Washington — Citing disparities in graduation rates between students from rich and poor backgrounds, leaders from a group of public urban universities recently launched a new collaborative initiative to improve completion rates and eliminate the gaps.
“We must find solutions,” said Mark Becker, president of Georgia State University, which is one of six urban public institutions participating in “Collaborating for Change”—an initiative launched last week by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, or APLU, and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, or USU.
The purpose of the initiative is to help the participating universities—as well as others—to “enact and scale a series of transformations aimed at admitting, retaining, educating, and graduating high-need, traditionally at-risk students while reducing costs, reexamining campus business models, and fostering mutually beneficial campus-community engagement.”
“Collaborating for Change isn’t just about outlining steps public urban universities can take to improve student success,” said APLU President Peter McPherson. “It’s about helping them actually implement those changes so we can begin to see the progress and improvement that is needed.”
Becker and McPherson said the initiative is also aimed at helping the United States have 60 percent of working age adults earn a post-secondary degree—consistent with the Obama administration’s goal to make the U.S. have the most college-educated workforce in the world by 2020.
Besides Georgia State University, the initiative, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, includes California State University, Fresno; Florida International University; Portland State University; Temple University; and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
At a kickoff event, institutional leaders shared some of the things they have been doing as of late to improve graduation rates.
