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  • Should California’s college systems be merged into one university?

    Should California’s college systems be merged into one university?


    California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson.

    Credit: Stephinie Phan / EdSource

    To better help students access and complete college, California should consider a major — and highly controversial — overhaul of its Master Plan for Higher Education that merges the state’s three public higher education systems into one mega-university, researchers argued Monday. 

    The bold proposal, detailed in a report from California Competes, a nonprofit research organization, suggests that the 10-campus University of California, the 23-campus California State University, and the state’s system of 116 community colleges be combined into a single California University that could accommodate a wide array of degree- and certificate-seeking students.

    Su Jin Jez, author of the report and CEO of California Competes, said merging the systems would eliminate transfer problems and make it easier for students to enter, succeed, and finish college, among other benefits. 

    “This proposal is intentionally provocative,” Jez said during a webinar Monday. “It’s designed to challenge existing paradigms and spark transformative discourse.” The original version of the report was released in December, but an updated version was published Monday when California Competes also hosted a webinar promoting the report. 

    Jez acknowledged that it might never come to be. The proposal would likely face challenges from the systems themselves, along with many stakeholders such as unions, faculties, legislators and alumni.  

    Other experts, reached by EdSource, questioned the proposal’s political feasibility, and one criticized the idea, saying it would not be possible to combine such large and complex institutions. 

    Jez argued that the original master plan, adopted in 1960, is outdated in part because of the rising costs of college and the changing racial and gender demographics of the state’s college students. Whereas the majority of students were white in 1960, Latinos now make up a majority of college-age individuals in California and a plurality of college students. Women also account for a majority of students in California colleges, a major change since 1960, when male students were the significant majority. 

    The original master plan said UC was to focus on research and enroll the top academically achieving eighth of high school graduates, while California State University was to consist mostly of undergraduate programs and serve the top third of high school graduates. The state’s community colleges were to offer open-access undergraduate classes, associate degrees for transfer, and vocational training. Those lines have since been blurred to some degree: CSU now offers some doctoral programs, and dozens of community colleges offer at least one bachelor’s degree. But over much of its time, that master plan arrangement was often hailed as a great strength for the state, helping during explosive population growth and supporting key scientific research.

    Under the proposed California University, the three segments would be merged into a network of regional campuses — such as California University, San Joaquin Valley, and California University, Los Angeles. 

    Each regional campus, which would be made up of one or several existing campuses, would offer a full range of programs and degrees, from certificates to doctorates. The LA campus, for example, would likely include the existing UCLA campus as well as the five CSU and many community college campuses in the county. It’s unclear how many regions would be included.

    There would be no admission requirements, and transfers would be completely eliminated, as students would be able to move seamlessly through their chosen regional campus.

    It would be highly challenging politically to merge the systems, which the report acknowledges. The co-directors of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, which commissioned the report, urged Jez to “think boldly” in looking for a revised master plan, rather than come up with an immediately pragmatic solution, according to the report’s foreword.

    Jez said during Monday’s webinar that she believes there is a “hunger for a new vision for higher ed in our state” and noted that higher education leaders have previously urged changes to the master plan.

    Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the former chancellor of the state’s community college system, said in an interview that he agrees with the premise that the master plan is outdated and that he supports some of the report’s ideas, such as creating better coordination between the systems. But he rejected the idea of a single university.

    “I could not and would not support it,” said Oakley, who is now CEO of the College Futures Foundation. “There is just no way in my mind that you could form one comprehensive governance entity, given the size and the scope of the three public university systems.”

    Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center, previously called for modifications to the master plan in a 2010 report he wrote. He suggested at the time that, by 2025, the master plan be updated by setting explicit goals for improving eligibility, completion and transfer rates. 

    In a recent interview, Johnson said the state has made progress in increasing eligibility for UC and CSU and improving completion rates. He pointed to California residents’ enrollment being up significantly at both systems and noted graduation rates have improved greatly at CSU, particularly four-year rates. 

    Progress is still needed, though, in transferring more students to UC and CSU, he said. A state audit published last year found that, among students who began college between 2017 and 2019 and intended to transfer, only about 1 in 5 did so within four years. One thing that will be required, he said, is better coordination between the community college system, CSU and UC.

    “You could argue that the way to do that is to have one big system, and I think that’s a valid argument,” he said, referring to the California Competes proposal. “Politically, I don’t know how realistic it is.”

    The first step to better coordination could be some kind of coordinating council or board — similar to the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which was eliminated in 2011. Proponents say it would benefit the systems to be able to share data and information about their students and use that to strengthen transfers. 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal included $5 million in annual funding to “establish a state planning and coordinating body for TK-12 education, higher education, and state economic and labor agencies,” though his revised budget released last week did not include that proposal.

