Dr. Lenore Rodicio is vice provost for Miami Dade Community College and a managing project director for Completion by Design in the Florida cadre.
One thing is certain: The Gates Foundation is putting its money where its mouth is to the tune of spending nearly a half-billion dollars, according to a 2011 tax report, as part of a 20-year mission to fix higher education. The foundation is in year five of that mission, with a goal to double the number of low-income U.S. students who have completed a degree or credential at age 26 by 2020.
“We see this as a natural evolution,” says Daniel Greenstein, Gates Foundation’s director of education, Postsecondary Success Strategy. “The foundation has always been interested in student success.”
He said the university and college systems aren’t really equipped to help college students succeed, given that the majority of today’s enrollees are “nontraditional” students — low-income, part-time, first-generation college goers, commuting students who are more likely to work full time.
“Unless we graduate more of these students we call ‘the new majority,’ because they make up the majority of students today in the United States, we’re not going to be able to keep our country economically competitive,” says Greenstein. “The goal is to graduate more students with better degrees and at lower cost.”
An Obama Initiative
The foundation’s efforts dovetail with American Graduation Initiative, a plan started in 2009 by the Obama administration to invest in community colleges and help American workers get the skills and credentials they need to succeed. The administration’s stated goals: “To lead the world in college completion; support the expansion of state data systems to track student progress and performance-based financing for colleges.”
