Jamie P. Merisotis, President, Lumina Foundation for Education
YMCA of the USA National Assembly, Chicago, IL

Thank you and good morning everyone. I’m very pleased to be here today. In fact, I’m honored by this opportunity. After all, it’s not often that one gets the chance to address an organization with a tradition of individual and social service that stretches back more than 150 years. The YMCA is, in many respects, a national treasure, and I’m proud and excited to speak to a group of dedicated people who do so much for so many in this country.

I’m also excited about the new professional relationship that the “Y” has forged with Lumina Foundation, the organization that I represent. It’s a partnership that my Lumina colleagues and I feel has tremendous potential—not just for our respective organizations, and not just for the tens of thousands of young people we hope to serve—but for the nation as a whole. In my remarks today, I will do my best to explore and explain that partnership, and to give you just a glimpse of that tremendous potential. Before I go too deeply into that topic, however, let me provide a bit of background for those of you who may not be familiar with my organization.

Lumina Foundation for Education is a national foundation, established nine years ago in Indianapolis. With assets of more than one billion dollars, Lumina is one of nation’s 40 largest private foundations. And we have just one mission: getting more Americans into and through college. In fact, we are the nation’s largest foundation devoted exclusively to increasing college access and success.

For most of the two years I’ve served as Lumina’s president, we have pursued that mission by focusing on one specific aim—what we call our “big goal.” That Big Goal, simply stated, is this: By the year 2025, we want 60 percent of the American population to hold high-quality college degrees or credentials. This would represent a huge increase over our current rate of college completion, which is 40 percent. In fact, that rate has gone virtually unchanged in this country for four decades—in marked contrast to other developing countries, many of which have been increasing their completion rates dramatically.

So, to restate this big goal: Over the next 16 years, Lumina wants to increase the percentage of Americans with college degrees—a rate that hasn’t really budged for 40 years—by 20 percentage points.

We know the goal is ambitious, but we’re convinced that it is attainable. Even more important, we also feel this goal is vital to the nation’s economic security and social stability, for several reasons:

One obvious reason is global competition. As I said, degree-attainment rates are rising in almost every industrialized or post-industrial country in the world, except for the U.S. In several other countries, more than half of young adults are degree holders—and rates in many of these countries are continuing to climb. So, if we hope to remain competitive and ensure our nation’s continued prosperity and stability, we must aim high—and that’s one reason for the 60 percent target.

Perhaps an even more compelling reason for reaching the big goal is that our changing workforce demands it. The knowledge economy requires Americans to have more advanced knowledge and skills. Experts agree that today’s “middle-class” jobs—those that ensure a good quality of life for citizens—are less and less attainable without education or training beyond high school.

Noted labor economist Tony Carnevale at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce has estimated that, by 2018, 63 percent of all jobs will require some form of postsecondary education or training. That’s a huge increase since the mid-’70s, when less than 30 percent of jobs required anything beyond a high school education.

Carnevale’s data fit seamlessly with the latest feedback from employers—most of whom seem to be pleading for better-educated workers. In a survey conducted just last month by the Business Roundtable, 65 percent of employers said they already require an associate’s degree or higher for most positions. And half of these employers said there is such a serious gap between their needs and their employees’ skills that productivity within their companies is slipping.

So, global economic and workforce trends are compelling us to reach this big goal. But there are other reasons, too. One is simply to extend to more individuals the financial benefits of earning a degree. Those benefits are obvious and undeniable. Since 1975, the average annual earnings of this nation’s high school graduates fell in real terms by 1 percent, while earnings among college graduates rose by 19 percent. And increasing degree completion will bring societal benefits as well: Higher rates of volunteerism, voting and philanthropic giving … decreased rates of crime and poverty … a reduced need for public assistance, including health care. These are benefits we all share when college-completion rates increase.

Finally, our big goal is an important means for addressing social inequity. Right now, the benefits I just listed are being distributed unfairly—and this inequity is a threat to all of us as Americans. Higher education attainment rates among certain population groups in this country—including adults, first-generation college going students, low-income students and students of color—are significantly lower than those of other students. These achievement gaps have endured for decades, and may now actually be widening. This trend is especially alarming, given demographic trends showing that, by 2050, “minorities” will actually constitute a majority of the U.S. population. They already do in four of the 50 states—California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii.

So, considering all of these reasons, you can see why Lumina has embraced this big goal and made it the central focus of all of our work. And, because we are an organization this is relentlessly focused on outcomes, we didn’t just stop after establishing the goal. Rather, we developed a workable plan to reach it. Our Strategic Plan is not a concept. It is very real and tangible. It truly guides our decisions and our work. It is clearly delineated in a document that we’ve printed and posted on our Web site. There is no secret plan that we are actually following; the plan you can download is the one we use.