    “Despite the very large state expenditure on colleges, universities and programs, the state is operating without any institutional body that coordinates these systems or even provides basic data that would be essential for the rational management, maximum efficiency and coordination of the system,” the California Competes report states, adding that creating such a board is “particularly urgent and doable.”

    Other proposals in the report may be less doable, Jez said Monday, adding that her proposal should be seen as a “vision,” even if making it happen would be “really tough.”

    “Our higher ed system is the best in the world, and I want us to stay there,” she said. “And I think that this is a moment that we can accelerate and ask, how do we stay on the vanguard? How do we continue to be the ones that are creating new models that the rest of the world will follow?”





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  • How one county is overhauling its math culture

    How one county is overhauling its math culture


    Riverside County teachers collaboratively learn with the Riverside County Office of Education math team around increasing student thinking.

    Credit: Riverside County Office of Education

    At the Riverside County Office of Education, we serve about 430,000 students across 23 districts, providing instructional support and other direct services in all content areas. In recent years, our state math assessment data has indicated a need for improvement in how our students learn math. As a state and county, we have struggled to show the hoped-for growth in math in our statewide Smarter Balanced Assessments.

    We don’t believe that recommending all our districts adopt new textbooks or curricula would solve the problem because we’d still be teaching math the same way. Instead, we decided to align to evidence-based practices to change our math culture countywide.

    This is how we, in collaboration with our districts, are working toward a better math learning experience for our students.

    Our renewed focus on math culture aligns with national organizations like the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics. The work we are doing also aligns very well with the California’s newly revised math framework. A few of the goals of focusing on culture are to increase student access, build positive identity and develop agency within students. These align directly with the ideas in chapters 1 and 2 of the new framework. Our approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics, informed by national reports such as “Adding It Up” and instructional models like cognitively guided instruction (CGI) honors what students bring to the classroom and builds on it while focusing on a balance between procedural skills, conceptual understanding and application.

    Due to numerous factors, mathematics instruction tends to spend a great deal of time on skills and procedures such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing for the purpose of getting answers. There is a continued focus on procedural skills in elementary mathematics. But, instead of drilling students on these processes over and over, we could be spending time helping them understand the mathematics behind the processes by encouraging them to share their thinking.

    We’ve also seen an interplay between math culture improvements and equity. Changing people’s hearts and minds opens doors to more equitable access for students because educators start to recognize that there aren’t low, medium and high students. Rather, there are students who have had diverse opportunities to learn math, and we should listen to them about what they know and how they learn.

    Ultimately, this culture shift is about student engagement. If students in a classroom are tuned out, we can choose to continue with the status quo, or we can help them see the beauty in math and how it connects to their lives and the things they care about.

    Much of our work is additionally grounded in the Teaching for Robust Understanding framework, the book “Street Data” by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan, and the Universal Design for Learning framework. These ideas underpin the three major aspects of our service: direct contract work with districts, countywide professional development, and the District Math Collaborative.

    We introduce ideas about math culture reform in our professional development contract work with districts. Districts reach out to us when they’d like to do customized professional development work to improve math teaching and learning.

    The District Math Collaborative began with seven districts in spring 2022, and we have continued to grow. Collaboration has centered around reflecting on teaching and learning systems, how they affect students, and how to continuously improve them.

    In addition, we have our annual Week of Math. This event is designed to allow educators, students and families to experience math differently — to find joy in mathematics. We partner with MIND Education to provide many of the games, stories and experiences through their MathMINDs program. We chose this program because it encourages the exploration, problem-solving and pattern-seeking that is the foundation of mathematics instruction we’d like to see in our classrooms. Students and their families delight in solving problems together, which builds community and reinforces the notion that everyone can be a “math person.”

    The anecdotal feedback has been great. We’ve visited schools to measure implementation and conduct surveys on how students perceive the changes. In classrooms with high implementation, we hear that students are more engaged, and that students who were labeled as low or struggling with low participation are now talking and engaging in meaningful ways.

    One of the schools that took the early initiative to work with us about five years ago — Quail Valley Elementary in Menifee Union School District — has exceeded state, county and district averages on assessments for the last two years in the grade levels with high implementation. We make sure to let all our districts know about this sort of success, because an important characteristic of culture is that it’s shared by a whole community.

    Our advice to anyone seeking to improve math culture is to find people who are energized by your ideas and lift them up. In time, they’ll lift others up as well.

