This document outlines key challenges facing higher education and proposes conversations to address them. It notes that intergenerational poverty is high while education attainment is decreasing, and billions are spent on students who do not earn credentials. Only 9% of students from the bottom quartile earn degrees compared to 68% from the top quartile. It proposes conversations around academic catch-up programs, innovative learning technologies, learn and earn models, institutional renewal, new college models, credentials with labor market value, and lifelong learning. The goal is to increase higher education access and success.

1. An Optimist’s Education Agenda
Moving to Increase Access and
Success in Higher Education
Mark David Milliron
mark.milliron@gatesfoundation.org

2. Issues Ahead
“If we want things to
stay as they are, things
will have to change.”

4. Issues Ahead
• Intergenerational poverty transmission is
at its highest
• Education is the single biggest disrupter
• We’ve doubled our access to HE
• But half of all college students drop out
before earning a credential
• 68% of top quartile students from college-
going families earn a degree by 26,
compared to just 9% of first-gen students
from the bottom quartile

5. Issues Ahead
• Over the last generation we’ve moved
from 1st in educational attainment to 12th
• Overall education attainment is projected
to decrease for the first time
• Billions of dollars (federal and state) are
spent on activity that never leads to a
credential
• Worse: millions of students are trying,
but experiencing significant failures that
put their futures (and ours) at risk

6. “ . . . Dropping out is not just
quitting on yourself, it’s
quitting on your country.”
Issues Ahead

7. Issues Ahead
Malthusian doomsayers
didn’t anticipate:
•New Technology
•New Techniques
•New Behaviors

8. Conversations to Consider
Academic Catch Up
Learning Innovations and Technology
Learn and Earn
Renewal and Redesign
New Models
Credentials that Count
Learning for a Lifetime

9. Academic Catch Up
Elimination, Innovation, Acceleration

10. Learning Innovation and Technology
Curricular Resource Strategy, Big Blend,
Engaging Learning, & Learning Analytics

11. Learn & Earn Continuum
Focus: Acceleration, Contextualization, & Competency
11
Apprenticeships
w/ Credit
Cooperative
Education
(Coops)
Corporate
Colleges
w/Credit
Paid Credit-
bearing
Internships
Credit-
Bearing
Contract
Training
Credit
Mapping On-
the-Job
Training
Light Deep
Working-student
friendly employer
practices and
policies
Working-student
friendly college
practices and
policies
Credit-bearing
On–Camp us
Work Study
Unpaid Credit-
bearing
Internships
COLLEGES
EMPLOYERS
Off–Campus
Work Study
Learn & Earn
Contextual
Based
Learning

12. SUPPORTING STUDENT SUCCESS:
PREVENTING LOSS, CREATING MOMENTUM
a s y s t e m d e s i g n e d f o r s t u d e n t c o m p l e t i o n
CONNECTION ENTRY PROGRESS COMPLETION
INTEREST TO APPLICATION ENROLLMENT TO COMPLETION OF
GATEKEEPER COURSES
ENTRY INTO COURSE OF STUDY
TO 75% REQUIREMENTS COMPLETED
COMPLETE COURSE OF STUDY
TO CREDENTIAL
WITH LABOR MARKET VALUE
LossPointsStudentProgressionMomentumStrategies
Student Data System
(From Day 1 to Completion)
Student Engagement
Leadership Focused on Completion
(Faculty, Administration, Trustees)
• Do not apply to PS
• Delayed entry to PS
• Poor college counseling leads to under
enrollment, poor matching and failure
to obtain financial aid for which they
qualify
• Consistent college and career ready
standards
• Foster college-going norms supported by
peers and trusted adults
• Increase understanding of college
requirements, application and financial aid
processes/Improve information, matching
and financial aid products
• Dual enrollment/Early College High Schools
(on-ground, online options), AP credit
• Take college placement exam in high school
• Enrollment directly from high school
• Poor academic preparation
• In community colleges, 60% referred to
developmental education, only 30% ever
take subsequent college level courses
• Fail to enroll/pass Gatekeeper courses
(i.e., entry-level math and English)
• Diagnostic assessment and placement
tools
• Mandatory “intrusive” advising,
attendance, life skills courses, declared
courses of study linked career pathways
• Improvedacademic catch-up (prevention,
acceleration, supplemental instruction,
concurrent enrollment, contextualization,
and competency-baseddigital prep)
• Aggressive financial aid application
support
• Course redesign to go further, faster,
cheaper
• 75% of low-income students need to
combine work and school; work more
than 20 hours/week; schedule changes
• Part-time enrollment means slow
progress, loss of momentum
• Life happens/complex lives means
many disruptions; stop out or drop out
• Innovative programs to incent optimal
(e.g., high intensity, continuous)
attendance
• Leverage technology to make real-time
feedback, intensive advising, accelerated,
flexible, and student-centeredlearning
more available
• Intentional, accelerated, competency-
based programs of study leading to
credentials in high-demand fields like STEM
and health care
• Provide emergencyaid to deal with
unexpectedlife events
• Mandatory “intrusive” advising
• Transfer with credentials incentives
• Remove barriers to graduation (e.g.,
fees, forms)
• Learn and Earn programs that
combine credential attainment and
work experience in field of study
toward career pathway
• Limited advising leads to credit (and
debt) accumulation not matched to
degree attainment
• Leave with credits neededfor degree
except for college level math
• Transfer without credential
• Credential doesn’t garner family-
supporting wage job or isn’t
“stackable” to career that does

13. New Models

14. Credentials that Count!
STEM (health), Local Focus

15. Learning for
a Lifetime
• Critical
• Creative
• Social
• Courageous

16. “In times of drastic change, it is the
learners who inherit the future. The
learned usually find themselves
equipped to live in a world that no
longer exists.” --Eric Hoffer
Courageous Learning

17. Conversations to Consider
Academic Catch Up
Learning Innovations and Technology
Learn and Earn
Renewal and Redesign
New Models
Credentials that Count
Learning for a Lifetime

18. An Optimist’s Education Agenda
Moving to Increase Access and
Success in Higher Education
Mark David Milliron
mark.milliron@gatesfoundation.org