South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Writing in The New Republic, Kevin Carey documents the collapse of the American Graduation Initiative.

Listening to the administration, you would think none of these failures had occurred. The White House has focused media attention on student loan reform and how it transferred billions of dollars from rich bankers to poor college students. And this is an unquestionably great accomplishment. But the bill-signing ceremony for loan reform was staged at a community college, and Organizing for America’s website declared that the legislation would help 5 million more students earn degrees by revitalizing community colleges—which is true in the alternate universe where the graduation initiative didn’t implode. Obama has also promised a White House “community college summit,” which is what you get in Washington in lieu of actual resources and reform.
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By allowing Congress to slash higher-education goals from the reconciliation bill, the administration is left with no backup plan to help more students graduate—and no money with which to build one. Just pretending to tackle the graduation problem will undermine this presidency in the long run. Above all, the United States needs strong economic growth and jobs to match. Recession-driven unemployment has brutally discriminated against people without college degrees. Economists across the political spectrum see well-educated workers as the lynchpin of American competitiveness—and note with alarm our declining position relative to other nations. If the administration doesn’t redouble its efforts to help more students graduate, it will look back on the collateral damage of the reconciliation bill with far more regret than anyone imagines today.