    •••

    Dennis Regus, Karon Akins, Diana Ceja and Susan Jagger are the mathematics administrators from Riverside County Office of Education in California.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Q&A: How one Cal State professor plans to teach politics during ‘the most important election since 1860’

    Q&A: How one Cal State professor plans to teach politics during ‘the most important election since 1860’


    Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Sipa via AP

    David McCuan is no stranger to strong disagreements in his political science classes.

    “Everything is framed as a life or death struggle and decision, in a very serious way,” said McCuan, a professor at Sonoma State University. “So what I do tell students at the beginning of the class is, ‘We’re going to work hard. We’re going to disagree. And everything is going to be OK, because politics is a game for adults.’”

    McCuan should know. Over the past two decades, he’s guided easily 400 budding politicos through an election-year course that teaches them not only how to unearth the money and power structures behind state ballot measures but also asks them to register voters, educate fellow citizens on the election and, quite frequently, work with a student from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

    Sonoma State political science professor David McCuan
    Sonoma State political science professor David McCuan
    Credit: Courtesy of David McCuan

    This fall’s course comes ahead of what McCuan’s syllabus calls “the most important election since 1860” — the election that preceded the Civil War.

    In the 2024 election, roughly 8 million youth nationwide will age into the electorate in a divisive election year that has highlighted deep fissures on issues like immigration and the war in Gaza. 

    It’s also a moment of generational transition. Sonoma students returned to the Rohnert Park campus the same week as the Democratic National Convention, where Vice President Kamala Harris’ brisk rise to the top of the ticket signaled the passing of power to a younger group of Democratic Party politicians. 

    All of that means fall 2024 could be a volatile time to teach politics, a reason why McCuan wants students to work with peers with whom they don’t see eye to eye. Students entering his classroom even fill out a questionnaire to gauge their political views, information McCuan uses to pair students with their ideological foil on class projects.  

    “I try to take two opposite individuals and put them together to work on a team to understand what’s going on,” he said, “because I’ve found over the years that actually lends itself to a lot of help for each other.”

    The idea behind the class dates to the late 1990s, when as a young academic, McCuan began to contemplate the disconnect between the political science literature — where whether political campaigns even matter is an ongoing subject of debate — and the world of politics as it’s practiced on the ground. 

    McCuan’s students work with the League of Women Voters to research state ballot measures. The league compiles arguments in favor and against each measure, while students piece together the story of who is funding the ballot issue, how much money they’re spending, which consultants they’ve hired and how those strategies could swing the campaign.

    The course also has a service learning component. Students lead a public forum in which they present their ballot measure research to the rest of the campus and receive training on how to register voters. Many interactions with the government can feel punitive, McCuan said, like serving on a jury or paying taxes, so the hope is that more positive experiences of democracy will inspire students to stay civically engaged for the rest of their lives. 

    “We know that voting is a habit, so if you get people civically minded and engaged to register people to vote or to analyze what’s on the ballot, it has an educative effect,” McCuan said. “The idea is to create something that’s positive about what it means to be civically minded.”

    Sonoma State also does not shy away from political science programming that can provoke strong emotions, McCuan said. The university has hosted a lecture series on the Holocaust and genocide, he noted, and McCuan himself teaches a course that examines terrorism and political violence.

    McCuan said high-profile events have galvanized youth interest in politics in recent years. The 2016 election of Donald Trump, the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision holding that abortion is not a constitutional right each emerged as lightning rods for youth political engagement. 

    Efforts to harness students’ political energy on McCuan’s campus have paid off in the past: 88.3% of registered voters at Sonoma State cast a ballot in 2020, besting the 66% average turnout rate across more than 1,000 colleges and universities in a national study of college voters that year. 

    It’s not just young people at Sonoma State who are eager to cast a ballot. CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, found that turnout for voters age 18 to 29 rose from 39% in 2016 to 50% in 2020.

    Will younger voters turn out this year? More than half of voters 18 to 34 told pollsters they were “extremely likely to vote.”

    What those numbers don’t show is the long-standing voting gap between college goers and people without a bachelor’s degree. In 2020, 75% of 18- to 29-year-olds with a college degree voted compared to just 39% with a high school education, a CIRCLE analysis of census data found.  

    McCuan recently discussed why he thinks universities should invest more in civics education and how he prepares students to discuss difficult issues in the classroom.

    The following Q&A was edited, condensed and re-ordered for length and clarity.

    What should K-12 schools be doing to teach students about civics and politics?

    We’re integrating civics rather than holding it separate. We’re trying to integrate things across the curriculum because we have so many things that we want people to learn or that we demand that they know. And I think that’s losing depth of understanding in the guise of trying to provide breadth of coverage.

