Welcome back to Degrees of Change, our series commemorating the 65th anniversary of California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. In this series, we reflect on the Master Plan’s legacy and explore how its foundational principles can evolve to meet the needs of today’s diverse student population and dynamic economy.
Our most recent guest, State Senator Christopher Cabaldon, represents California’s 3rd Senate District, which spans portions of Contra Costa, Solano, Sacramento, Napa, Sonoma, and Yolo counties. He brings a rare breadth of experience to conversations about higher education, having engaged with the system from nearly every vantage point: as a UC Berkeley graduate and student activist, a Vice Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, faculty member at Sacramento State, and Mayor of West Sacramento for two decades, and now as state legislator. He’s also held influential roles as a commissioner on the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education and as a former board member of California Competes.
This multifaceted background gives Senator Cabaldon unique insight into how higher education policy works at every level of California’s complex system. Having seen the challenges from inside institutions, from city hall, and now from the state legislature, he understands both the barriers students face and the levers available to remove them.
Today’s conversation explores how Senator Cabaldon’s varied roles have shaped his perspective on California’s higher education challenges. Senator Cabaldon addresses how California can create meaningful coordination to build seamless pathways that turn policy reforms into tangible results.
Their conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Dr. Jez: Just to kick us off, you’ve engaged with higher education from almost every angle, as a student, as a faculty member at the public university, as a community college vice chancellor, as a mayor launching local college access programs, and now as a state senator shaping policy. How have these different roles and perspectives shaped your thinking about informing a better California via higher education?
Sen. Cabaldon: It is a great question in retrospect. It wasn’t the plan to stop by all these stations in higher education but I began as a student government leader and activist during the apartheid movement and affirmative action work at Berkeley, seeking to understand how to change the world and improve my campus and state policies for diversity, investments, and other issues. I thought, ‘Well, all the power is in Sacramento,’ so I decided to work in the legislature. I was the head of the higher education staff at the state assembly.
I worked on one of the assembly revisions of the Master Plan, as well as other tasks, and I kept thinking, ‘It’s just really hard to make policy from the Capitol.’ It’s the administration. That’s where it’s at. So when I got the opportunity, I became vice chancellor at the California Community Colleges and worked closely with the faculty members. I thought that’s where the power lies.
I later became a faculty member, and then at one point, Governor Brown said, ‘Would you want to be on the Interstate Commission for Higher Education?’ This gave me an important perspective; however, it didn’t take long before I realized this elusive search for where the decisions are actually being made – there’s no such place. Having now been on a lifetime treasure hunt for where the actual higher ed decisions are being made, I came to the conclusion that they aren’t. That decisions and actions are kind of an emergent property of the chaos.
We’re sort of all cohabitating in this higher ed world together, without any sort of coherent decision-making structure. So that might lead us to some of the conversation about coordination, but it’s a constant reminder I give myself that it’s never as simple as you think.
“Having now been on a lifeline treasure hunt for where the actual higher ed decisions are being made, I came to the conclusion that they aren’t. That decisions and actions are kind of an emergent property of the chaos.”
Dr. Jez: What needs to happen, or how do we get these entities to work together to make the change that we want to see?
Sen. Cabaldon: Higher ed is exhilarating work because we all share very similar values. Whether you’re a faculty union leader, an assistant dean, a senator, a president, or a chancellor, we’re all trying to do what’s best for students. We truly believe in the power of education, and we know that California is what it is today because of it.
Now I’m in the Senate, but even as mayor, you work on climate issues, for example, and it’s the oil companies fighting against the environmental activists, who are fighting against the environmental attorneys, who are fighting against somebody else. The same thing in healthcare. It’s the doctors versus the insurance companies, and the nurses want something different. There is sort of a dialectic of opposing views.
I do think that what that dialectic does in those other policy areas is reveal gaps in our paradigms. It holds us accountable for the things that we say we’re trying to do, but don’t actually accomplish. Or when we deliver the program, we don’t get the outcomes. If that happens in healthcare, or climate, or consumer protection, there’s always somebody to say that’s not working. In higher ed, that’s not really the case. Because we all share the same values and good intentions, and because our goals are so numerous and difficult to measure, we don’t face the same external pressure to demonstrate results. There’s no adversary holding up a mirror to show us when we’re falling short of our promises to students.
That sort of breakthrough innovation, that accountability, that real focus on outcomes, and really, in the end, the student and not each other’s professional norms is, in a very paradoxical way, harder in higher ed than it is in these bloody battleground policy issues that I work in the rest of the time.
“That sort of breakthrough innovation, that accountability, that real focus on outcomes, and, in the end, the student and not each other’s professional norms is, in a very paradoxical way, harder in higher ed than it is in these bloody battleground policy issues that I work in the rest of the time.”
