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Category: National News

Washington, DC - Today, President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the First Lady will join college presidents and other education leaders from around the nation at the second White House College Opportunity Day of Action, where organizations will announce over 600 new actions to help more students prepare for and graduate from college. 

Today’s participants were challenged to commit to a new action in one of four areas: building networks of colleges focused on promoting completion, creating K-16 partnerships around college readiness, investing in high school counselors as part of the First Lady’s Reach Higher initiative, and increasing the number of college graduates in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

Expanding opportunity for more students to enroll and succeed in college, especially low-income and underrepresented students, is vital to building a strong economy and a strong middle class. President Obama believes that the United States should lead the world in college attainment, as it did a generation ago. Because completing college is key to strengthening the middle class and should not be a luxury for the few, the President has increased Pell Grants by $1,000 a year, created the new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth up to $10,000 over four years of college, capped student loan payments to 10 percent of monthly income, and laid out an ambitious agenda to reduce college costs and promote innovation and competition in higher education.

Together, the actions taken today by college and system presidents, education leaders and organizations will reach hundreds of thousands of students in the coming years. Impacts include:

The President will also announce new steps on how his Administration is helping to support these actions, including $10 million to help promote college completion and a $30 million AmeriCorps program that will improve low-income students’ access to college. 

Today’s event is the second College Opportunity Day of Action, and the White House also released a report summarizing the progress of participants in the first day of action, held on January 14, 2014.  To view the list of Commitments to Action on College Opportunity, click HERE (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/college_opportunity_commitment_report.pdf). To view the Progress Report on January Commitments, click (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/college_opportunity_progress_report.pdf).

Actions Announced Today in Response to the President and First Lady’s Call to Action on College Opportunity

As part of the President and First Lady’s national call to action on college opportunity, college presidents and leaders of non-profits, foundations and other organizations are announcing over 600 new commitments in the following key areas:

Working Together to Produce More College Graduates. Across the nation, innovative higher education leaders have found ways to raise graduation rates while improving quality and maintaining affordability. Some of these initiatives involve cutting-edge technology; others ensure that academic credits transfer and provide additional support to at-risk students. Today, college leaders are coming together with a concrete goal to produce more college graduates who are career-ready and detailing the actions they will take to get there.  These actions include using predictive analytics to keep students on track to graduate, adopting new technologies such as adaptive learning to meet individual student needs, and supplementing financial aid awards – with an overarching focus on working together to learn from and scale the most effective practices. Examples of commitments made today include:

Promoting College Readiness through Partnerships: Collaborations of school districts, colleges and universities, community organizations, business, and philanthropy are setting ambitious goals and specific plans to dramatically improve college-going and success for low-income and under-represented students. Collectively, these community collaborations will generate 100,000 more college-ready students by strengthening connections among high schools, community colleges, and four-year colleges and universities and tying together academic expectations, student support systems, and community resources. Many partnerships are focusing on four key benchmarks: applying for financial aid through the FAFSA, completing two or more college applications, preparing for college-level work without remediation, and enrolling in college. By systematically gathering and sharing data on these indicators, communities can set quantitative goals for improvement, rally community support, develop focused strategies, and align systems, curricula, and resources around the goals. Examples of commitments made today include:

Leveling the Playing Field in College Advising. Over 85 percent of America’s high school students expect to attend college, but many lack the support and guidance they need to navigate the enrollment process and be academically prepared for success. With the goal of inspiring every young person to complete their education beyond high school, the First Lady’s Reach Higher initiative is shining light on the great potential for school counselors to help students reach college and career readiness – potential that is too often frustrated by not having sufficient training and information available to school counselors about college and career readiness, unrealistic student-counselor ratios of 471 to one and no counselor at all in one school in five, inappropriate assignments for counselors to perform non-counseling tasks, and a lack of comprehensive district strategies measured by college access, persistency and completion metrics.

The First Lady believes that school counseling is a necessity, not a luxury.  In recent months, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and San Diego State University joined the Administration to bring together state officials, school district administrators, school counselors and college access leaders around the importance of addressing counselors’ training needs, ensuring that counselors can obtain credentials in college- and career-ready counseling, and the need for state, community and school districts to develop college- and career-ready strategies. Examples of commitments made today include:

Improving STEM Learning and Degree Completion for Underrepresented Students. More than 110 individual colleges, universities, non-profit and philanthropic organizations are making new commitments to increase STEM degree access, preparation, and completion for students from low-income and underserved backgrounds, women, and minorities underrepresented in STEM fields. The commitments combine new goals with reforms like transitioning from lectures to active and inquiry-based learning, increasing student access to hands-on research in the first two years of college, providing mentors and internships to connect learning to career fields, and engaging future K-12 teachers in STEM courses so they are trained to prepare and inspire the next generation of STEM innovators. Examples of commitments made today include:

The President’s Executive Actions on College Opportunity: To support these commitments, the President announced today that his Administration will:

Progress on Existing Commitments to College Opportunity

Since the first College Opportunity Day of Action on January 16, 2014, over 140 colleges and organizations have been hard at work implementing their pledges to improve college access and completion for low-income students. Examples of progress include: 

Progress on Administration January 2014 Commitments

At the January event, the Administration also made a number of commitments. Examples of progress on those commitments include: