Project Graduate — 07/08/08

July 07, 2008 02:35 pm

— Project Graduate, a new program launched in November by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, already has convinced more than 200 former students to return to college and earn their undergraduate degrees. The potential is far greater than that.
The critical need for more college graduates in Kentucky makes the success of Project Graduate important to the economic future of this state. Thus, former students who dropped out before earning their degrees can benefit themselves, their state and community by completing the work necessary to earn a degree.
“Challenge to Lead” — a report released July 1 by the Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta — found that only 20 percent of the adults in Kentucky had a bachelor’s degree or higher. That’s far below the national average of 27 percent and the regional average of 25 percent for the 16 states that make up the SREB. Only 13 percent of black adults in Kentucky had college degrees, compared to a national average of 17 percent.
“Challenge to Lead” also points out that there is no shortage of adults in Kentucky who are the primary targets of Project Graduate. Of the students entering four-year college and universities in Kentucky in 2000, 47 percent received a degree within six years. That compares to a national average of 55 percent and of 52 percent in the 16 southern states.
Thus, while the 1998 higher education reform act set an ambitious goal of having the percentage of college graduates in Kentucky equal or exceed the national average by 2020, eight years after the approval of that bill, Kentucky was actually falling further behind in its percentage of college graduates. While the goal legislators set in 1998 may have been too ambitious to be realistic, the last thing this state can afford it to lose ground in this critical area — yet that is exactly what is happening.
Project Graduate is not aimed at former students who took only a handful of college classes before dropping out. Instead, it is aimed at helping adults who piled up a significant number of college credits but left before earning a degree
There are more than 300,000 state residents between 25 and 50 who have some college credit from a state school, but no degree. Project Graduate is for former students who have 90 or more credit hours, or about 75 percent of the credit hours needed to receive a bachelor’s degree from most institutions.
The program doesn’t require students to return to the school where they earned their previous credits. Some students are able to take classes online, through correspondence courses or at a regional campus. Many schools have made it easier for returning students by offering admission fee waivers and tuition breaks. The response has been so positive the program is being expanded from the state’s eight public universities to include 10 private colleges.
Kentucky needs to at least double its number of college graduates. To do that, it is going to go beyond just convincing more recent high school graduates to go on to college. It must also convince former students and other adults to give college a try.