Lumina’s Strategic Plan identifies three critical outcomes—three significant results that must be produced for our big goal to be reached. Those three outcomes are:

1. Preparation: Students must be prepared academically, financially and socially for success in education beyond high school.
2. Success: Higher education completion rates must be improved significantly.
3. Productivity: Higher education must become more efficient and effective so that it can increase capacity and serve more students.

Of course we know we can’t reach any of these three major outcomes in one step. A number of intermediate outcomes will be necessary in each area to get us where we need to be.

To give you a better understanding of how Lumina approaches this work, let me take just one of these three critical outcomes and “unpack” it to show you what we think needs to happen—and what Lumina is doing—in that area. Keeping in mind that steady progress must be made on all of the outcomes if we are to reach the 60 percent goal, let’s look closely today only at the first outcome: “preparation.”

Again, before the big goal of 60 percent degree attainment can be reached, we believe that many more students must be prepared academically, financially and socially for success in education beyond high school. And it’s important to emphasize that all three areas—academic, financial and social—must be addressed as co-equals in the pre-college preparation effort. Research shows that, if any of these three aspects is ignored or underemphasized, the road to college becomes very rocky—and, for many, impassable.

Before we can reach the major outcome of ensuring that all students are properly prepared for college success, we believe three intermediate steps must be taken:

• First, states and institutions must create and implement transparent higher education readiness standards, and those standards must be aligned across K-12, adult learner and higher education systems.
• Second, students must be supported to attend and succeed in college through expanded state and community-based higher education outreach networks.
• Finally, federal, state and institutional policies must ensure that no student is denied access to higher education because it is too expensive.

To foster achievement of these outcomes and thereby improve preparation, Lumina has identified a number of specific strategies. I’ll share just three of them today—because these three strategies have direct and important connections to your work at Y-USA.

• First, Lumina is supporting innovative approaches to support the financial preparation of low-income students and their families, including efforts to streamline and simplify the financial aid application process.
• Also, we are expanding national postsecondary access outreach and action campaigns.
• Finally, we are contributing to the expansion of sustainable, high-quality student service and advocacy networks.

If I may, I’d like to speak in some detail about each of these three strategies, and to explain specifically how Lumina’s growing partnership with Y-USA is helping us pursue those strategies.

First let’s talk about Lumina’s effort—really, now a shared effort between Lumina and Y-USA—to help low-income students and families navigate the financial aid application process.

Since the Foundation was established, Lumina has been the major funder of College Goal Sunday. As many of you know, College Goal Sunday is a volunteer program that, for two decades, has provided hands-on help to students and families who are applying for financial aid. Each February, in sites all across the nation, financial aid professionals and other College Goal Sunday volunteers sit down with low-income students and their families to complete the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).

If you have a son or daughter applying to or already in college, you know that filling out the FAFSA is no picnic. It’s lengthy, it’s detailed, and it can be confusing even to the most financially savvy applicants. For many families—especially those who lack a college-going tradition—the form itself can be a real barrier to college access. College Goal Sunday effectively breaks that barrier. The program, which has aided hundreds of thousands of students over the years, now serves about 35,000 students annually in 39 states and the District of Columbia.

And, thanks to the good work of your organization, College Goal Sunday is poised to do even more. In April of this year, Y-USA officially assumed management responsibility for College Goal Sunday. This was a move that Lumina was thrilled to fund because it significantly enhances the program’s potential impact.

As the nation’s largest nonprofit community service organization, the “Y” touches 21 million people each year through nearly 2,700 branches serving some 10,000 communities. More than half of your organization’s local branches are in low-income communities, and you can call on a national network of 560,000 volunteers.

Foundations and other social-service organizations always talk about the importance of scalability and sustainability in their work—of finding ways to ensure that the programs they establish have enough size and staying power to really make a difference. Well, if any organization can help ensure that College Goal Sunday is scalable and sustainable, Y-USA is that organization. Is it any wonder that Lumina is excited about this partnership?

Let’s look now at those other two strategies Lumina is using to improve students’ pre-college preparation: expanding outreach campaigns and fostering student-service and advocacy networks.

In pursuing both of these strategies, we at Lumina have put a great deal of emphasis on an initiative called KnowHow2GO. This initiative works on two tracks to help young teens get an early start on the path that leads to college success.

