Last month, President Obama said in a speech in Chicago, “There is no surer path to success in the middle class than a good education.”
Today, I had the opportunity to speak at the Department of Education’s Higher Education Program Project Directors’ Meeting, which gathered thousands of people who work every day to ensure that more students receive a good education.
Project directors from across the country came together in Washington, DC to discuss how to better serve students in their three program and grant administration areas: Institutional Service (IS), which strengthens institutions that serve largely minority or low-income populations and first-generation college students; Student Service (SS), which works to provide academic preparation, support and career development; and Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), which seeks to help implement, evaluate, and share innovative reforms to improve productivity, efficiency, and completion in higher education.
Their work supports President Obama’s goal for the United States to again lead the world with the highest proportion of college graduates by the year 2020.
To reach this target, we project that the proportion of college graduates in the U.S. will need to increase by 50 percent nationwide by the end of the decade. That means that eight million more young adults will need to earn associate’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, and postsecondary certificates by 2020.