Credit: Julie Leopo for EdSource

Pre-pandemic Graduation ceremonies in 2022 at Glendale Community College students

Credit: Julie Leopo for EdSource

Pre-pandemic Graduation ceremonies in 2022 at Glendale Community Higher students

In a development that would no doubtfulness exist welcomed by many aspiring higher students and their parents, California should develop a common awarding form for admission to all levels of public higher education in California, including the state's community colleges system.

Currently, students must utilize to each system separately.  The proposal is merely one of myriad recommendations issued by a task force convened by Gov. Gavin Newsom's assistants to come up with what information technology is calls "a roadmap for higher education subsequently the pandemic."

The mutual application outlined in the task force'due south "Recovery with Equity" study released Tuesday would replace what it chosen "the currently overwhelming and Byzantine application and transfer processes." To practise and then, the job force said, would require developing an "integrated engineering platform" that currently doesn't be.

It is not clear how a common application for California would work, although it echoes ithe "common app" in place for over 600 more often than not individual colleges and universities nationwide.

The 20-fellow member panel was organized by Lande Ajose, Newsom'due south principal advisor on higher education, in consultation with Newsom'southward Council for Post-Secondary Education which he established in 2019. The council is fabricated upwards of the heads of all public education systems in California, labor leaders and others.

The taskforce detailed a plan that would aid California's post-pandemic recovery so that by 2030, all of California's public colleges would be inclusive, offer clear pathways to degrees, offering all public school students early college experiences and access to college preparatory courses, and support students' bones needs such as internet and financial aid.

The report endorses some long-standing goals such as improving faculty and staff diversity, promoting student well-existence, subsidizing internet access for eligible students and improving college affordability. But it also proposes building and expanding systems that would be new for the state:

  • Offer an online advising platform that would let middle, high school and college learners to admission their educational records, enrollment and financial help, and encounter their progress toward a degree.
  • Create an online land social services platform that allows students to apply in 1 place for annihilation they are qualified to receive, such every bit financial assistance, CalFresh, housing programs, subsidized childcare, transportation, wellness and mental wellness care.
  • Making A-G coursework, the sequence of courses needed for admission to UC and CSU, as the default high school curriculum, Currently, nearly students in California are encouraged to consummate those courses, only in nigh districts, they are non required.
  • Expanding admission to early college experiences like dual enrollment which allows students to take higher courses in high school.

In tandem with the growing recognition that students' non-bookish needs have a profound impact on their educational outcomes, the study advocates that students be able to have a single online tool allowing them to apply "all at once for the full spectrum of country services they authorize to receive (e.g., financial aid, CalFresh, housing programs, wellness/mental healthcare, subsidized childcare, transportation, internet/technology support, etc.)."

The goal, Ajose said, is to emerge from the pandemic "with a vision for economic recovery with a post-secondary ecosystem that is more equitable, more resilient and more than coordinated." A key office of that vision, Ajose said, is to "elevate the number and diversity of Californians who earn a caste, with a focus on improving outcomes for Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, Ethnic and adult learner students who unduly accept been denied opportunity and access to higher instruction."

The task force endorsed the expanded dual access program (not to be dislocated with dual enrollment) proposed by Newsom in his January budget which would allow students admitted to a community college to simultaneously be admitted to a specific California State University or Academy of California campus, if they met all the requirements for transfer to a four-year establishment.

Crucially, the "streamlined and unified admissions process" the chore force has in mind would require creating a single repository for student transcripts from high schools, community colleges, CSU and UC. Initially, the priority would exist on loftier schoolhouse and community college transcripts.  Such a repository is what planners envision for the Cradle to Career Data Organisation currently existence adult to track a pupil'due south trajectory from preschool into the workplace.

The leaders of the country's public and individual colleges and universities applauded the task forcefulness's recommendations.

"The Task Strength'south forward-thinking recommendations will ensure that the (California Country Academy) prepares future generations of diverse leaders of all backgrounds who will pb and contribute to the Gilded State's recovery as well as its robust growth, benefiting all communities, in the years to come up," CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro said.

Community colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley said the taskforce'south recommendations complement the Vision for Success initiative, the organisation'southward blueprint focused on drastically improving success rates of community college students.

State Board of Education president Linda Darling-Hammond endorsed the notion of clarifying and streamlining pathways from preK-12 schools to higher education, including emphasizing what she called Linked Learning pathways to careers and dual credit options that "shine transitions to our systems of higher education." Those, she said, "will yield long-term benefits to our state."

As for distance learning — a style of teaching that almost anybody anticipates will remain a central part of the postsecondary landscape after the pandemic — the task force says that California should make sure that students have internet access and if necessary underwrite the costs of providing it. That could be done past increasing funds for cyberspace access in Cal Grant B fiscal aid packages, and through partnerships with the private sector.

The job force underscored the crucial importance of getting a college degree for a educatee's later success in the labor market. It noted that more than than half of California's labor force with a loftier school degree or less had filed for unemployment since March 2020. That compared with 13% of workers with a bachelor'south caste or college who had filed for unemployment. Disturbingly, almost all Blackness workers with a loftier school caste or less — 99% — had filed for unemployment in 2020, also as 75% of the Asian Pacific Islanders. That compared with 52% of white and 33% of the Latino workers with that level of pedagogy who filed for unemployment.

To get more reports similar this ane, click here to sign upward for EdSource'south no-cost daily email on latest developments in instruction.