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This final brief in the series focuses on policy options that can foster more innovation and address challenges in career education (CE) program development. It is based on earlier research for a series of reports called "Career Opportunities," aimed at identifying ways that state and system policy can best support the CE mission of the California Community Colleges (CCC). The authors: (1) revisit the primary recommendations from that series about barriers to more effective CE programs; (2) outline related actions the system has taken to address those barriers and improve CE in recent years; and (3) suggest opportunities for further changes to policy to promote the success of CE students. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis are having particularly devastating effects on California's low-income populations and people of color, ensuring that state and system policies support community colleges to provide robust and relevant CE programs to the state's displaced workers may be critical to the state's economic recovery. [Nancy Shulock was the co-principal investigator for this brief. For the first brief in this series "A Community Anchor: Student Perspectives about Career Education. A Community Anchor: Redesigning Career Education to Support Regional Economic Development," see ED610768. For the second brief in this series "A Community Anchor: College Personnel Perspectives about Developing and Implementing Career Education Programs. A Community Anchor: Redesigning Career Education to Support Regional Economic Development," see ED610773.]

This second brief on learnings from career education (CE) opportunities in the California Community Colleges (CCC) focuses on what college personnel described as barriers to designing and implementing programs with features that students find helpful, as described in the first brief of this series (ED610768) (e.g., cohorts, consistent course schedules, work-based learning opportunities). The authors found that faculty, staff, and administrators encountered a common set of challenges when implementing changes to their CE programs, including: (1) difficulty with garnering support from various constituency groups; struggles with setting realistic goals; (2) lack of professional learning opportunities; (3) capacity constraints; bureaucratic approval processes; and (4) difficulty engaging employer partners. Learning from college personnel's experiences can help colleges prepare for barriers and avoid pitfalls while redesigning their programs to better meet students' needs. Their perspectives are also relevant in the context of current efforts by the U.S. Department of Education to issue grants meant to expand short-term and work-based learning programs to address workforce needs and to revitalize the economy. [Nancy Shulock was the co-principal investigator for this brief. For the final brief in the series "A Community Anchor: A Review of Career Education Policy Barriers and Solutions. A Community Anchor: Redesigning Career Education to Support Regional Economic Development," see ED610774.]

This is the first brief in a series on learnings from career education (CE) opportunities in the California Community Colleges (CCC). The series begins on learnings from CE opportunities in the CCC system by highlighting what students described as most helpful in contributing to their success. These CE programs were aimed at helping students find meaningful jobs and careers with family-supporting wages, aligning curriculum with industry needs, encouraging timely completion, and providing students with work-based learning opportunities. It was found that students especially valued having a consistent schedule, being part of a student cohort, having a program-specific counselor, building foundational skills, and obtaining relevant work experience while enrolled in college. Learning from students' experiences in these programs can help colleges redesign their CE programs to better meet students' needs and support their regional economies. Students' perspectives are also relevant in the context of current reform efforts in the CCC such as Guided Pathways (GP), aimed at providing clear pathways and structured support for students. [Nancy Shulock was the co-principal investigator for this brief. For the second brief in the series "A Community Anchor: College Personnel Perspectives about Developing and Implementing Career Education Programs. A Community Anchor: Redesigning Career Education to Support Regional Economic Development," see ED610773. For the final brief in the series "A Community Anchor: A Review of Career Education Policy Barriers and Solutions. A Community Anchor: Redesigning Career Education to Support Regional Economic Development," see ED610774.]

This report constructs a model public agenda to address the mounting challenges facing California higher education. It is intended to inspire broad discussion potentially leading to an official public agenda for California higher education. The report describes some of the structural barriers that are preventing more dramatic progress in meeting California's needs. The model public agenda envisions region-based planning and heightened collaboration at the regional level, guided by effective state-level policy leadership. (A list of resources is included.) [For accompanying reports, "State Policy Leadership in Higher Education: Six Case Studies," see ED574483 and "Average Won't Do: Performance Trends in California Higher Education as a Foundation for Action," see ED574485.]

