Issue Position: Higher Education

Issue Position

Efforts to meet "Closing the Gaps" benchmarks have resulted in significant increases in attendance rates across ethnic groups, however, our work is far from over. We now need to focus our attention on ways to significantly improve completion rates. Though UT and A&M have six-year graduation rates of 83%, six-year graduation rate at all public universities for students who entered in Fall 2003 was only 55.9%. In addition, Texas currently ranks in the bottom 5 states in numbers of adults with baccalaureate degrees.

Funding for tuition assistance programs must be restored and expanded as this is critical to ensuring access as well as persistence, especially for high-demand degrees.

Innovations in delivery of instruction as well as expansion of career and technical training programs must be developed to meet the needs of a diverse student population, to ensure necessary workforce production, and to provide cost effective investments in higher education.

Accountability must be tied to appropriate milestones/benchmarks that reflect the mobile student population and the unique experiences at the various types of institutions, i.e. community colleges and four-year institutions.

Source