaska Native Californians face particularly inequitable opportunities.

3

Some quality of life markers, however, are equally good or bad across groups—notably, housing is unaffordable for almost everyone, and nearly all Californians have health insurance.

4

Further studying, understanding, and analyzing the data are key next steps toward developing and implementing strategies to meet our goals.

Check out the Postsecondary to Prosperity Dashboard here and read our other published briefs here.

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Budget Surplus Can Smooth the Path to Higher Education

California Competes | June 25, 2021

This commentary, authored by California Competes Executive Director Dr. Su Jin Gatlin Jez, was published by CalMatters on June 25, 2021.

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California Competes | June 17, 2021

In celebration of California Competes’s tenth anniversary, Loren Kaye, President of the California Foundation for Commerce and Education, joined Executive Director Dr. Su Jin Gatlin Jez for a discussion on business’s relationship with higher education.

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Challenges and Solutions to Comparing Outcomes by Race and Ethnicity

David Radwin | June 11, 2021

Seemingly small differences in the collection and reporting of racial and ethnic identification can significantly affect the ability to make valid findings about education and employment within and across datasets. This blog post details this challenge and discusses a few ways in which these differences play out and how we resolved them in the development of the California Postsecondary to Prosperity Dashboard.

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California Competes is a project of Community Partners.