Employment Outcomes at California Colleges: Improving Information for Students, Schools, and Policymakers

California has long been a national and global leader in developing and maintaining quality higher education options, as well as in providing financial aid and consumer protections for Californians who access that education. However, although California's colleges and the state government do collect, receive, and report a great deal of data, these data have not been effectively connected to present accurate, understandable, and comparable employment outcomes information in a transparent way for policymakers, students and families, institutions, researchers, and others. In the absence of a statewide data system in California, the California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU), and University of California (UC) have each initiated their own independent efforts to share higher education outcomes data. However, the data each independently share are slightly different, and there is no consistency in format or presentation among any of the segments. The result is that higher education employment outcomes data available in California are not comparable because of inconsistency in data definitions and reporting between the segments and individual schools; incomplete because it does not include vital elements that students and policymakers need to know; and inaccessible because it is not housed centrally for statewide use. This report provides an overview of higher education employment outcomes data currently available in California, highlights where data are lacking, and makes recommendations for the state to improve the data's availability, comparability, and usability by: (1) Creating and developing a secure, private, central statewide database that collects and houses studentlevel education, employment, and wage data for all higher education institutions in California; (2) Even in the absence of a statewide database, making verified employment and wage outcomes data newly available to students at private schools by requiring that the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) and the Employment Development Department (EDD) share data in the same way that public segments do; and (3) Creating a publicly accessible dashboard that presents accurate, comparable education employment outcomes data by school and by program. In addition, this report also highlights qualities of several systems developed in other states, which can serve as examples as California develops a model statewide system.[This report was written with assistance from