The Status of Education and the Educational System in California

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The Status of Education and the Educational System in California

Demographic and Budget Changes affecting Education in the Californian State

The budgetary allocations from the state have significantly declined over the years. Between the 1990 and the 2008 academic years the Californian University actual state funding for each student declined by 3%. California is however not likely to solve these budgetary constraints through increasing taxes because of the prevailing political and structural bottlenecks to these kind of proposals. Consequently, California’s higher education is and will likely continue to be both philosophically and empirically a low budgetary concern. These facts in amalgamation indicate that the state’s public education is vulnerable to crowding out with time if California’s budgetary allocations continue to face shortfalls (Newell, 2009).

A long-term group-by-group evaluation of California’s general fund projects annual mean shortfall from this year to 2030 has approached $5 billion. The current higher education funding levels, which are already below the latest peak, are likely to be sustained to the last part of this decade or until the tax increases are expired. However, even the increase in taxes will not be enough. While it is not likely that the Californian legislature will entirely eliminate spending on higher education the current occurrences are an indicator that the pressure to progressively trim the higher education budget is not likely to let up in the near future (Moore and Jensen, 2009).

Studies indicate that California’s minority students, which include Latinos who make up the fastest rising demographic cohort in California, are inexplicably disheartened by higher education enrollments whenever there are increases in tuition fees. Forced by necessity private universities are inclined to charge higher costs of tuition fees in comparison to public universities. Consequently, an eventual privatization is likely to lead to a decline of the proportion of Latino students’ population that will ultimately increase the population of white students. Private universities in California offer great incentives for students from poor backgrounds. This enables them to cut costs and thus in the end graduate many students in their low cost programs, for instance, education compared to their higher cost programs like Engineering (Johnson, 2009).

California presently stands at the void of having its outstanding system of public higher education grind down to an essentially private one. The state is faced with a long-term crisis in its budgetary allocations that is likely to get worse with time in the absence of urgent and audacious action by the state’s legislature. With its objectionable consequences for the student body’s ethnic composition, this financial obstacle intimidates the heart of Higher Education’s mandate for universal access. Boldly responding to a predicament that is of this enormity will not only be extremely necessary but also very appropriate (Hanak and Mark, 2005).

Though most of California’s state workers were educated in other states, the Californian public institute in one of its study findings indicates that it is impossible to fill the apparent gap in education by international or interstate migrations. The existing trends in migrations are absolutely insufficient to fill this gap given that the highly educated Californian population segment are now reaching retirement while the least educated in California’s demographics: the Latinos make up a very wide proportion of the Californian workforce. For this reason, it will be critical that stakeholders in the state’s education system consider augmenting the output of the state’s higher education institutions (Douglass, 2010).

Even though the California state demands more from public universities, it provides them with very few resources. If the existing trend of receding financial support from the state persists the results for California’s economy and society will be drastic. Consequently, there is a dire need for stakeholders across the education divide to do something about it before the situation gets out of hand.

Some of the Problems Facing the State’s Education System and How They can be Solved

Higher education in California is faced with two major crises: the gap in education skills and insufficient budgetary allocations. Consequently, there is an imminent shortfall of the anticipated supply of graduates in relation to market demand. It is projected that the deficit could amount to 1 million graduate workers in 2025 unless the California State considerably increases university enrollment and graduation rates. Studies indicate that the state will not be able to meet the growing demand for graduates through national and international migration; meaning that it has no option but to look for viable ways by which it can get additional funding in order to avoid this apathy. This is already a tall order given its budgetary constraints (Bowen and Michael, 2009).

By updating fundamental components of its master plan, this would be a critical step in an attempt to close the gap in education skills. This paper hereby proposes three premeditated alterations to the master plan. Firstly, the UC (University of California) and CSU (California State University) eligibility systems should be increased slowly to new levels by 2025. The UC sharing of high school graduates in the state should be increased from the current 12% to 16% graduates stemming from high schools. The share that is qualified for CSU should grow from the top 33% to the top 45%. The master plan should then set precise objectives for transferring students from the community colleges to CSU and UC. The state should define its target for larger shares of degrees that it awards to transfer students in both systems. In addition to this, a new element in the policy for higher education that focuses on outcomes particularly its rates of completion should be enjoined in the master plan (Newell, 2009).

