Increasing the Number of Graduates

Now that the school year has ended and students are headed home for the summer, it’s a good time to think again about the number of Americans who are not just starting college but who are actually finishing with a degree or certificate. Recently, AGB partnered with the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia to author a report on just this topic. Leaders in higher education, including the more than 50,000 voluntary board members who serve their institutions so well, know that increasing the numbers of Americans who complete their education is critical to ensuring the economic and social future of our nation.

The report, “Front and Center: Critical Choices for Higher Education,” is based on a December 2010 conference that convened individuals and organizations responsible for higher education. Besides the Miller Center and AGB, the conference was also sponsored by the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The report outlines recommendations in four primary areas to achieve a national higher education agenda, one that addresses the need for increased student access and success, ensures the quality of learning, and provides reliable finances so that institutions can accommodate increased enrollments. The recommendations include:

• Promote—and reward—institutional changes that increase the number of persons who successfully complete higher-education degree and certificate programs. Changes include devoting a greater percentage of operating budgets to instruction; reducing administrative overhead; focusing research efforts at fewer institutions; increasing faculty teaching responsibilities; adopting tighter, more focused curricula with key learning objectives; and meeting the varying needs of different students, especially those who attend college part-time. Online instruction is an important way to reduce costs and the time it takes to finish school.
• Reconsider the federal role in higher education. The federal government can play a strong leadership role in improving our education system by stressing the importance of increased rates of college completion; convening state leaders to discuss issues that require interstate cooperation; aligning its student financial aid and other funding programs with a student success and completion agenda; and clarifying its regulatory responsibilities for higher education.
• Create an environment at the state level that will give institutions reasons to pursue the public agenda. State-level governing and coordinating boards, working with governors and legislators, should assume two major responsibilities: setting clear, measurable, and institution-specific performance goals for colleges and universities; and creating funding mechanisms that link to those goals, such as emphasizing the completion of courses and programs of study, not just enrollment.
• Provide leadership to help colleges and universities do the work that needs to be done. Leadership is needed at all levels of involvement. Institutional governing boards need to establish completion agendas for their institutions, supporting the leadership of administrators and the efforts of faculty, and insist upon accountability for results. Governors and state legislatures must help define a college completions agenda and target resources toward it. The federal government can provide leadership by setting national goals and providing incentives for meeting them.

Leadership is vital, not only from governing board members, but from federal officials, state governors, legislators, college presidents, and faculty members. In this climate of economic uncertainty, when federal and state funding is flagging and endowments have not recovered their pre-recession worth, institutions must improve productivity and monitor costs as never before. Whether increasing operating budgets for instruction, fully maximizing online instruction, focusing research efforts, increasing faculty teaching responsibilities, or adopting curricula with key learning objectives (or all of the above), institutions must improve their rates of successful completion and produce the graduates America needs, thus continuing to serve the public good and the national interest.