The first part of KnowHow2GO is a national public-awareness campaign designed to encourage students in grades 8 to 10 to take the necessary steps toward college. Ninety percent of low-income teens in this age group say they plan to attend college, but far fewer actually take the concrete steps necessary to realize that dream. In its youth-oriented TV and radio spots, KnowHow2GO urges students to act—by taking the challenging courses that will prepare them academically for college, by seeking out mentors and advocates who can help them reach their goal, by talking to their parents about college savings and finances.

The campaign’s public-service advertisements also direct young people to a Web site that connects them to a local network of advocates, advisers and pre-college service providers. This is where the second part of the initiative kicks in: what we at Lumina call the “ground campaign.” As with the College Goal Sunday effort, KnowHow2GO’s ground campaign is very individualized and very much hands-on. Really, there is no other effective way to do this work except one student and one family at a time.

Ensuring a successful high school-to-college transition is not a once-and-done conversation, particularly with low-income or first-generation students. As I mentioned earlier, pre-college preparation efforts can only be effective if they are holistic. Students and families must focus on all three aspects of preparation: academic, social and financial.

Clearly, then, the pre-college advisers and advocates who work with these populations must be able to provide substantive, personalized guidance and encouragement in all three areas of preparation. And that means these folks can’t just be an e-mail address or a voice at the end of an information hotline. They need to establish real relationships with students and families. That takes time. It takes trust. And frankly, it requires an impressive level of commitment and dedication from college-access professionals.

The people involved with these programs have worked hard over the years, not only to serve their own constituents, but also to form cooperative networks and partnerships that improve the college-access field as a whole. One way they do this, of course, is to share the lessons they have learned. I’ve brought along one example of that sharing today—a recent Results and Reflections report titled “Making the Numbers Add Up.” This report focuses on how the consistent use of data can improve such programs —and that’s an important lesson for any social-service effort.

Not only does the report contain good ideas about data collection and use, it also gives additional information about the KnowHow2GO campaign and provides some useful tips on how to create and sustain effective networks and partnerships. Finally, it also offers a brief inside look at some exemplary programs in cities all over America—from Chattanooga to Chicago to San Antonio to Seattle.

As I’m sure you realize, the organizations and the individuals who constitute the growing KnowHow2GO network are really the source of the initiative’s success. By and large, these pre-college access programs are small-scale operations providing direct service to students and families in specific areas. In fact, they operate in very much the same way that the “Y” branches operate—working at the grassroots level, in communities of need, over a sustained period of time.

And don’t think that we at Lumina haven’t noticed those similarities. In fact, we are working quite actively to take advantage of them and leverage them. It is our hope that the Y-USA branches, through their involvement with College Goal Sunday, will also connect to the KnowHow2GO network. Such a move would not only complement the existing youth programs at local YMCAs, it would also help fill gaps in the pipeline of pre-college access services. Unfortunately—and perhaps not too surprisingly—that pipeline is often the most “leaky” in the communities where such services are needed most.

By incorporating both College Goal Sunday and KnowHow2GO, we hope that many local “Y” branches can almost become one-stop pre-college shops for low-income or first-generation students. The local Y can be the place to go for valuable information about the college-going process, the site to get hands-on help in applying for financial aid, the place that offers the sustained mentoring, support and encouragement that every young person needs at this vital transition point.

You can see, then, why Lumina is tremendously excited by the prospects of its budding partnership with Y-USA. By building a robust college-access component into the existing framework of local Y-USA branches in cities and towns all over America, we feel our organizations can work together to create a powerful tool for positive change.

And, as I hope I’ve made clear, this nation is very much in need of positive change. We need to do a much better job of preparing our young people for the demands and opportunities of postsecondary education, and you at Y-USA can play a huge role in that effort. Once our students cross the threshold and enroll in college, we also need to do a much better job of supporting their success—of ensuring that they stay on track, complete their programs, and earn high-quality degrees and credentials that truly prepare them for work and for life in the 21^st century.

The Big Goal that Lumina seeks for this nation—60 percent attainment of high-quality college degrees by 2025—is the key to so many good things: individual prosperity, economic security, societal stability, social equity. We’re proud to be working toward this goal, of course. But we’re also realistic. Even with a clear goal and a well-defined plan of action, we know we can’t get there alone. We need partners in every sphere: academia, government, philanthropy, business, and social service.

So let me close by again thanking Y-USA—and every one of you—for your commitment to this partnership with Lumina. We feel it has huge potential, and we look forward to working with you to realize that potential—for both of our organizations, for the tens of thousands of deserving students we hope to serve, and for this nation as a whole.

Thank you.