Dr. Jez: Right, the stakes are high in areas like healthcare policy. At the extreme, literally life and death. The goals are clear. In higher education, there are numerous goals, which is both what makes higher education amazing, with all the benefits it offers, and also what can make it really challenging. Even if you look at student learning, it might be easier to measure within a specific class or assessment but it turns out to be tough when you zoom out to measure student learning writ large.
Sen. Cabaldon: When I was working on climate issues, I admired the policy folks on climate who wanted to eliminate gas-powered vehicles. Now, whether you think that’s a good idea or not is not really the point. They cooked up this idea, and then they fought really hard against the oil companies, the auto manufacturers, and a bunch of other folks, and they won a mandate. In 10 years, there would be no more gas-powered vehicles (until reversed by the Trump administration).
That was bold. Then I returned to work on higher education for a moment, and someone said, ‘We’re this close to getting common course numbering in higher education.’ I’m like, common course numbering? I worked on that legislation that passed in 1990, and we’re still implementing it. We’re still applauding ourselves for our progress in implementing it. So the scope and the degree of ambition that exists in virtually every other policy area is much higher. I think effective breakthrough policymaking requires a little bit more elbows than we’re sometimes comfortable throwing in higher ed.
And we know that the stakes are as high as healthcare. The impact of a UCLA degree on a low-wealth Black family in California is so enormous. We know the secret sauce. We have the magic. So if this was healthcare, every single year would be like, how are we not getting a UCLA degree to more people? We need to get it to 10,000, or 50,000, or a million of them each year. That would be our imperative.
“I think effective breakthrough policymaking requires a little bit more elbows than we’re sometimes comfortable throwing in higher ed.”
Dr. Jez: We can look beyond higher ed, or higher ed in other states or countries. Higher ed does change lives, and in many ways, the stakes are very high. How are you thinking big? What excites you? If you could encourage listeners to be thinking about higher ed in a more ambitious way, what gets you excited?
Sen. Cabaldon: We did a bill this year that was based on something that we did locally in my own community during the pandemic. I was in an Urban League conference in DC about a decade ago. We were talking about the gap between 12th grade and college that allows students to fall through the cracks. What are we going to do about that?
I’m thinking that when people pointed out that the 1040 federal tax form was hard to complete, the country had two options it could have taken. We could have said, ‘How do we make sure every American has access to an H&R Block counselor?’ The second option: ‘Why don’t we just make a 1040EZ? Why don’t we just make it simple?’
This gap between 12th grade and college is largely a human-made phenomenon. It is clear today that every American needs some education beyond high school. We haven’t made education beyond high school universal, free, or compulsory, but could we at least make it less of a hassle?
In my city, we were the first in the country to implement an auto-admission program. This year, I have a bill pending on the governor’s desk that would automatically admit every eligible California graduating high school senior, hundreds of thousands of young people in California, to the CSU system, without requiring an application. That passed the legislature.* That’s only possible because of you and some of your colleagues.
Dr. Jez: I often think, can we design a system that doesn’t require another person to tell you how to navigate it? Sometimes we’re just going to have complicated systems; I get it, but let’s save those for things that we don’t have, such as the technical infrastructure or data, to simplify. I am so with you. Let’s make things so much easier for people.
Sen. Cabaldon: I don’t want to give up one organization, but one of the K-12 groups for one day was opposed to the bill I just described. Their opposition was that students might attend a university when they’re not ready. I called them up and said “That’s a very 1950s way to think about this. A student who’s fully eligible to go to the CSU shouldn’t be told that unless their counselor decides that they are worthy of that information?”
They said, if the student is in Barstow, then they should just go to Barstow Community College, and they’d be better off than going to CSU. To reiterate, I’m a former vice chancellor of a community college. I’m a huge fan of community colleges. But, that’s not necessarily true. If the average completion rate for community college in California, and this is the hardest stat for us to say out loud, if it’s less than 35% for degree, or transfer, certificate, it’s substantially less than going to CSU.
So you are better off enrolling directly in Sonoma State or Sac State than you are in attempting the transfer route, unless you happen to know you’re one of the 30-plus percent.
This was happening around the same time as a bill to expand the College Promise program for community colleges, which currently only applies to full-time students, to all students. I surprised everybody. I’m a former member of President Obama’s College Promise Board, and I opposed the bill. I said, look, that’s in there because we’re trying to nudge students to do full-time instruction, because the chances that you finish with a degree or a transfer or a certificate are over 50% if you enroll full-time, and they’re in the single digits if you enroll part-time.
If you have single-digit completion rates, if you were a proprietary institution, we would be sending the Attorney General after you. That’s unacceptable. We would say you’re preying on the most vulnerable people in California by telling them to sign up and quit their job for less than a 10% or 15% success rate. That’s not cool. But because our intentions are good, we kind of wave all that away.
I’m still considering how to approach this at the state level, but we typically don’t adjust our outcomes and accountability measures for completion. Students are showing up at our colleges and universities because they have been convinced by us that this is the key to prosperity and social mobility. And so, our job is to make sure that we do put that front and center, even when it’s uncomfortable for us and our institutions.
