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  • Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education by Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider
  • Jennifer Nicole Nailos and Victor M. H. Borden
Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider. Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. 335 pp. Hardcover: $45.00. ISBN 978–1–4214–0622–0.

There has been a palpable, if not seismic shift in public policy discourse about higher education from a focus on access and other inputs to a focus on success, completion, and other outputs and outcomes. This shift is marked most visibly by the ambitious completion goals put forth by the Obama administration and two philanthropic foundations. For the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, the Obama administration is challenging the higher education sector to increase the postsecondary degree attainment rate to 60% compared to its current 40%.

Among philanthropic organizations, the Lumina Foundation is pursuing as its “Big Goal” 60% attainment of high quality postsecondary credentials by 2025, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seeks to double the number of low-income students who earn a postsecondary degree or credential with genuine value in the workplace by age 26 with no timeline specified. In their anthology, Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education, editors Andrew Kelly and Mark Schneider have assembled a collection of chapters on the prospects for attaining these completion goals.

Kelly and Schneider describe as the purpose of the volume, “to take stock of the new higher education agenda, exploring where we stand in the [End Page 415] effort to improve student success and which sectors of the postsecondary landscape seem particularly ripe for increases in such success” (p. 2). They note in their introductory chapter that the goals are neither consistently articulated nor likely to be met as stated. In the process of pursuing these goals, however, we can make some constructive gains in better and more equitably preparing students for productive lives. Moreover, with some flexibility in defining what constitutes “completion,” we can make significant numerical progress and, more importantly, promote several under-utilized post-secondary pathways that are especially important for the fastest growing population segment: traditionally underserved and less well academically prepared individuals.

Getting to Graduation offers critiques on the ambitious completion agendas, provides recommendations for alternative avenues for reaching these goals, and offers illustrative case examples at the state level. The volume is organized into four sections: the challenges (two chapters); the performance and potential of sub-baccalaureate programs (three chapters); the relationship between policy and completion (three chapters); and the lessons from three states (three chapters). The editors end the volume with a brief chapter offering conclusions and recommendations.

Arthur Hauptman begins Section 1, “The Challenges,” with his chapter asserting and demonstrating that the evidence base for the completion agenda is generally misleading and, in some cases, simply incorrect. He describes the important distinctions between participation (percent of population enrolled); completion (percent of enrolled who earn a degree); and attainment (percent of working population that has a degree), as well as the difference between sub-bachelor’s and bachelor’s or higher attainment.

He illustrates that the United States has always been and continues to be a leader in bachelor’s or higher attainment and was never a leader in broader postsecondary attainment, primarily because of the sub-bachelor’s level. Hauptman notes that attainment rates have not been stagnant as is generally claimed, albeit not climbing at the rate required to achieve the Obama/Lumina/Gates goals. He warns against focusing on completion rates per se and promotes attainment as the proper focus. He closes with eight “Rules for the Road for Increasing Attainment,” several of which are related to appropriately characterizing, contextualizing, and interpreting the metrics upon which the goals are based.

Matthew Chingos begins his contribution to the “Challenges” section by restating the problem of low attainment, noting all-too-modest gains thus far in reaching the stated goals and the limited research suggesting what can be done. He also raises the issue of cost effectiveness as a context for assessing possible solutions. His purpose, then...

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