The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities recently announced a significant push to increase the number of U.S. graduates — and avoid falling behind other international universities.
Almost 500 public colleges and universities nationwide pledged to increase the number of students graduating from college by more than a quarter, or 3.8 million, by 2025.
The initiative is part of an effort to reach the nation’s goal of 60 percent of adults earning a college degree.
David Dill, a UNC higher education policy professor, said the nation’s proportion of students who graduate from a higher education institution has remained fixed for 30 years.
He said the U.S. is lagging behind other nations such as South Korea, which graduates close to 90 percent of all college-aged students.
“Other leading developed countries have substantially expanded their systems of higher education,” Dill said.
Dill compared the United States’ higher education system to the United Kingdom, which has a university system that only admits top applicants. But he said it is now graduating more students than the U.S.
“The U.K. enrolls a smaller proportion of students, but they all graduate,” he said.
But some worry the goal fails to address one of the core issues of American education — improving the nation’s K-12 schools.