the completion agenda: building the case

Building Alliances To Connect, Collaborate, and

Contribute to Student Success

Yavapai College May 17, 2011

The Completion Agenda:Building the Case

In a single generation, the US has fallen from 1st place

to 12th place in college

graduation for young adults

College Board July 2010

is more than double what it is for those who have gone to college

The unemployment rate for people who have never gone to college

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics July 2010

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics December 2009

By the end of the decade, 8 out of 10 new jobs will require post-secondary education

We now need every young American not only to complete high school, but to obtain a post-secondary credential or degree with currency in the labor market. Most Americans now seem to have gotten the message that a high school education is no longer sufficient to secure a path to the middle class.

Pathways to Prosperity Project, 2011

Jobs requiring at least an associate degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience.

We will not fill those jobs, or keep those jobs on our shores, without the training offered by community colleges.

President Obama

There are 6 million Americans in community colleges.

President Obama announced a goal of 5 million additional community-college graduates by 2020.

…middle school students overwhelming aspire to go to college.

College enrollment has been steadily rising over the past decade.

The problem is completion: nearly half of those who enroll leave without a degree.

Pathways to Prosperity Project

More than 70% of our young people start some kind of advanced training or education within two years of receiving their high school diplomas.

Just over half of students who start 4-year bachelor’s degree programs full-time finish – in six years.

Fewer than three out of ten students who start at community colleges full-time graduate with an associate degree in three years.

Complete College America

Only 22% of students entering a community college emerge with a degree three years later.

An estimated 60% of community college enrollees first must take remedial courses before they can even begin taking credit-bearing classes, and data suggest that only about one-third of those students eventually graduate.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

National Governors Association◦Complete to Compete

Democracy’s Colleges: A Call to Action◦To increase student completion rates by 50% by 2020

American Association of Community Colleges◦Voluntary Framework for Accountability

National Initiatives

Recommendations on the common higher education measures that states should collect and report publicly.

Collecting and reporting metrics at the campus, system, and state levels is a necessary first step for states as they seek to improve completion rates and productivity in higher education.

NGA’s Complete to Compete

The VFA will result in more accurate ways to measure community college performance. Initially, the VFA performance indicators will assess effectiveness in the areas of college readiness, student progress and completion, and job preparation and employment.

AACC’s VFA

Widespread accessibility and connectivity

Student choices/customization

Shaping thinking and learning

Simplification of processes

Technology for Learning

Getting technology in the hands of every student and family should be the standard practice. It isn’t now.

We are losing ground. We have a lot of work to do to make faculty comfortable with technology and ways to use it.

Let’s put out a call to our professors. They can tell us what is working and what is not.

Martha J. KanterQuoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/10/2010

How do we better engage young people in learning and demonstrate its relevance to—real life—and their aspirations?

How do we personalize learning to accelerate and deepen understanding and knowledge retention?

How do we encourage persistence and completion in spite of the competing demands of students’ lives?

How can institutions and educational systems afford improvements in student success in light of flat or declining budgets?

Gates Foundation-NGLC

A Council Across the Silos:

…moving towards individualized instruction; serving students rather than the adults in the bureaucracy; using assessment to allow more learning options; and flexibility on how learning content, location, and time constitutes the learning experience.

Blackboard Institute, July 2009

The “pipeline”

metaphor is no longer applicable to modern education

progression

Blackboard InstituteUsed with Permission

K-20 is a complex cycle of lifelong

learning with many entry and exit points and

multiple paths to student success

Blackboard InstituteUsed with Permission

Access Focus on Student Success:

◦Impact Remediation◦Increase Persistence; Measure Progress◦Encourage Completion

Efficiency/Accountability Longitudinal Data; Tracking K-20 models; Pathways; Systems Partnerships; Collaboration

Themes and Trends

It is critical to our state’s future that more students enter college, complete degrees and qualify to assume positions in competitive industries that will foster a healthier Arizona for decades to come.

