California colleges and universities need to step up degree completion dramatically for the state's economy to flourish, a group of business and civic leaders said Thursday.
The state will need 2.3 million more college degrees and certificates than it is likely to produce by 2025, the report by California Competes said.
If legislators and higher-education leaders fail to act quickly, the group said, California will lose its economic and educational luster.
"We have to change business as usual in higher education," said Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, one of the organization's board members. "This is about our future."
The group recommended. changes, including improved decision-making at California's 72 community-college districts and figuring out which college degrees will be most valuable in the future, The state also needs an independent agency to guide California's higher-education decisions, the organization said.
With 2.6 million students, community colleges are a key to improving California's outlook, the group said. The state is on track to grant 3.2 million degrees and vocational certificates in the next 13 years, researchers concluded, but 5.5 million will be needed by then.
Matt Krupnick covers higher education. Contact him at 510-208-6488. Follow him at Twitter.com/MattKrupnick.
Source: www.contracostatimes.com
California investor’s Dallas property play winds down - Dallas Morning News
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Voters in California Back Pension Cuts for City Workers - New York Times
In San Diego and San Jose, voters overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives designed to help balance ailing municipal budgets by cutting retirement benefits for city workers.
Around 70 percent of San Jose voters favored the pension measure, while 66 percent of San Diego residents supported a similar measure.
"This is really important to our taxpayers," Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose, said Tuesday night. "We’ll get control over these skyrocketing retirement costs and be able to provide the services they are paying for."
Statewide, voters also remained very closely divided on a $1-per-pack tax on cigarettes, which would be the first increase in the cigarette tax here in 14 years. Proceeds from the tax would not go to state coffers, but would instead finance cancer research.
The tax remained too close to call on Wednesday morning, according to The Associated Press, although opponents of the measure appeared to cling to a razor-thin lead with all precincts reporting.
Antismoking advocates, who promoted the tax as the best way to reduce smoking rates, were outspent nearly four to one. Their opponents, financed largely by the tobacco industry, spent almost $47 million in advertisements to defeat the measure.
Public employee unions, meanwhile, had fought hard against the two pension reform initiatives.
The San Diego Municipal Employees Association brought an unsuccessful legal challenge in an effort to keep the measure off the ballot, and union leaders said they would continue to challenge the new pension plan in court. The measure in San Jose will probably face a legal challenge as well.
Michael Zucchet, general manager of the union, said that it had already negotiated pension reforms with the city, and that the plan imposed by the ballot initiative would not save San Diego money. Its proponents, he said, were motivated largely by politics.
“This initiative, in and of itself, saves not one penny,” Mr. Zucchet said.
But the mayors of both cities pushed the pension reforms hard, arguing that changes to city worker pensions were essential to keep municipal budgets in the black.
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said he hoped the initiatives would provide models for other cities and for the state government, where pension reform efforts have stalled. "The appetite for pension reform in California is huge," Mr. Coupal said.
Tuesday also offered the first widespread test of the state’s new primary system, in which the top two vote-getters move on to a runoff, regardless of party affiliation.
One of the most heavily financed races pit two sitting Democratic representatives, colleagues in the House for 15 years, against each other to represent the San Fernando Valley: Brad Sherman won with 42 percent of the vote, and Howard L. Berman had 32 percent. They will face each other again in the November runoff.
Source: www.nytimes.com
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