Gates Foundation boosts aid to community colleges to help improve graduation rates
Seattle Times
April 20, 2010
For years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle has pushed high schools to work harder to graduate more students.
Now it is prodding community colleges, which educate about half of the nation's college students, to pay more attention to their graduation rates, too.
Melinda French Gates, speaking Tuesday at the American Association of Community Colleges conference in Seattle, said the foundation estimates that only 25 percent of students who enter community college leave with a diploma or certificate.
While acknowledging that number is controversial because many community-college students don't intend to earn a degree, she said there's agreement that the number needs to rise.
And at the conference Tuesday, six national organizations representing nearly 1,200 community colleges signed a commitment to increase student-completion rates to 50 percent over the next decade.
"Community colleges led the way with college access," Gates said. "I really think now is the time to have the conversation about college completion."
Gates said she and her husband, Bill Gates, are often moved by the sacrifices many community-college students make to get an education. She talked about a North Carolina man she met who works all night, goes to school all morning, and sleeps just a few hours in between.
"We owe them the same tenacity in return," she said.
She pledged another $57 million to help community colleges improve remedial classes, which about 60 percent of community-college students take.
