Vice President Joe Biden announced Tuesday an incentives-only education reform program encouraging states to increase their college graduation rates. The College Completion Tool Kit will include a $20 million Comprehensive Grant Program to states which execute plans to graduate more students.
The program also includes low-cost or no-cost measures states can take to meet completion goals, such as aligning high school exit and college placement standards and making it easier for students to transfer schools.
In addition, the Department of Education is accepting applications from state governors to participate in the College Completion Incentive Grants, which would provide $50 million total to states and institutions whose reforms produce more college graduates.
"America once led the world in the number of college graduates it produces, and now we've fallen to ninth," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a press release Tuesday. "While our educational advancement stalled, other countries have passed us by. We need to educate our way to a better economy, and governors must help lead the way."
Jeff Caldwell, spokesperson for Gov. Bob McDonnell, indicated that the commonwealth will participate in the completion campaign.
"Virginia will compete [to earn] these grants in an effort to bring more funds and support to these initiatives," he said.
University spokesperson Carol Wood said in an e-mail the federal initiative sounds very much like the recommendations McDonnell already has made through his Commission on Higher Education Reform and related legislation.
McDonell's current five-point program plan for higher education includes matriculating students toward an additional 100,000 associate and bachelor degrees in the next 15 years, emphasizing the sciences, mathematics and other high-demand career fields, incorporating community colleges in workforce training along with promoting regional public-private partnerships to implement research, workforce training and economic development. McDonnell also aims to make education more affordable and graduates more employable.
The McDonnell office has highlighted support for degrees in the math and sciences, rather than those in the liberal arts.
"I don't think it's any de-emphasis on [liberal arts] degrees," Caldwell said, adding that the commitment is to increase the number of all degrees. "But the focus of math and science skills is because those are the areas [in demand]."
The governor, Caldwell added, also is working closely with school presidents ensure students complete college in no more than four years.
University President Teresa A. Sullivan has announced her intentions to increase student body enrollment by 1,800 students during the next five years, as well as her interest in programs allowing students entering college with an abundance of college credit to earn degrees in three years.
Wood said the University will not argue with any initiative that seeks to expand education.
"President Sullivan has taken a multi-pronged approach to increasing the number of University degrees and to graduating some students on a faster track," Wood said, adding "Sullivan has noted numerous times when it comes to graduation rates, we don't have a lot of margin for improvement: the University has among the highest graduation rates in the nation at 92.9 percent"
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