    (In political science), we pay very close attention to the relationship between economic, social and political variables, (also known as) ESP. They (students) might be able to name off ESP components of American history and American politics. It’s the what they’re really good at. It’s the why that is always the struggle.

    They might be able to note certain things on the history timeline, but how those were moments of change or inflection points — or why they matter, or how they’re consequential — that’s the part that’s often still the same as it was before. All the stuff they’re covering from K through 12 is ticking off boxes that aren’t necessarily providing greater understanding.

    Is there anything that would better prepare students before they reach your classroom?

    Invest in civics. I struggle, because I was a department chair for a long time and, as you know, in higher education, it’s faced a lot of pressure and a lot of financial pressure.

    I have a great passion about learning. I’m a first generation college student. I’m the son of a cop. I’m not supposed to even be here. The neighborhood I grew up in is the ‘hood, man, and if I can do it, others can do it. It takes a great deal of courage to call things out, and I don’t see that with a lot of higher education leaders, so I need an investment in civics that’s greater.–

    And as we’re cutting budgets and we’re cutting requirements, we’re taking things out– like how to write and how to think — because we’re trying to cram other things in there, or graduate people faster, or push things through. 

    Do you ever have to step in as a conciliator between students in your classroom?

    I haven’t generally had to weigh in on severe disagreements. I think your question, though, is appropriate for this fall, where everyone’s made up their mind about how they’re going to vote, except for 5% of people. So I’m going to have people in this class who are on far sides of the political spectrum trying to work together. Can that be combustible? Yeah, sure, maybe.

    I just feel like a professor who hadn’t been teaching this course for as long as you have would run in the opposite direction from starting now.

    I want a lively, engaged classroom, man!

    And also, remember, while we’re looking at the election, paying attention to candidates, we’re also concentrating a lot on non-candidate on ballot measures. Now, those are our proxy for blue and red, for left and right, sure — but we are concentrating on ballot measures, non-candidate elections, so it does remove some of that heavy partisanship.

    Do you hear this sentiment among colleagues, a reluctance to talk about political views with students?

    What I do hear from colleagues, especially younger colleagues or newer colleagues, is a frustration with trying to delve into issues that are hard. They often avoid those because they’re worried that they won’t have a chair or an administration that will back them up if things get heated. 

    Sometimes I have newer, younger colleagues who try to steer around issues if it makes students uncomfortable or will lead to aggression in the classroom. I’m not afraid of that.

    What makes you not afraid of that?

    I trust that we can get to a place of respect, if not understanding. I want a classroom that’s lively, engaged. I think the best thing in a student in my class is intellectual curiosity. That’s what I want. I’m not interested in the politics — and what I mean by that is, I’m not interested that they feel strongly this way or that way. I need them to be intellectually curious, because I can work with that. We can work together on that. And intellectual curiosity is something we see less and less of, so it’s harder.

    You don’t strike me as somebody who’s disillusioned with political processes — or are you?

    I think to be in this profession, to do this job, you have to have an optimistic view of the human condition. Because you don’t do it for the pay. You don’t do it for the benefits. You do it because you have a passion and a mission that the next generation can do it better. 

    When you see that ‘aha’ moment with students, it’s not because they’re mimicking your view. It’s not that at all, and I don’t do this in the classroom. It’s that they are understanding and making connections that I never saw. Or that they are finding and understanding in depth and making those connections that are analytical, not political. And that’s really helpful, because that’s a skill. 

    Is there some way that the students you’re teaching have changed since you started this course in 2003?

    They use social media tools to get an idea of what’s going on. So in other words, as the digital space has grown in campaigns, they’re in that space. 

    I don’t know what the hell a “Swiftie” is. I didn’t know the BeyHive is Beyoncé, and I would have spelled it like a beehive. But they know, so they’re operating in the space where the BeyHive and the Swifties are operating. 

    They’re understanding that space, and therefore, they are understanding the colors that are used by Kamala and her team, that lime green color. They know what that means, right?

    Their understanding of social media, their clarity about what messages are being communicated, would fly over the head of most pointy-headed academics. So I need them.





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  • Michael Tomasky: Why No One Cares that Trump Is Raking in $1 Billion a Month

    Michael Tomasky: Why No One Cares that Trump Is Raking in $1 Billion a Month


    Why did Trump run for President in 2024?

