Adding to a drumbeat of concern about the nation’s
dismal college-completion rates, the College Board warned
Thursday that the growing gap between the United States
and other countries threatens to undermine American
economic competitiveness.
The United States used to lead the world in the number
of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it
ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.
“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to
our nation’s long-term well-being than the current
fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the
College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of
education leaders and policy makers, where he released a
report detailing the
problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our
college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and
improve education from preschool through higher
education.”
While access to college has been the major concern in
recent decades, over the last year, college completion,
too, has become a leading item on the national agenda.
Last July, President Obama announced
the American Graduation Initiative,
calling for five million more college graduates by 2020,
to help the United States again lead the world in
educational attainment.
This month, on becoming chairman of the National Governors Association,
Gov. Joe Manchin III of West
Virginia announced that he would lead a
college-completion initiative.
In May, Grantmakers for Education, an organization for
those who make gifts to educational programs, convened a
group of philanthropists and policy experts to talk
about how to bolster college-completion rates.
“We spend a fortune recruiting freshmen but forget to
recruit sophomores,” Michael McPherson, president of the
Spencer Foundation, said at the meeting.
In April, Melinda Gates gave a speech at the American
Association of Community Colleges convention, urging community college
officials to lead the way on college completion and
pledging that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
would contribute up to $110 million to improve remedial
programs, in an effort to increase graduation rates.
“The stars are aligning in a way that gives me some
hope,” said William Kirwan, chancellor of the University
System of Maryland, who hosted the Washington discussion
along with Mr. Caperton. “This is a problem that’s been
around for too long. But now there’s beginning to emerge
a focus of attention and activity that quite frankly we
haven’t had till now.”
Mr. Kirwan said that the United States had fallen
behind other countries over several decades.
“We led the world in the 1980s, but we didn’t build
from there,” he said. “If you look at people 60 and
over, about 39-40 percent have college degrees, and if
you look at young people, too, about 39-40 percent have
college degrees. Meanwhile, other countries have passed
us by.”
Canada now leads the world in educational attainment,
with about 56 percent of its young adults having earned
at least associate’s degrees in 2007, compared with only
40 percent of those in the United States. (The United
States’ rate has since risen slightly.)
While almost 70 percent of high school graduates in the
United States enroll in college within two years of
graduating, only about 57 percent of students who enroll
in a bachelor’s degree program graduate within six
years, and fewer than 25 percent of students who begin
at a community college graduate with an associate’s
degree within three years.
The problem is even worse for low-income students and
minorities: only 30 percent of African-Americans ages
25-34, and less than 20 percent of Latinos in that age
group, have an associate’s degree or higher. And
students from the highest income families are almost
eight times as likely as those from the lowest income
families to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24.
The problem begins long before college, according to
the report released Thursday.
“You can’t address college completion if you don’t do
something about K-12 education,” Mr. Kirwan said.
The group’s first five recommendations all concern K-12
education, calling for more state-financed preschool
programs, better high school and middle school college
counseling, dropout prevention programs, an alignment
with international curricular standards and improved
teacher quality. College costs were also implicated,
with recommendations for more need-based financial aid,
and further efforts to keep college affordable.
