Greater numbers of students are enrolling in U.S. colleges and universities, yet the proportion of individuals earning a postsecondary degree or credential continues to decline. Approximately 52 percent of beginning four-year students will complete their higher education with a degree or credential. Success rates are even lower for community college students.
Looking ahead, global economic and workforce trends will require getting more Americans into and through college. To increase college attainment rates, Lumina’s efforts involve the following priority strategies:
- Advocate for the redesign, rebranding and improvement of developmental education.
- Promote strategies that improve attainment of high-quality degrees and certificates, particularly by traditionally underrepresented students.
- Explore the development of alternative pathways and credentials.
- Implement stronger transfer and articulation systems that keep students moving toward completion of degrees and credentials.
- Advocate for the use of quality data in higher education, through universal nationally linked state student record data systems that follow students to the workforce, as well as data that facilitate alignment of higher education and the workforce.
- Define and measure student learning outcomes and align them with workforce needs. (See: Tuning USA.)
Developmental education often is the glue that holds students together academically and helps them persist to attain a college degree.
Each year, a large proportion of first-time community college students enter two-year institutions in need of developmental education. Few succeed in making it through these programs to college-level courses, let alone earning a certificate or a degree. These outcomes have prompted many colleges to focus on intervention efforts such as student advising services, professional development for faculty, and revision of the instruction and curriculum within developmental education courses themselves. (Source: Promising Instructional Reforms in Developmental Education)
Stronger fiscal incentives can yield improved postsecondary outcomes.
State higher education finance policy has traditionally focused almost exclusively on enrollment growth and inflationary increases. According to the NGA Center for Best Practices, performance funding in higher education can influence higher education outcomes, but the emphasis on degree completion needs to be strengthened. Specifically, governors and state legislators should consider providing greater general fund support to colleges and universities that achieve or exceed an institution-specific benchmark for postsecondary completion. This benchmark needs to fit into the statewide goal for completion and be based on the academic records of the students admitted. (Source: Issue Brief, NGA Center for Best Practices)
Accelerated postsecondary degree and credentials programs are an immediate and impactful way to connect high-demand, high-wage jobs with the required postsecondary education needed to be successful in those jobs.
Accelerated postsecondary degree programs have been piloted by various states and institutions, with the goal of helping students earn quality credentials with real value for the new economy. A large-scale expansion of these proven programs would help make President Obama’s goal for every American to complete at least one year postsecondary education a reality.
Student engagement activities influence academic performance and degree attainment. However, far too few students are exposed to these practices, especially first-generation students and other traditionally underrepresented students in higher education.
First-year seminars, service learning, capstone courses, and learning communities are among various engagement practices that have proven to be beneficial for students from underserved or at-risk backgrounds, elevating their academic performance and degree attainment. (Source: High-Impact Educational Practices: What Are They, Who Has Access To Them, and Why They Matter)
Transfer and articulation policies are viable mechanisms to increase opportunities for students to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Transfer and articulation policies can create greater coherence in postsecondary curriculum and facilitate the transfer of students across institutions. These policies are especially relevant because of their potential to help students make the leap from community colleges to bachelor-granting institutions. To ensure transfer and articulation policies serve this function, however, they must promote consistency and reliability across all institutions, paying particular attention to the number of institutions participating in the agreements, the quality of commonly identified curriculum components, and the use of articulation agreements in guiding student course taking. More (Source: Can Transfer and Articulation Policies Propel Community College Students to a Bachelor’s Degree—and Is This the Only Goal?)
Robust, honest data that informs policymakers and institutional leaders of where institutions stand and how much they are improving is critical to raising U.S. college-attainment rates.
The majority of publicly reported data about college-going and completion rates omits large numbers of students. Transfer and part-time students aren’t included in federal data collections, nor is the progress of low-income students tracked through college. Measuring results for nontraditional groups offers critical insight into how well postsecondary institutions are serving their entire undergraduate enrollment—not just a select few—and helps them improve student outcomes on their campuses by addressing the gaps in college-going and degree completion that separate certain student populations from others. (Source: Access to Success)
Community colleges hold tremendous potential to expand access to higher education.
Two-year institutions serve close to half of all undergraduate students in the United States, and are an important springboard to traditional four-year institutions. At the same time, degree attainment eludes many community college students. Stronger state transfer and articulation policies may help reverse this trend by clarifying pathways for students who use community college attendance as a bridge to eventually transfer to a four-year institution. More (Source: Community Colleges and Higher Education How do State Transfer and Articulation Policies Impact Student Pathways?)
Nontraditional students have become the new majority on college campuses, yet they are often enrolled in programs poorly documented by traditional higher education data-collection systems.
A better understanding of the variation in retention and graduation by different types of postsecondary students—particularly adult, nontraditional learners—may lead to improved student success and degree attainment. The use of student unit records, which are collected by states for mandated reporting, is one way that policymakers and institutions can help nontraditional students stay on track toward their academic goals. (Source: Nontraditional Students in Public Institutions: A Multi-State Unit Record Analysis) When students don’t complete their educational goals, it results in substantial losses for the student, the state, and society.
State and institutional activities have a direct influence on student retention and college completion. At the same time, there is a clear disconnect between states and institutional leaders, with few pathways established for states to communicate their priorities to institutions and for institutions to communicate what works to state policymakers. (Source: Making the Connections: Connecting State and Institutional Policies to Improve Student Success.
Economic and workforce conditions demand a new way of thinking and operating in higher education.
The United States spends twice as much as the average industrialized country on higher education, but has an increasingly smaller proportion of young adults with at least an associate’s degree. In 2008, state and local governments spent $85 billion to fund public higher education. Those efforts resulted in 56 percent of first-time, full-time students receiving a degree within six years. To improve degree completion rates, state policymakers and higher education leaders need to embrace policies and strategies that will drive a more productive higher education system and graduate more students within existing resources while ensuring maintaining quality. Among the possible solutions: Rewarding institutions that focus on students completing quality programs, not just attempting them, and expanding and strengthening lower cost, nontraditional education options through modified regulations. (Source: Four Steps to Finishing First in Higher Education: A Guide for State Policymakers)
