As current graduation rates stand, California will have a shortage of nearly three million college-educated workers by 2025, according to projections presented at a panel discussion Thursday. Those in attendance included local school and college administrators, trade organization members, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi and Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez.

“All the studies indicate that we have an incredible challenge facing us,” Garamendi told the audience of about 40. “Bottom line is, we have to make a serious investment in education.”

Administrators from Sac State, the Los Rios Community College District, and the Sacramento City Unified School District were at the Alumni Center Thursday to talk about the challenges local schools have in meeting the workforce demand.

By 2025, California’s businesses may need as many as eight million college-educated workers, but may have as little as five million, according to a projection presented by Debbi Reed, director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California.

“We can’t import enough college workers from other states or other countries to meet this demand,” Reed said.

If the state cannot produce enough of these highly-educated workers, California’s economy will slow down and the jobs will go to other states, Reed said.

Lila Jacobs, president of the Sac State chapter of the California Faculty Association, told Garamendi that many problems in the California State University system come down to a lack of resources because of misplaced priorities.

“It is counter-productive to raise executive salaries while raising student tuition,” Jacobs said. “We are on a course in this state to spend more money on prisons than on education.”

Jacobs said something is wrong in a state willing to spend more money on prisoners than on innovators and educators.

She said in order to encourage students to stay in school, teacher-student relationships must be fostered, classroom size needs to come down, and working conditions for teachers need to improve.

Thanks to the rise in construction bond spending, construction companies already face a workforce shortage, said Debra Chaplan, director of Special Projects at the State Building and Construction Trade Council.

“To complete all the infrastructure bond work in the pipeline now, 144,000 new construction workers will be needed,” she said.

Speaking about the pressures facing Sac State, Gonzalez said, “We are being challenged on both sides not only to produce more (graduates), but to move to the next level.”

The next level, he said, means expanding post-graduate programs at Sac State.

During the second half of the three-hour talk, Garamendi noted that in 2025, 40 percent of the population in California will be Latino, and roughly 13 percent of that population will have earned a degree.

“You’re looking at 40 percent of a population that basically will not be college-educated,” Garamendi said, “That is less than 15 years away….That will be a big problem for California.”

He also berated a financial model that calls for students to work 20 hours a week, while in school, to make ends meet.

“That is the most god-awful public policy we could have,” Garamendi said.

Jose Millan from the Community College Chancellor’s Office spoke about the need to reach those students who drop out of school.

“We need to reconnect with the generation who have grown up with the Xboxes,” Millan said. “We need to reach out to them and make learning fun.”

Sac State was the eighth campus stop in Garamendi’s “listening tour,” a statewide effort to discuss what can be done to increase the education level of the state’s residents.

The next step will be to determine what roles each individual school can play in fixing the problem, he said, and then finally, allocating resources to get the solutions underway.

Lacey Waymire can be reached at [email protected].