Native Son Propels Opportunities for Kentucky Students

In April, Dr. Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), participated in the Attaining College Excellence and Equity Summit put together by the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute for Higher Education Policy. On the panel, “Selecting Evidence-Based Advising Strategies to Improve Student Outcomes,” Thompson spoke about equity being a top priority, noting that, if higher education does not serve its most disenfranchised populations, then it is failing.

Dr. Aaron ThompsonThe first African-American person and first native-born Kentuckian to hold the CPE presidency, Thompson knows how challenging the path to and through higher education can be. As the first person in his family to go to high school and college, he was largely left to fend for himself growing up in under-resourced and ill-equipped schools that served the Black community in rural Clay County, Kentucky.

“As an African American from Appalachia, whose father was illiterate and mother had an 8th grade education, I knew the value of college, and if I had a chance to express that with policy, process and procedures to help other people live out that generational dream, then I wanted to take advantage of that,” says Thompson. “My history as a whole told me that I needed to be in a situation where, if I have the opportunity…to help other people realize their dreams without having to go through all that I went through to get there, then I needed to do that.”

As indicated by several key metrics, over the past decade underrepresented minority (URM) students have made considerable progress in retention, graduation, and persistence rates. CPE’s 2024 Higher Education Matters Progress Report shows the graduation rate for URM in the Kentucky Community & Technical College System (KCTCS) increased 15 percentage points from the 2016-17 academic year to the 2022-23 academic year. The graduation rate for URM at four-year public institutions (4YP) increased 9 percentage points from 2016-17 to 2022-23, and the graduation rate for low-income students increased 10 percentage points in that time period.

Building pipelines

After attending undergraduate and graduate school, Thompson built a career as a professor, administrator, and researcher/writer before joining the CPE in 2009 as senior vice president for academic affairs. He became executive vice president in 2013 and assumed the presidency in 2018.

CPE is a coordinating board that oversees Kentucky’s public universities, community colleges, and technical colleges. It also licenses nonprofit and for-profit higher education institutions in the state. Part of the CPE’s role is to bring about a positive return on the investment of public funds in higher education. It sets an educational attainment goal for Kentucky and serves as a policy advisor to the state. It collects, analyzes, and reports comprehensive performance data. The data show that attainment gaps are narrowing.