California's public colleges and universities are benefitting from the passage of Proposition 30 in 2012, which provides for temporary tax increases through 2018 to help preserve education funding, and will likely benefit from increasing state revenues. While additional funding will allow the three public postsecondary systems (University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges) to increase class offerings and expand programs and services, more than additional money is needed to meet the immense challenges facing California postsecondary education. Repeated calls have been issued for California policymakers and educators to take action to enroll and graduate substantially more Californians to meet the needs for an educated citizenry and competitive workforce. The latest two of these calls were in October and November, 2013. Both of these new reports stress the urgency of improving postsecondary attainment in California and the sad fact that California is lagging in innovation to address its educational challenges. Yet California postsecondary education continues to operate without effective state-level planning and coordination to heed those calls. Now lack of data on which to base state-level planning and coordination can be added to that list. With the de-funding of the California Postsecondary Education Commission in 2011, there is no longer publicly available data on current patterns of student enrollment and progression from high schools to and across colleges and universities that would help families, educators, policymakers, and other interested stakeholders determine how best to improve postsecondary student success. This report is part of a larger effort to begin to move into an action phase now that the case for change is so well documented. In this report, the authors provide an update of California's trends in six performance categories that have become standard measures of a state's postsecondary performance. Over the ten years that the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy (IHELP) has been tracking these measures, there has been improvement in only one area--the preparation of high school students for college--and California is still worse than most states in that category. Using this report as a baseline, the authors will develop a model public agenda for California postsecondary education, drawing on lessons from the many states that have developed goals, plans, and strategies to meet their needs. If the model public agenda is effective in engaging public stakeholders to reach consensus about how public postsecondary education can best meet the needs of Californians, the remaining missing pieces will be the leadership and the infrastructure to implement and sustain new initiatives. To that end, the authors will produce case studies of effective state-level policy leadership for postsecondary education in other states that are applicable to the kinds of state-level actions needed in California. The following are appended: (1) Methods for Calculating California's Performance Relative to Other States; (2) List of Counties by Region; and (3) Methods for Calculating Measures by Region and by Race/Ethnicity. [For accompanying reports, see "State Policy Leadership in Higher Education: Six Case Studies" (ED574483) and "A New Vision for California Higher Education: A Model Public Agenda (ED574486.)]

In today's highly-skilled economy, rewarding career pathways are available to those who acquire technical skills by enrolling in certificate and associate degree programs in a community or technical college. Such programs are often more costly to offer than liberal arts and sciences programs that prepare students to transfer to four-year institutions to pursue bachelor's degrees, due to the need for smaller class sizes and specialized equipment and facilities. Many of the higher-cost career and technical education (CTE) programs are in fields and industry sectors that are important to economic growth in most states and regions, such as nursing, allied health, various engineering technologies, and alternative energy. Consequently, it can be challenging for colleges, and the states that fund them, to maintain these programs. When hard fiscal decisions result in diminished offerings of programs that are valuable to students and communities, no one is well-served. The California Community Colleges (CCC) are facing this problem now, particularly in the aftermath of several years of budget-cutting during the recession. College officials have had to stretch fewer dollars across their program offerings in order to try to meet enrollment targets. Since colleges receive one set dollar amount per full-time-equivalent student (FTES), there is a fiscal disincentive to maintain high-cost programs. There is much anecdotal evidence, and some empirical evidence, that CTE offerings have been disproportionately reduced in recent years. This is troubling to those who recognize the value of technical education to students, to regions, and to the California economy. This policy brief reports findings of a 20-state study of strategies that may help colleges provide students with access to valuable workforce-oriented programs despite some higher costs. It is intended to help education leaders and policymakers in California continue to work toward realizing the vast potential of the CTE mission of the college system to contribute to student success.