    1. To stay out of jail.
    2. To destroy our government.
    3. To make money.

    All three answers are correct. Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, recounts the latest financial scandal associated with Trump–the sale of Trump crytocurrency that is pulling billions into family pockets. And he tries to figure out why the story appears to have faded, instead of blowing up as a mind-boggling violation of the emoluments clause. That’s the part of the Constitution that says Presidents are not supposed to be getting rich by being President, especially by any sort of gift from foreign powers. Trump evaded that restriction in his first term, when he owned the hotel closest to the White Hiuse, and visiting potentates rented the most lavish suites. That was small potatoes. An investment firm in Abu Dhabi just put $2 billion into Trump cryptocurrency. Tomasky asks: does anyone care?

    He writes:

    Nicolle Wallace had Scott Galloway on her MSNBC show Thursday. She began by asking him what he makes of this moment in which we find ourselves. Galloway, a business professor and popular podcaster, could have zigged in any number of directions with that open-ended question, so I was interested to see the direction he settled on: “I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”

    Stop and think about that. A presidency lasts, of course, 48 months (at most, we hope). Trump has been enriching himself at an unprecedented scale since day one of his second term—actually, since just before, given that he announced the $Trump meme coin a few days before swearing to protect and defend the Constitution.

    And now, we know that he’s having a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in two weeks for his top $Trump investors, whose identities we may never know. How might these people influence his decisions? This whole arrangement is blatantly corrupt. And The New York Times had a terrific report this week about Don Jr. and Eric going around the world (Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia) making deals from which their father will profit.

    I read these stories, as I’m sure you do, and I think to myself: How on earth is he getting away with this? It’s the right question, but we usually concentrate on the wrong answer.

    For most people, they think first of the Democrats, because they’re the opposition, and by the traditions of our system they’re the ones who are supposed to stop this, or at least raise hell about it. Second, we might think about congressional Republicans, who, if they were actually upholding their own oaths to the Constitution, would be expressing alarm about this.

    They both shoulder some blame, but neither of those is really the answer. Every time I ask myself how he gets away with this, I remember: Oh, right. It’s the right-wing media. Duh.

    After the election, I wrote a column that went viral about how the right-wing media made Trump’s election possible. Fox News, most conspicuously, but also Newsmax, One America News Network, Sinclair, and the rest, along with the swarm of right-wing podcasters and TikTokers, created a media environment in which Trump could do no wrong and Kamala Harris no right.

    Think back—I know you’ve repressed it—to that horror-clown-show Madison Square Garden rally Trump held the week before the election. It was, as the Times put it, a “carnival of grievances, misogyny, and racism.” A generation or two ago, that would have finished off his campaign. Last year? It made no difference. No—it helped. And it helped because a vast propaganda network—armed with press passes and First Amendment protections—spent a week gabbing about how cool and manly it was.

    Newsflash: They’re still at it.

    First of all, Fox News is basically the megaphone of the Trump administration. In Trump’s first 100 days in office, key administration officials, reports Media Matters for America, appeared on Fox 536 times. That, obviously, is 5.36 times per day; in other words, assuming that a cable news “day” runs from 6 a.m. to midnight, that’s one administration official about every three hours. I’ve seen occasional clips where the odd host challenges them on this point or that, but in essence, this is a propaganda parade.

    I tried to do some googling to see how Fox is covering the meme coin scandal. Admitting that Google doesn’t catch everything, the answer seems to be that it’s not. On the network’s website, there was a bland January 18 article reporting that he’d launched it; an actually interesting January 22 piece summarizing a critical column by The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, who charged that it was an invitation to bribery; and finally, an April 24 report that the coin surged in value after Trump announced the upcoming dinner—“critics” were given two paragraphs, deep in the article. (Interesting side note: Predictably, other figures on the far right have aped Trump by launching their own coins, among them former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley.)

    But it’s not just Fox, and it’s not just on corruption. It’s all of them, and it’s on everything. You think any of them are mentioning Trump’s campaign promise to bring prices down on day one, or pointing out that all “persons” in the United States have a right to due process? Or criticizing his shambolic tariffs policies? I’m not saying there’s never criticism. There is. But the thrust of the coverage is protective and defensive: “Expert Failure & the Trump Boom” was the theme of one recent Laura Ingraham segment.

    So sure, blame Democrats to some extent. A number of them are increasingly trying to bring attention to the corruption story, but there’s always more they could be doing. (By the way, new DNC Chair Ken Martin announced the creation one month ago of a new “People’s Cabinet” to push back hard against Trump. Anybody heard of it since?)

    And of course, blame congressional Republicans. Their constitutional, ethical, and moral failures are beyond the pale, and they’re all cowards.

