Education and Economic Growth

It is an article of faith among California’s political class that insufficient higher educational opportunities are a constraint on California’s economic and job growth. Just about every California economic development document includes a discussion of California’s desperate need for more college graduates. Unfortunately, the facts disagree with the faith. California is educating far more people than it is creating jobs for them to take. In the past 10 years, California’s public higher education system alone issued 2,455,421 degrees. Over the same period, the state saw a net increase of only 1,136,642 jobs. That’s right. California granted more than twice as many post-high-school degrees as net new jobs.