Claiming California’s Golden Ticket starts with centering working learners—and ensuring postsecondary education leads to real upward mobility.
Alongside the Golden Ticket report, College Futures is launching a storytelling series that explores how postsecondary education can be aligned with working learners—and how, when it is, it drives attainment and upward mobility. These stories follow working learners and the partnerships working to align postsecondary education with their lives—and connect it to real economic opportunity.
When postsecondary education is accessible, flexible, affordable and connected to upward mobility, individuals and families move forward—and California’s communities grow stronger and more prosperous.
What will it take to claim California’s Golden Ticket?
California’s future depends on whether postsecondary education fully aligns with who learners are and what they need to fully succeed—and whether that education leads to real upward mobility. Today, millions of working learners are navigating school alongside jobs, caregiving, and other responsibilities. This video explores why centering working learners is essential—and how expanding pathways for them can strengthen families, communities, and the state’s economy.
What do cross-sector partnerships connecting working learners to upward mobility look like today?
Claiming California’s Golden Ticket requires more than access and attainment for working learners—it also requires alignment. This story shows how employers, educators, and communities are working together to create pathways that lead to upward mobility and regional prosperity.