    But neither of those groups is the reason Trump can throw a meme coin party and nothing happens; can send legal U.S. residents to brutal El Salvador prisons; can detain students for weeks because they wrote one pro-Palestinian op-ed; can shake down universities and law firms; can roil the markets with his idiotic about-faces on tariffs; can whine that bringing down prices is harder than he thought; can empower his largest donor, the richest man in the world, to take a meat-ax to the bureaucracy in a way that makes no sense to anyone, and so much more.

    It’s all because Trump and his team operate within the protective cocoon of a media-disinformation environment that allows just enough criticism to retain “credibility” but essentially functions as a Ministry of Truth for the administration that would have shocked Orwell himself.

    And just remember—a billion dollars a month.

    Don’t be surprised to see Trump-branded stuff on the White House website any day now. Trump Bibles, Trump sneakers, MAGA hats, Trump watches, Trump trading cards, etc. why not?



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  • College is one of life’s ‘biggest investments.’ A new report asks — is it worth it?

    College is one of life’s ‘biggest investments.’ A new report asks — is it worth it?


    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    A new report released by the College Futures Foundation finds that while a large majority of California college programs allow graduates to recoup the costs of their postsecondary education in five years or less, a handful leave recent graduates earning less than the typical Californian with only a high school education. 

    The report by researcher Michael Itzkowitz of the HEA Group finds programs that did not result in recent graduates earning more than people with a high school diploma were concentrated at private, for-profit colleges. The paper flags such programs as having no economic return on investment.  

    By contrast, all programs analyzed at the California State University and the University of California had a positive return on investment, measured as the difference between the median graduate’s earnings five years after graduation and the median earnings among Californians aged 25 to 34 with no college education. Less than 1% of programs at both university systems were expected to take more than 10 years to pay off.

    Eloy Ortiz Oakley
    Credit: College Futures Foundation

    Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the president and CEO of the College Futures Foundation and a former chancellor of California Community Colleges, said the report is a response to survey data highlighting increasing skepticism about the value of higher education amid its rising costs. 

    “Paying for a higher education is, in many ways, one of the biggest investments that a student or their family is going to make in their life, second probably only to a mortgage,” he said. “If you think about it, people get a lot more information about other investments that they’re going to make, or other indebtedness they’re getting into, than they do when they invest in an institution of higher education. So we want to make sure that there’s greater transparency and more information for the student and their families when they’re investing in higher education.”

    Oakley said the report is not a judgment on whether a particular academic program should be offered as a result of its economic payoff. Rather, he said the report aims to help Californians to think of a college or university’s value less in terms of its acceptance rate and more in terms of its potential for increasing graduates’ economic mobility.

    Defining ‘return on investment’ 

    The report, “California College Programs That Pay,” analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard to understand the earnings of roughly 260,000 people who graduated from undergraduate certificate, associate and bachelor’s degree programs in California with support from a federal loan or grant.

    Looking at 2,695 programs across 324 institutions, Itzkowitz compared students’ out-of-pocket costs for a credential to the additional money they earn as a result of completing it.

    To judge how much a postsecondary program costs, the study uses colleges’ self-reported data on how much students are responsible for paying after deducting grants and scholarships. That figure includes not just tuition, but also fees, books, supplies and other living costs. This net cost is used to calculate a price-to-earnings premium, a measure of how many years it will take to recoup the cost of a credential. 

    The study makes a couple of simplifying assumptions to calculate that premium. 

    The first is that students will take one year to earn a certificate, two for an associate degree and four for a bachelor’s degree. Those assumptions are not true for many students in practice. For example, only about 36% of Cal State first-year students who started in 2019 completed their degrees in four years. In cases where finishing a program over an extended period of time would be more expensive, the study could underestimate students’ actual costs.

    A second assumption is that every program offered by a given institution cost the same, since cost breakdowns for given fields of study were not available. 

    Finally, the study universe is limited to students who graduated, not those who started a program but didn’t finish it. Previous research suggests students who start a college program but don’t receive a credential tend to earn less than graduates, Itzkowitz said, and are more likely to struggle to pay down debt.

    Report highlights

    Across all programs included in the study, Itzkowitz calculated that 88% prepared graduates to earn back the costs of their credential in five years or less. Median earnings five years after graduation were at least $10,000 more than those of a typical high school graduate for the vast majority of programs, too.

    But 12% of programs left graduates taking five years or longer to recover out-of-pocket costs and, of those, 112 were flagged as having no economic return on investment.

    The report also notes differences across education sectors. Itzkowitz found that 17% of programs offered by for-profit schools had no return on investment, compared with only 1.2% and 1.3% of majors and credentials at nonprofit and public institutions, respectively. 

