Washington
The nation must ensure that 55 percent of Americans hold a college degree or certificate by 2025 to maintain its global competitiveness, education leaders said here on Wednesday.
At a news conference on Capitol Hill, members of the College Board’s national Commission on Access, Admissions, and Success in Higher Education announced their recommendations for reaching that goal. The commission’s new report, “Coming to Our Senses: Education and the American Future,” contains a 10-point plan for improving the nation’s school systems and increasing postsecondary attainment. It also states that the College Board, which owns the SAT, will track the annual progress made on each of the commission’s recommendations.
Gaston Caperton, the College Board’s president, cited several gloomy statistics that are all too familiar to higher-education experts. Although the United States once had the highest high-school completion rate in the world, for instance, it now trails 20 industrialized nations. And 10 other nations have a greater percentage of workers between the ages of 25 and 34 who have a postsecondary credential.
“The growing education deficit,” Mr. Caperton said, “is no less a threat to our nation’s well-being than the current fiscal crisis.”
Five of the commission’s recommendations relate directly to colleges and universities. One urges postsecondary institutions to simplify their admissions processes “to make the task of applying to college less onerous and more transparent, “ particularly for first-generation applicants. The report alluded to the public anxiety and confusion about getting into college: Institutions with open-admission policies, as well as those that guarantee admissions for applicants who meet certain requirements, should more clearly communicate “the ease of admission,” it says. The report, however, does not specifically mention standardized admissions tests, like the SAT, which cause much anxiety among applicants.
Another recommendation encourages state and federal officials to increase need-based financial aid available to students, and to bring “clarity, predictability, and greater simplicity” to the financial-aid process.
The report also calls for greater support of institutions that serve older students. It urges the federal government to spend $1-billion annually on adult-education programs, to increase job-training programs at two- and four-year institutions, and to help states reach more prospective students, including older Americans and the unemployed. The report also endorsed the possible creation of an “honors GED,” which would recognize students who scored high on the tests as opposed to merely passing them.
Demographic projections reinforce the importance of closing the existing degree gap between white and minority students, said William E. (Brit) Kirwan, the commission’s chairman and chancellor of the University System of Maryland. According to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, for instance, the number of Hispanic students graduating from high school will increase by 54 percent between 2000 and 2020, while the number of non-Hispanic white students graduating from high school will decline by about 11 percent during that time.
“As a declining, aging, and well-educated white population approaches retirement,” the report says, “it will be replaced by a growing number of younger minority citizens with lower levels of educational attainment if current degree patterns continue.”
Mr. Caperton conceded that the report—which relies heavily on existing research and explains long-acknowledged challenges—did not break new ground. But he said that as a major player in both kindergarten through 12th grade and higher education, the College Board was uniquely positioned to promote the changes that the commission recommended.
According to the report, the College Board will issue annual reports on several indicators related to the 10 recommendations (and would break those evaluations down by state, when possible). One of its recommendations is to “keep college affordable.” An indicator, according to the report, will be whether “college costs rise at a rate that is equal to or below the rate of inflation.”
U.S. Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, said he hoped those benchmarks would distinguish the commission’s work from other calls to action: “We’ve all seen a lot of reports come and go.”
