RI joins effort to increase grad. rates

(FOX Providence) - President Obama has called on the US to have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by the year 2020. Rhode Island, along with seventeen other states, have signed onto this effort.

Pete Kerwin from the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority joined The Rhode Show to explain what this means for students in Rhode Island.

What have Rhode Island and the other states committed to do?

Well the President set an ambitious goal to make sure our higher education institutions across the country were graduating students and giving us the world’s best educated population over the next decade. By joining this effort, Rhode Island education officials have committed to develop specific plans to improve college-completion rates in our state.

Each of the states taking part are going to be required to set yearly goals for increasing graduation rates and set benchmarks for individual schools. And this isn’t going to be happening behind closed doors—the states are going to publicly report their progress by releasing completion rate data. There’s a DC-based nonprofit, Complete College America , which organized the national graduation program and is going to be working with Rhode Island and the other participating states to give them advice from higher education experts and help them apply for federal grants to get the funding support they need to meet their completion goals.

What are the foundations that are supporting this effort?

There are some real heavyweights getting involved in this—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Ford Foundation. They have pledged to provide financial support for programs designed to make sure students are getting to college and completing their work there.

And that’s what make this such a unique effort. There’s a real focus on putting new state polices in place, being able to measure programs that are working and making sure these efforts get the money they need to get to the finish line.

Where does Rhode Island stand in terms of its graduation rate?

We’re in the top third of the nation, with about 43% of our young adults (age 25-34) having a college degree.

At a time when Rhode Island and many other states are struggling with budget problems and seeing cuts to their public higher education institutions, it’s good to see a strong commitment to move forward and make improvements to college graduation rates.