“Students are showing up at our colleges and universities because they have been convinced by us that this is the key to prosperity and social mobility. And so, our job is to make sure that we do put that front and center, even when it’s uncomfortable for us and our institutions.”
Dr. Jez: Getting students good information on what their likelihood of completion is, or what the program will get you, or what is the typical time to completion, is necessary to be able to make informed choices. I’m excited to see that UC is going to start giving students labor market information on their programs of study. I know we require it for for-profits. Although I did a study of how students attending for-profits actually process the information that they’re given, which is typically at the point of enrollment, so it’s a little late.
However, I think these are the things that make a lot of sense for the state to consider. We recognize the value of providing this information to students. How do we make sure people are A, going, and B, making decisions that enable them to successfully complete? Because Californians are smart. We can figure it out, assuming we have the right info and the right support.
Sen. Cabaldon: I’ll just say one other thing about this, it was kind of the flip side of it, I have the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo in my district as well. Whenever anyone does rankings in the United States of the top institutions in the country for what’s the best value in America, the California Maritime Academy is always in the top 3 to 5.
Its licensure program has a 90% completion rate, a 90% placement rate in the industry, and starting salaries in those industries are close to $150K. The taxpayers own this, and we’ve created this. Yet, for most of its history, including the last decade, it has been under-enrolled. We can’t get people to come. That’s crazy!
Dr. Jez: I will say that California Competes is launching a study soon to really try to understand how today’s students make decisions about whether they attend college, where they attend, and what they study. We know a lot about the more traditional student who goes to college prep, is in high school, but if you are not that student, or if you are a worker working a poverty-wage job, and you realize you need to go to college to have a real chance at a good life, what makes you make that decision? How do you find info? How do you enroll?
Sen. Cabaldon: Great. I’ll look forward to that research as well. When you ask what the big priority is for higher education, or a new Master Plan, it is this one: How do we re-anchor ourselves around California as it is, and not California as it was in 1960?
“How do we re-anchor ourselves around California as it is, and not California as it was in 1960?”
Dr. Jez: Looking ahead, as California moves toward creating a new coordinating entity, how can we make sure it creates more seamless pathways through higher education for students and turns policy reforms into tangible results, since as you’ve said ‘Simply having a coordinating body doesn’t guarantee coordination’?
Sen. Cabaldon: We can’t let it be the be-all and end-all. It’s an important part of the framework, but it is not the answer, and it can’t reduce our fire and our urgency around the rest of it.
Dr. Jez: As Mayor of Sacramento you advanced efforts like the West Sacramento Home Run to better connect education and workforce areas. Government structures in California don’t always fall neatly under our city government’s purview but are central to the communities’ economic future. Regardless of their formal structures, mayors are typically still held accountable for education outcomes and obviously always care deeply about economic opportunity in their city. You’ve clearly shown both commitment and expertise in this space. How did you approach this complex but critical issue as a mayor, and now as a senator?
Sen. Cabaldon: I do think mayors play an important role. When I was mayor I chaired the education committee for all the mayors in America. We did a lot of work in the higher ed space because mayors are held accountable.
When it comes to thinking about how higher ed does a radically different and better job of dealing with education beyond right out of high school, mayors know how critical that is. You cannot have a prosperous local or regional economy as a mayor if you’re just focused on a declining population of recent high school graduates alone. Or, if you’re thinking of education and training as something that lasts only two to five years, and then it’s all over, and you never need to learn anything again. Mayors are also typically on their local workforce boards, or they appoint half of them and have the ear of their university presidents, but also the major corporations.
As mayor, I developed a program for the automatic admission of high school students to college. However, I understood that this was not going to be a city council resolution that we could then present to the college president and the superintendent. We had to work it, and a few elbows and a few hugs in order to make it happen. We were the first ones in California to do a college promise (which means funding the first two years of higher education for community colleges.) The flip side of it, though, is that higher ed also has to have some humility about that and understand that mayors, companies, and nonprofits don’t exist only when you turn the light on at a collaboration session. You need to understand how you can support one another.
Dr. Jez: I appreciate that viewpoint. If you could advise California on one immediate action to improve higher ed outcomes, what would it be? It’s an easy final question.
Sen. Cabaldon: The two things that are still top of mind for me are accounting for completion rates. Both in how we communicate with students and families, but also in our policy and accountability. We have to understand it’s threatening to us as institutions. A lot of people felt that way about student success measures a decade ago.
We got over it. We implemented a lot of breakthrough innovations in terms of public policy and community college student success in the last decade, probably more than ever before. We need to be able to grapple with the harsh reality about the differences in completion rates.
And then policymakers and higher ed have to heed what California Competes has been saying, which is we must focus on all Californians, working adults, and others, and around lifelong learning, in order to continue to upskill and achieve full potential, both individually and as California’s economy, so we can continue to be prosperous.
* The bill was signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom on October 8, 2025.
