Governing Board Oversight of College Completion

The issue of college completion has become a hot-button topic for higher education and the public in recent years. While completion is not a new issue, several national and state-level efforts, including President Obama’s 2020 college-completion goal to increase the number of college graduates to 50 percent of the population, have brought increased attention to this issue. Labor market changes have also elevated the subject.

In the spring of 2015, AGB launched an initiative aimed at providing boards and administrators with information, tools, and resources related to their responsibilities for advancing completion at their institutions and systems. As part of this effort, a survey was conducted of nearly 1,100 college, university, and system board members to better understand what they know about completion, the importance of this issue among their boards, the nature of the information they receive on completion, and how they use it to make policy decisions.  This report highlights board members’ understanding of completion, the type of information and data boards receive, and their priorities and role in advancing completion efforts.