WASHINGTON – In seeking to join President Barack Obama’s ambitious college completion initiative, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), a leading U.S. association of private colleges and universities, devoted a significant part of its annual meeting to having administrators and faculty members explore and discuss the role private institutions can play in the drive to expand access and graduate more students.
Meeting to consider “Strategies for a New Future” as this year’s theme, the organization has focused on Obama’s initiative because NAICU supporters and officials say their schools are among the best equipped institutions to help reach those national goals.
“Private colleges do better than public institutions to help graduate first-generation college students,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who addressed members of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities Tuesday at the association’s annual meeting.
Echoing the President’s call to produce the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, NAICU officials announced a pledge to join the college completion campaign through a collective initiative by their members along with the Council of Independent Colleges and Universities. NAICU counts nearly 1,000 institutions among its members.
NAICU officials said private colleges and universities play an unmatched role in bringing the most vulnerable students into the classroom and educating them. NAICU representatives are working with federal lawmakers to ensure private institutions are considered in legislation. The effort is also expected to expand best practices and programs at private institutions and allow NAICU members to set goals for marking their progress with at-risk students and graduation rates.
The rising generation will be students of color and low-income students, and these institutions (private schools) have done well identifying and graduating them,” said NAICU President David Warren. “We need increased investment in these programs and to create national competition to help find students, institutions, and communities to find ways to lift up these populations.”
Student aid policies are key to the private schools, NAICU officials said, because they affect their ability to bring underrepresented minorities and low-income students into their institutions. Nearly 61 percent of first-generation college students earn bachelor’s degrees at private institutions, compared to the national total of 24 percent for all U.S. students, according to NAICU.