    One way for-profit institutions differed from their nonprofit and public peers is that the for-profit institutions offered the most undergraduate certificates in the state — and a larger share of those programs resulted in no economic payoff. Two fields, cosmetology and somatic bodywork, stood out as having the most programs with no measured return on investment.

    Still, many programs showed returns even at a one-year time horizon. The report calculated that almost half of programs at public institutions allowed graduates to recoup the costs of their credential within a year. Among private, nonprofit institutions, 7% of programs positioned graduates to earn back their costs within that period. Thirteen percent of for-profit institutions met the same criteria.

    Oakley said that he hopes the report inspires more research into whether higher-earning programs are attracting students of color, where high-return programs are located regionally and how to replicate programs giving the best economic payoff.

    “There are a lot of programs within our public institutions that provide a good return on investment,” he said. “What surprises me is that when we ask those institutions why, they don’t necessarily know why.”

    Other approaches to measuring the value of college

    While the College Futures Foundation report focuses on graduates’ earnings in the five years after they graduate, other recent research has sought to project college-goers’ earnings over a longer time horizon.

    For example, a 2019 report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce ranked 4,500 colleges by calculating their projected returns 40 years after enrollment. That analysis estimates the net present value of a student’s potential future earnings — that is, it balances the costs of paying for a college education today against the potential for higher earnings over time.

    The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity in May released a study framing return on investment in terms of how much college increases a student’s lifetime earnings after subtracting the costs of college. Rather than compare college-goers to the median high school graduate, that study estimates what college-goers would have earned had they not pursued higher education. It also takes into account colleges’ actual completion rates, a step that acknowledges the risk to students that start a program but don’t finish it. 

    EdSource receives funding from several foundations, including the College Futures Foundation. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.





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  • Musk’s DOGE Protects One (1) Person: Elon Musk

    Musk’s DOGE Protects One (1) Person: Elon Musk


    Before Trump was elected, Elon Musk was being investigated by multiple federal agencies. After Trump’s election, Musk persuaded Trump to put him in charge of a cost-cutting operation called “Department of Government Efficiency,” which was tasked with cutting the budgets or shuttering multiple federal agencies.

    Musk and his team of hackers were ruthless in closing agencies that did not like. They shut down USAID, which provided food and medicine to the world’s neediest families and children.They terminated scientific research on a large number of university campuses and in the NIH, which sponsors critical research into cures for deadly diseases. They defunded large and small.

    But there is one kind of project they not defund: anything that pays federal funds to Elon Musk.

    More than that, Musk had a very lucky break. His good friend Trump, to whom he gave nearly $300 million for the 2024 election, is unlikely to prosecute his pal Elon.

    Lawrence Darmiento of the Los Angeles Times had the story:

    Elon Musk and his companies faced at least $2.37 billion in potential federal fines and penalties the day President Trump took office, according to a congressional report released Monday that highlights the possible conflicts of interest posed by the billionaire’s cost-cutting work in government.

    The 43-page memo by the minority staff of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), is the most exhaustive attempt yet to detail Musk’s alleged conflicts as an advisor to Trump and chief promoter of his team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
    Based on publicly available documents, media reports and the committee’s own calculations, the memo found that as of Jan. 20, Musk and his companies were “subject to at least 65 actual or potential actions by 11 different federal agencies” and that 40 of those created $2.37 billion in potential liabilities.

    “Mr. Musk has taken a chainsaw to the federal government with no apparent regard for the law or for the people who depend on the programs and agencies he so blithely destroys,” the memo stated. “The through line connecting many of Mr. Musk’s decisions appears to be self-enrichment and avoiding what he perceives as obstacles to advancing his interests.”

    The memo notes that Musk’s companies have received more than $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits going back more than 20 years. And it notes that SpaceX, as of Friday, had $10.1 billion in federal contracts.

    “President Trump could not have chosen a person more prone to conflicts of interest,” states the memo, which calls on the president, executive departments and regulatory agencies to “take coordinated action to address Elon Musk’s threat to the integrity of federal governance.”

    To no one’s surprise, the white Hohse press office indignantly insisted that Musk had no conflicts of interest.

    The committee found that Tesla created most of the potential penalties for Musk — a cumulative $1.89 billion — due to investigations, lawsuits and other issues involving eight agencies.

    The largest single liability was a potential $1.19-billion fine due to a reported criminal investigation opened by the Department of Justice into allegedly false or misleading statements made by Musk and the company about its Autopilot and Full-Self Driving Features since as early as 2016.

