The Completion Agenda: Building the Case

1. Building Alliances To Connect, Collaborate, and Contribute to Student SuccessYavapai College May 17, 2011

2. The Completion Agenda: Building the Case

3. In a single generation, the US has fallen from1st place to12th place in college graduation for young adults College Board July 2010

4. The unemploymentratefor people who have never gone to college is more than double what it is for those who have gone to college U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics July 2010

5. By the end of the decade, 8 out of 10 new jobs will require post-secondary education U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics December 2009

6. 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

7. 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

8. There are 6 million Americans in community colleges. President Obama announced a goal of 5 million additional community-college graduates by 2020.

9. …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

10. 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

11. 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

12. National Initiatives • 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

13. NGA’s Complete to Compete • 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.

14. AACC’s VFA 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.

15. Technology for Learning • Widespread accessibility and connectivity • Student choices/customization • Shaping thinking and learning • Simplification of processes

16. 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. Kanter Quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/10/2010

17. Gates Foundation-NGLC • 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?

18. Blackboard Institute, July 2009 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.

19. The “pipeline” metaphor is no longer applicable to modern education progression Blackboard Institute Used with Permission

20. K-20 is a complex cycle of lifelong learning with many entry and exit points and multiple paths to student success Blackboard Institute Used with Permission

21. Themes and Trends • 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

22. Arizona Efforts 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

23. Arizona Data 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

24. State Efforts • Complete College America • Getting Ahead (Lumina) • The Arizona Higher Education Enterprise- ABOR • Vision for Community Colleges

25. Complete College America 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

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

27. Goals of “Getting AHEAD” • Broader geographic access for student convenience • Seamless credit transfer • Lower-cost options through campus partnership • Improved coordination, planning and governance

28. ABOR’s The Higher Education Enterprise A covenant with the people of Arizona The public universities in Arizona In order to: Focus on: Provide broad access to an innovative, world-class university education to all segments of Arizona’s society • Educational attainment through access • Academic excellence • Discovery and creativity • Serving the citizens of AZ

29. Arizona higher education profile 2020

30. AZ Community Colleges • Vision Arizona’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

31. AZ Community CollegesAreas of Focus • 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.

32. Effective Leadership Must Build Alliances To Connect, Collaborate, Contribute

33. 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 Universities A Higher Education Policy Brief, January 2010

34. 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 silos K. Bird, Kentucky Community and Technical College System

35. 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

37. No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing. Ralph Waldo Emerson

39. 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.

40. Teaching and Learning Matters 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.

41. 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

42. What Can We Do? • 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

43. 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

44. 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

45. 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

46. No one can whistle a symphony.  It takes a whole orchestra to play it. H.E. Luccock

47. Questions?

48. References • 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.