This week, the Lumina Foundation announced their four-year plan to help universities and colleges increase graduation rates across the United States. Lumina specified two major areas that the plan will be focused on in an effort to increase the number of graduates in America to 60 percent of the total population by 2025.
First, the Foundation is looking to encourage communities, local business employers, lawmakers and higher education officials to employ strategies specifically focused on achieving an increase in higher education graduates.
“These new emerging models have to play a big role in how you get to the 23 million degrees,” Dewayne Matthews, Lumina’s vice president for policy and strategy, told Inside Higher Ed.
Second, the Foundation plans to provide hands-on support to higher education institutions and individual states as they develop new business models that focus on increasing the number of graduates from degree and certificate programs.
These strategies represent a significant change in the way Lumina is operating. While they initially took a relatively hands-off approach, giving grants in order to increase the number of degree and certificate holders, they are now becoming more active in making that goal a reality. In fact, there are a number of colleges, many of which have received support from Lumina either directly or indirectly, that have already started setting goals to increase attainment numbers.
The Lumina Foundation is reporting that the college competition rate for adults aged 25-34 is currently over 39 percent and that this number reflects a promising start to their revitalized campaign to increase degree and certificate attainment.
