The 11 Learning Year states participated in the State Policy Academy in Denver, CO, June 10-11, 2009. Resources created for the Academy participants on what states and systems can do to improve postsecondary productivity are available at our events page.
The United States is confronting a serious economic crisis, and as higher education budgets come under scrutiny or shrink in size, we need to ensure meeting labor-market demand for graduates with high-quality degrees remains a top priority. We need millions more workers with two- and four-year degrees by 2025 to continue to drive the American economy, maintain the health and vigor of our society and aid individual advancement. If we fail to face the enormity of what it will take to ensure 60 percent of Americans are college educated within 17 years, we truly will be a nation at risk. The evidence is clear: A generation ago, the United States had the best-educated population in the world. Today, we are in a three-way tie for 10th among developed nations in our percentage of college-educated adults ages 25 to 34.
Identifying efficiencies and more cost-effective approaches alone will not be enough to help 16 million more people than we are on track to educate earn meaningful two- and four-year degrees. However, significant new public investment in higher education is not likely without evidence of a commitment by colleges and universities to changing the way they do business. This shift must occur without diluting the skills and knowledge attainment signified by the awarding of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. We believe the good news is that significant movement toward educating a much-greater share of the U.S. population does not have to cost a lot more. In the United States, we already spend at least twice as much as the average industrialized nation per student. We believe this represents a tremendous opportunity for rethinking priorities, and this is one of the reasons for the Lumina's productivity work, which has brought together like-minded partners and state-level advocates.
Some of the questions we are raising include: Are states who want to provide more education for every dollar spent willing to try bold approaches that could upend conventional wisdom? What are some promising ideas that could immediately address the critical need for many more people with postsecondary credentials? What barriers exist to dramatically expanding postsecondary success, and how can these be demolished?
From November 2008 to October 2009, the initiative will engage a Learning Year. This is a joint effort among 11 states participating in the initiative to address these questions and others. Along the way, we hope to develop innovative educational models capable of reaching more students, especially those toughest to serve.
In order to succeed, we believe states need willingness to experiment and a strong desire to work toward understanding, recognizing and removing regulatory and public and institutional policy barriers to implementing new approaches. The initiative will focus on how to best gauge returns on investment without sacrificing quality.
The states have identified and will expand upon a number of promising ideas and approaches. From a modest philanthropic seed fund, Lumina Foundation for Education expects to recognize and reward risk-taking that delivers important lessons even when results differ from what might be anticipated. We believe such efforts will result in more rapid iteration and learning that inform public and institutional policies and practices as well as advance states toward the ultimate goal of much-more-widespread student success. The United States no longer has the luxury of big goals supported by relatively small ideas.
The initiative will capture lessons learned and spread them broadly in an open, networked fashion. The most important manifestation of this approach is the Knowledge Collaborative, an online space for the initiative’s participants designed to promote technology-enhanced, collaborative and open-resource efforts to engage around the most promising ideas.
Working together, we intend to use the coming year to assist at least five states in reaching a point at which they are poised to become proof points to the nation of how wiser investment, with a focus on productivity, can generate better results.