(The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 16, 2009) President Obama and his administration need to get more involved if the United States is to meet his goal of having the world's highest proportion of college graduates by 2020, panelists said at the annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities here on Monday.
"Only the president can pull this together," M. Peter McPherson, the association's president, said during a panel discussion of the challenges facing public universities.
Others on the panel urged the president and the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, to use their "bully pulpits" and "purse strings" to encourage a stronger commitment from the states for the president's goal. One panel member said that higher education could use the administration's Race to the Top competition as a model. That program will allow states to vie for grants that would support education reform in elementary and secondary schools, and innovation in the classroom.
Panelists pointed out that the United States has rallied before and increased college enrollment, especially after World War II, following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, and with the advent of community colleges. So there is history to assume that the president's goal can be reached, they said.
Among the challenges in meeting the president's goal identified by members are the large number of students in the pipeline—mostly minorities who are not prepared for college work—the lack of stronger credit-transfer agreements between two-year and four-year colleges in some states, and the country's current economic difficulties.
A couple of panelists recommended that the association band together with other educational organizations such as the Association of American Universities to not only reaffirm the president's goal but devise some intermediary steps that could be achieved along the way.
By Jennifer Gonzalez