Closing IE's degree gap is worth $1 trillion, Georgetown says. A local economist disagrees.

IE Business Daily: Only 25% of working-age adults in Riverside and San Bernardino counties hold a four-year degree, against roughly 40% statewide. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, in its April Golden Ticket report, projects that closing the gap and raising IE attainment to 70% across all demographic groups would add more than $1 trillion to the regional economy over 50 years.

The CEW report, produced with the College Futures Foundation, projects a $4.4 trillion statewide gain — about $212,000 per working-age adult — against a roughly $200 billion public investment in postsecondary education. The report calls the 70% goal aspirational and projects that six of the 12 demographic groups it tracks will miss the target by 2035, five years past the state's 2030 deadline.

Jay Prag, an economist at the Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, pushed back on the supply-side math in an interview with IE Business Daily. "There aren't that many jobs for people with college degrees, or even associate's degrees," Prag said. Adding millions of credentialed workers, he argued, would let employers draw from a larger talent pool and pull wages down. By 2030, the report counters, nearly 75% of California jobs are expected to require some training beyond high school.