By Emily DeRuy, Bay Area News Group

As the jobs that keep California’s economy running change at a rapid clip, the workers who fill them are expected to keep pace. That puts enormous pressure on all schools in the state, but especially on the state’s community colleges — which help prepare more than 2.1 million students across 113 campuses to enter or move up in the workforce.

In 2013, California’s community colleges began restructuring — talking to each other more, scaling up programs in high-demand fields and paring back others, working more closely with companies that want to hire new employees and creating course schedules that let students balance school and jobs. In the next five years, the system is set to spend $1 billion trying to move those changes forward. 

Now, a new report from the Institute for the Future, which the system asked to evaluate its work so far, shows the schools are making good progress. But the terrain they’re navigating is moving.

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