Governor Jan Brewer

Arizona Efforts

31%: Current Percentage of young adults (25-34) with a college degree

Arizona ranks • 50th in State-by-State college-going rate• 47th in Percentage of Adults (ages 25-34) with

a High School Diploma• 35th in Degree Attainment for 2-year or 4-year Diplomas

Arizona Data

Complete College America

Getting Ahead (Lumina)The Arizona Higher Education Enterprise- ABOR

Vision for Community Colleges

State Efforts

The organization was founded to focus solely on dramatically increasing the nation’s college completion rate through state policy change, and to build consensus for change among state leaders, higher education, and the national education policy community.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York Ford Foundation Lumina Foundation for Education W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Complete College America

Reforming Arizona’s Higher Education System to Serve More Students, Meet Workforce Needs and Realize Economic Success

Goals of “Getting AHEAD”

• Broader geographic access for student convenience

• Seamless credit transfer• Lower-cost options through campus

partnership• Improved coordination, planning and

governance

The public universities in Arizona

•Educational attainment through access

•Academic excellence•Discovery and creativity•Serving the citizens of AZ

Provide broad access to an innovative, world-class university education to all segments of Arizona’s society

Focus on:

ABOR’s The Higher Education EnterpriseA covenant with the people of Arizona

In order to:

METRIC 2010 2020

Adults with bachelor’s degrees in Arizona 25% 29-30%

Bachelor’s degrees produced annually 21,000 28-36,000

Freshmen retention 79% 85-90%

6-year graduation rate 57% 70-75%

College-going rate (from K-12) 50% 60%

Community college transfers 9,000 16-24,000

Community college transfers to earn bachelor’s degrees 6,000 10-15,000

Undergraduate enrollment 100,000 130-155,000

Total research expenditures $900 million $2 billion

Arizona higher education profile 2020

VisionArizona’s community colleges seek to collaborate with educational, business, and community partners to dramatically increase the number of Arizonans who achieve their postsecondary education and training goals, complete a degree or certificate, and/or transfer to a university

AZ Community Colleges

Access: Broad access to high-quality education and training for all Arizonans at times and places that are convenient for learners.

Retention: Improve the retention of learners through the achievement of their education or training goals.

Completion: Greater completion and transfer.

AZ Community CollegesAreas of Focus

Must Build Alliances To Connect, Collaborate,

Contribute

Effective Leadership

…issues such as access, affordability, accountability, and cost containment will further spur state higher education leaders to redouble their efforts to innovate and collaborate and in doing so help fulfill American aspirations.

American Association of State Colleges and UniversitiesA Higher Education Policy Brief, January 2010

Effective Leadership

The Case for Mission Integration

All students will enter the workplace Separation of institutional missions in workforce, academic, remediation, student affairs, and categorical programs promotes silos that impact students and employers

Public policy reinforces the silosK. Bird, Kentucky Community and Technical College System

What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.

W. Edward Deming

T&L

A/S A

Faculty Support

Student Support

IT

Solutions

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

LearningStudent Success

Academic Affairs

Faculty

Admin./Business

StudentAffairs

Information

Technology

The Goal

Work together to continue to provide access to education, knowledge, and skills while ensuring students are receiving support in an environment conducive to learning and success.

It is time for community colleges to start imagining what is possible.

It is time to challenge the notion that some students will not succeed.

It is time to relinquish our resistance to require.

It is time to raise not just our students’ aspirations but to raise our own.

Teaching and Learning Matters

Perhaps most of all,it is time to assert that access to college is just not enough.

Student success matters.

College completion matters.

And teaching and learning— the heart of student success — matter.

The Heart of Student Success, CCCSE Executive Report

Teaching and Learning Matters

Strengthen classroom engagement

Integrate student support into learning experiences

Expand professional development focused on engaging students

Focus institutional policies on creating the conditions for learning

CCCSE

What Can We Do?

Look for leadership across the campus.

Everyone must play a leadership role in advancing the college completion agenda, particularly faculty members, who can have the most direct effect on student success.

CCCSE

What Can We Do?

What Can We Do?‣Early Connections‣High Expectations and Aspirations‣Clear Academic Plan and Pathway‣Effective Track to College Readiness‣Engaged Learning‣Academic and Social Support Network

Survey of Entering Student Engagement, CCCSE

Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common

occasions and make them great. Weak men and women wait for opportunities; strong men and

women make them.

Orison Sett Marden

No one can whistle a symphony. 

It takes a whole orchestra to play it.

H.E. Luccock

Questions?

National Governors Association, Complete to Compete: http://www.subnet.nga.org/ci/1011/

AACC, Voluntary Framework for Accountability: http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/vfa

ABOR, Vision 2020: https://azregents.asu.edu/strategicplanning/5YearStrategicPlans/2020%20Vision--System%20Strategic%20Plan/ABOR_2020_Overview.pdf

Harvard’s Pathways to Prosperity project and report: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf

Complete College America:http://www.completecollege.org/

Center for Community College Engagement:http://www.ccsse.org/center/

Powerpoint slides from ABOR, Getting Ahead, and Blackboard were used with permission.

References