A critical deliberation in the adoption of these objectives is whether adequate numbers of graduates from California high schools will be college ready. The strategy by CSU that requires that students complete all remediation work within a year is very effective and it is important that this strategy is also adopted by community colleges. California’s master plan will gain from added benefits if it is updated along these lines. If the eligibility levels are increased, there would be a more diverse student body in both the CSU and UC system’s economically, racially and ethnically (Moore and Jensen, 2009).

Funding issues represent the biggest impediment to meeting the new goals. On the other hand, the failure to attain these goals in the higher education sector could cost the State even more. California is a state in which the rate by which young adults are not likely to graduate from colleges in comparison to older adults is highest compared to other states in the USA. Of the states with the highest population, California is ranked 18 out of 20 in the high school to university enrollment rates. In all states, California is ranked 40 for students who attend private institutions and community colleges (Johnson, 2009).

California lags behind other US states as far as graduation and college attendance are concerned. This has in turn made the attainment of academic qualifications a critical predictor of successes in the labor markets. Education in California now serves as the only way by which an individual’s upward economic mobility can be evaluated. In the past few years, the entire US individuals with not more than a high school diploma stagnated in their wages. On the contrary, California’s college graduates increasingly experienced augmentation in their financial status. Workers with degrees earn almost twice as much as those with high school diplomas in California. Consequently, if the state attains improvements in the educational sector it will be able to realize less demand for social services, higher incomes and more generation of tax revenue.

It is estimated that by 2025, 43% of jobs in the state would require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree. On the contrary, given the current state of affairs, the California educational system is unlikely to meet this demand. The disparity between population supply and economic demand in California could be solved in two ways: by either lowering the quality of jobs found either in the state or by augmenting the outcomes of Californians educational system. The Californian state policy on higher education is therefore critical and determines the number of college graduates that can be available to Californian employers (Hanak and Mark, 2005).

In order to plan for the future of the state’s higher education system, stakeholders must come up with new goals with strategic and specific funding provisions in mind. For the Californian state to effectively close the obstructing work skills gap it must revise the 1960 levels of college eligibility by increasing them. It is projected that if the direct college enrolment rates are increased jointly with an increase in completion of degrees and transfer rates the gap in educational skills could be closed by 2025. To attain this, UC eligibility rates have to be increased from 13% to 16% of the high school candidates that are top ranked. Combined with new targets, increased completion, and new transfer targets that intend to increase the number of eligible students for CSU and UC would add about 800,000 new graduates to the state’s population by 2025 (Douglass, 2010).

Fewer high school graduates in California are enrolled in universities in comparison to other states. However, most of them are enrolled in community colleges. There is thus an ardent need for the state to guarantee the successful transfer of students from community colleges to universities in order to increase the number of college-educated workers in the state. Theoretically, a system that enables students to complete their studies in community colleges and then ensure they transfer to universities is cost effective for both the students and the state (Bowen and Michael, 2009).

Finally, the greatest impediment is on how the system would be financed, and in case the education skills gap is to be closed, how increases in enrollment can be funded as well as outcome improvements in completions and transfers. In the last five decades, the most critical change to California’s higher education is the decreased role of the state to fund its education sector. Even before the current budgetary allocations problems, funding by the state had already eroded. The residents in California State favor the work-study programs as a way of increasing funding for students. They are however, opposed to increased taxation. To ensure that funding for the educational sector is increased, the Californian state should shift spending from other programs that are not as critical as educating its residents.

References

Bowen, William G., Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson. (2009). Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Douglass, John Aubrey. (2010). The California Idea and American Higher Education: 1850 to the 1960 Master Plan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Hanak, Ellen, and Mark Baldassare. (2005). California 2025: Taking on the Future. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.

Johnson, Hans. (2009). Educating California: Choices for the Future. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.

Moore, C., N. Shulock, and C. Jensen. (2009). Crafting a Student- Centered Transfer Process in California: Lessons from Other States. Sacramento: Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy.

Newell, Mallory. (2009). Higher Education Budget Cuts: How Are They Affecting Students? Sacramento: California Postsecondary Education Commission, December.