America No Longer the Worlds Education Leader!

July 28th, 2010 by admin

It’s been expected and now it’s finally happened. The College Board reported last Thursday on the growing gap between the United States and other countries in terms of their college graduation rates.

Together with the overall degradation of American high school education written earlier about, this threatens to undermine the nation’s economic competitiveness.

The United States used to be the world’s number one by its college graduates from 25 to 34 years. Now it ranks only 12th among 36 developed nations.

“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the President of the College Board, warned at a meeting of education leaders and policy makers on Capitol Hill. He also released a report which recommended to “think P-16 and improve education from preschool through higher [one]” in order to increase the completion rates.

“We led the world in the 1980s, but we didn’t build from there,” said William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, who hosted the Washington discussion along with Mr. Caperton.  “If you look at people 60 and over, about 39 – 40 percent have college degrees, and if you look at young people, too, about 39 – 40 percent have college degrees. Meanwhile, other countries have passed us by.”

While public and media attention was mostly paid to college accession rates in recent decades, college graduation rates are relatively new item on the national agenda. Everything started a year ago when President Obama announced his American Graduation Initiative that urged for five million more college graduates by 2020.

This month, after chairing the National Governors Association, Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia spoke on his similar initiative.

While policy makers are still uncertain on how to exactly improve the college graduation rates, underfunding is believed to be the core of the problem. Many sponsors, funds and philanthropic organizations have declared on their intentions to help.

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