UK
China
South Korea
Japan
Sponsorship Link
A generation ago, according to the President, the U.S. had the highest college graduation rate in the world. Today, the U.S. ranks 12th in graduation rates.
"That's unacceptable," President Obama said last week at the University of Texas in Austin. "But it's not irreversible."
/
The U.S. is still held in high regard throughout the world for its institutions of higher learning. According to a 2007 report by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, 17 of the top 20 universities and more than half of the top one hundred universities in the world were in the United States.
The U.S. also leads the world in its investment in higher education, spending 2.9 percent of GDP on post-secondary institutions, while the world average is 1.4 percent, according to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Must Read
But despite the quality and the investment, only 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 have earned a college degree. To lead the world again in that prestigious category the ratio would have to rise to about 60 percent.
Follow us
That would mean finding a way to add 8 million more college graduates by 2020. That is President Obama's expressed goal.
"This isn't just a target for target's sake," said Cecilia Rouse, a member of the president's council of economic advisers. "It's really important that we have the workers that will compete in the 21st century."
"We have flat-lined, while other countries have passed us by," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.
The problem is not so much that American students don't make it to college. They do. They just don't stay there.
"Initial enrollments in the U.S. are largely competitive with those of other countries," said Henry M. Levin, professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. "But, completion rates are well below those of other countries."
The White House pointed out that over a third of America's college students and over half of the nation's minority students do not earn a degree.
This is in an era when, according to a recent report by the University of Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce, the U.S. is continuing to become a "college economy" - that is, where most of the jobs will require some sort of postsecondary education. Advancements in technology and automation decrease the need for low-education manual labor positions and increase the need for highly trained professionals.
"America needs more workers with college degrees, certificates and industry certifications. If we don't address this need now, millions of jobs could go offshore," said Anthony P. Carnevale, the center's director at Georgetown.
Levin said that extensive research indicates that a major obstacle to completing college is financial. A 2009 study by educational scholars Susan Dynarski of the University of Michigan and David Deming of Harvard, which examined a niumber of college intervention programs, found that "aid typically generated positive effects on enrollment and persistence."
