MALDEF joins the Campaign for College Opportunity and coalition partners in urging Governor Newsome and the California legislature to invest in higher education and pursue policy reforms in order to close racial equity gaps in college access and completion.
Our California
Our California is a statewide effort endorsed by hundreds of statewide leaders that calls on California’s legislature and Governor Newsome to set a college attainment goal for adults of 60% by 2030, set a goal to completely eliminate racial equity gaps in college opportunity and completion, and implement a budget and set of policies that ensures greater access, completion and affordability for college students.
The key components of Our California include:
- Developing and adopting a statewide attainment goal and closing persistent racial opportunity gaps in higher education. This includes establishing a college attainment goal, making equity the driving criterion in all decision-making, and committing to addressing the gaps by prioritizing the improvement of college access for underrepresented communities.
- Improving the faculty and leadership diversity in California’s college and universities. This includes appointing Regents, Trustees and Board of Governors that reflect the diversity of the state and improving institutional admissions, hiring policies and practices that yield diverse faculty and student bodies.
- Increasing access to serve more Californians. This includes addressing the rising number of eligible students turned away by California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC) system and revisiting the admissions caps to expand the access, affordability and quality of California’s educational institutions.
- Improving student pathways. This includes tearing down unnecessary barriers to success for students and strengthening support of the Associate Degree for Transfer and recent efforts to eliminate remedial education requirements at the CSU.
- Establishing a central coordinating body in higher education. This includes creating a higher education coordinating council, one that will set bold statewide goals and hold institutions accountable, because our higher education segments have operated in silos for far too long.
- Creating accountability for student success by creating a centralized, longitudinal data system. In order to address the challenge of our education systems operating in silos and committing to connecting early childhood, K-12 and higher education data systems to better serve California’s students data must be predicated on transparency and measurement.
More information on Our California can be found at: https://collegecampaign.org/ourcalifornia/