Education Code section 88782
(a)
(1)The California Career Passport Program is hereby established. The program shall be administered by the chancellor’s office, in partnership with the Office of Cradle-to-Career Data and the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, for the purpose of developing a Career Passport that provides an individual a secure digital tool displaying their preparation for employment, academic records, and credit for prior learning, which may include, but is not limited to, military service.(2)
An individual may use their Career Passport to curate their relevant validated skills, which may include skills attributable to verifiable credentials and academic records, in a shareable format for skills-based and competency-informed hiring by employers. An individual may share all or part of their Career Passport with outside entities.(b)
The program shall be developed by leveraging existing statewide tools for documenting academic learning, including, but not limited to, eTranscript California and other electronic transcript tools, and existing tools for validating learning in nonacademic contexts, including, but not limited to, providing credit for prior learning and the California Mapping Articulated Pathways Initiative, and combining those tools into the Career Passport that can be integrated with employer-based hiring systems to support skills-based hiring.(c)
The program shall at least accomplish all of the following goals:(1)
Enable the linkage, management, and monitoring of information of an individual’s verified academic and third-party records of education, training, and development of validated skills for the purposes of hiring by employers.(2)
Ensure that information contained in, and available through, the secure digital tool is kept secure and that individual privacy, including, but not limited to, personally identifiable information, is protected.(3)
Provide individuals access to their aggregated information for use in applying for employment and in training at no or low cost to the individual.(d)
The chancellor’s office, in collaboration with the Office of Cradle-to-Career Data, shall convene agency and employer representatives to identify technical and policy considerations for building the secure digital tool described in subdivision (a).(e)
The chancellor’s office, in collaboration with the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, shall engage with business and industry leaders collaboratively to ensure Career Passports are useful to, and used by, California’s employers, and shall work closely with the Department of Human Resources as a possible early adopter of Career Passports.(f)
The program shall serve the public good and remain accountable to it.(g)
The program shall comply with federal and state laws to protect individual privacy, including, but not limited to, all of the following:(1)
The federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-380, as amended).(2)
The federal Higher Education Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-329, as amended).(3)
The federal Privacy Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-579, as amended).
Source:
Section 88782, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=EDC§ionNum=88782. (updated Jun. 27, 2025; accessed Jul. 14, 2025).
