Fourteen years ago, lawmakers set an ambitious goal for higher education: By 2025, 80% of Oregon’s young people would hold a college degree or an education credential of some sort.
Unsurprisingly, the state fell short. The writing has been on the wall for several years, as Oregon’s progress inched along slower than necessary to meet most of the goal’s targets.
Last week, the director of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission asked lawmakers whether it’s time to revisit the state’s 40-40-20 goal and to reconsider what benchmarks would best suit the educational needs of Oregonians and the economic needs of the state.
Members of the House Education Committee, who gathered for Legislative Days in Salem last week, offered little immediate feedback on the idea. But the opportunity to “reorient” the state’s education goals was applauded by a teachers union and a group representing technology companies.
“We all know that credentials alone don’t tell the whole story of higher education,” said Ariana Jacob, president of Oregon’s chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. “Students and families want more than a piece of paper. They want affordable pathways, they want real opportunities and degrees and certificates that lead to good jobs, to the jobs of the future.”
The state goal, known as 40-40-20, set a clear target to have 40% of young people earn a bachelor’s degree, 40% earn a community college degree or a credential, such as one from a trade school or apprenticeship, and the remaining 20% of all Oregonians ages 25 to 34 to earn at least a high school diploma.
“Perhaps one of the most important things … it did was express the perspective that all young people are capable,” Ben Cannon, executive director of the higher education commission, told lawmakers. “And it’s the job of our systems and our schools to do what is necessary to help them succeed.”
As of 2024, about 57% of Oregonians between the ages of 25 and 34 had a college degree or credential. The share of young people with bachelor’s degrees has climbed from 31% to 39% since the state started measuring progress, nearly reaching the target. But the share of students with a community college degree or certificate has not grown in the past dozen years, stagnating around 18%.
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The state has also fallen short of the goal that every student earn at least a high school diploma. About 7% of young Oregonians today have no high school diploma, an improvement from the roughly 11% in 2012.
After hitting pandemic-era lows, high school graduation rates have been climbing modestly in the last few years. Nearly 82% of the class of 2024 graduated within four years, the second highest rate in state history, but there is a caveat. The state board of education has suspended until 2029 the requirement that students must prove they have a “basic mastery” of reading, writing and math skills via passing a series of standardized tests or completing a standalone series of assignments designed by their teachers.
Meanwhile, new state testing data released last week finds that only four in every 10 elementary and middle school students are currently proficient enough in writing and reading skills to graduate from high school without needing remedial courses in college or extra training from future employers. In math, that figure is only about three of every 10 elementary and middle schoolers.
Cannon told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the suggestion lawmakers revisit higher education goals is not driven by Oregon’s failure to live up to them so far. He thinks the state has made “enormous progress” since adopting the 40-40-20 plan and that the goal helped focus the state on helping students complete high school and continue their studies after graduation. But the goal is dated.
“The nature of work and education is changing,” he said, “as are the needs of our economy and communities.”
Lawmakers could consider doubling down on the 40-40-20 goal, Cannon said. They could tweak the numbers based on a new analysis of the employment market and community needs. Or they could decide to measure other metrics entirely, he said, like job placement rates or social and economic mobility.
Skip Newberry, president of the Technology Association of Oregon, said tech companies want to see employees who are well versed in data literacy, automated systems and cyber security and are adept at soft skills like communication and working with a team.
“How we define our attainment goals, that obviously can go a long way to incentivizing relevant stakeholders, and the state, to meet these new opportunities and realistic challenges head on,” Newberry said.
The higher education commission has not decided to rewrite the 40-40-20 goal or its goal for adult learners, Cannon told lawmakers, but it’s looking for some direction on whether to start that process. If lawmakers decide they’re on board, the commission plans to solicit feedback from education and workforce groups across the state and potentially work to craft a new proposal ahead of the 2027 legislative session.
Jacob, the representative of AFT Oregon which represents some Oregon K-12 employees, graduate students and higher education faculty, said the union is eager for that kind of engagement.
“By working together we can craft goals that chart a path forward for education,” she said. “We need goals that measure affordability, that hold us accountable for building an equitable and inclusive system and that articulate the real public purpose of higher education.”
John Tapogna, a policy adviser at research firm ECOnorthwest, thinks the 40-40-20 plan is still a valuable framework for the state.
Increasing the number of young working age professionals with a community college credential, trade school certificate, apprenticeship or other education credential has always been the state’s largest challenge, he said. But he thinks there’s a strong argument that young people should get some kind of postsecondary training in an economy that’s changing quickly, particularly as technology evolves.
Employers are hiring people trained to implement artificial intelligence, he said. Clean energy jobs are going to require education credentials, as are healthcare and elder care jobs that will be in higher demand as the American population ages.
Oregon also has “an awful lot of work to do,” in ensuring all young people have a high school diploma, a goal Tapogna described as a moral imperative.
A decade ago, the 40-40-20 goal was discussed widely as a north star in education, Tapogna said, but it doesn’t get the same attention today. He’d like to see the higher education commission re-amplify its underlying mission.
“We need to be paying attention to these attainment rates in the way that we were paying attention to them 10 years ago,” he said. “They’re as important, if not more important, than they were then.”