    The Times previously reported the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is probing the Full-Self Driving technology after reports of four collisions in low-visibility conditions, including one in which a pedestrian was killed.

    However, doubts have been raised about the Justice Department’s commitment to any prosecution. The memo notes that in February the department dismissed a lawsuit it filed against SpaceX for allegedly discouraging asylum seekers and refugees from applying for jobs or hiring them because of their citizenship status. It calculated the lawsuit could have exposed SpaceX to $46.1 million in liabilities.

    The second single largest liability of $462 million facing Musk also involved Tesla. It arose out of a 2023 lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for the company’s alleged toleration of widespread racial harassment of Black employees at its Fremont, Calif., factory. Tesla has denied the allegations. In January, Trump fired two Democratic commissioners and the agency’s general counsel.

    How likely is it that any of these charges will go to trial?



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  • How one rural county pays for its resource officers

    How one rural county pays for its resource officers


    A Trinity High School student in Weaverville conducts a science experiment with the assistance of school resource officer Taylor Halsey, while fellow resource officer Greg Lindly observes.

    Credit: Timbre Beck / EdSource

    While some districts commit millions of dollars to resource officers, others struggle to find funding.

    Trinity County, population 16,500, has cobbled together a school policing program using a state grant funded by taxes on marijuana sales.

    The grant helps pay for two resource officers who cover nine widely spaced districts across the county’s 3,208 square miles, most of it national forest. Checking on one school requires a five-hour drive round trip on mountain roads, County Superintendent of Schools Fabio Robles said.

    The officers, a deputy sheriff and a juvenile probation officer, balance their work at schools with other law enforcement duties.

    They can only get to some schools a few times a year. “It’s a challenge,” Robles said in an interview in Weaverville, the county seat. The sheriff’s office and the probation department did not allow the officers to be interviewed for this story.

    Only one district has a contract with the county. Trinity Alps Unified agreed to an open-ended agreement with the county in 2020. That agreement doesn’t address school discipline.

    Robles said he wants to revisit the issue of contracts, but his priority is to keep the resource officer program running.

    “We’ve taken a step back lately,” Robles said of formal agreements between the districts and the counties. Contracts “are something we should re-look at,” he said.





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  • Transact Campus Partners with Luxer One for Secure, Frictionless On-Campus Package Delivery

    Transact Campus Partners with Luxer One for Secure, Frictionless On-Campus Package Delivery


    Jun 28
    2023

    Transact Campus Partners with Luxer One for Secure, Frictionless On-Campus Package Delivery

    Transact Campus, “Transact,” the award-winning leader in innovative mobile credential and payment solutions, today announced a partnership with Luxer One, a premium manufacturer of package management systems and smart contactless lockers, owned by ASSA ABLOY, the global leader in access solutions. This partnership will deliver a turnkey solution for on-campus package delivery, including hardware, software, installation, service, support, and package delivery company facilitation.

    The Luxer One partnership addresses campuses’ desire for a versatile and secure package delivery system, enhancing the student experience by providing a reliable, around-the-clock package pick-up service. Use cases beyond package management include laptop and lab equipment exchange, library holds, bag and personal item storage, and pickups from the student bookstore. In addition, the partnership includes configurable integration with Transact Campus ID solutions, enabling students to access lockers using their Transact Mobile Credential or physical credential.

    “At Transact, we are committed to transforming the campus environment into a place where innovation thrives and the campus experience is seamlessly connected,” said Rasheed Behrooznia, SVP and General Manager, Campus ID Solutions, Transact. “Our partnership with Luxer One not only provides a superior, frictionless student experience, but also strengthens the security and connectivity between students and client facilities.”

    Prior to the partnership with Luxer One, students were constrained by limited package pick-up hours and had to endure long lines, or risk their packages being left unattended. Luxer One significantly reduces costs associated with staffing a mail room for extended hours.

    “This collaboration represents a significant milestone for Luxer One as we continue to innovate and enhance our offerings for valued customers. By joining forces with Transact, we are combining our expertise and resources to revolutionize the way universities manage packages, item exchange, library orders, and even temporary bag storage. Together, we will deliver unparalleled convenience, efficiency, and security as a full campus solution. We are excited about the endless possibilities this collaboration brings and look forward to the incredible advancements we will achieve together,” said Josh Middlebrook, President, Luxer One.

    The partnership will provide a secure, convenient, package delivery solution on Transact-enabled campuses which reduces the burden on administrative staff and enables efficient management of daily operations. In addition to the primary benefit of a frictionless student experience, this union also provides secure package delivery assurance, and reduces costs for campuses.



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