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Teacher-Scholar: The Journal of the State Comprehensive University

Abstract

In his first address to a Joint Session of Congress in February 2009, President Barack Obama committed the nation to dramatically expanding adult baccalaureate degree attainment among US adults, which had fallen from first to eighth among developed nations around the world: That is why, at the start of my administration I set a goal for America: by 2020, this nation will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world….Today, I am announcing the most significant down payment yet on reaching this goal in the next ten years. It’s called the American Graduation Initiative. It will reform and strengthen community colleges from coast to coast so that they get the resources students and schools need—and the results workers and businesses demand. Through this plan, we seek to help an additional five million Americans earn degrees and certificates in the next decade. The task of dramatically increasing adult baccalaureate degree attainment requires a substantially greater policy focus on what National Center for Public Policy Center and Higher Education President Pat Callan termed the most understudied sector of US higher education, the nation’s public regional universities (2009 unpublished remarks to the Council for the Public Policy of ASHE).

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