Over the past decade, the completion agenda has swept through the world of higher education policy and practice. College graduation is now the focus of much higher education reform discussion. Furthermore, community colleges are now at the center of such discussions.
This chapter explores the role of community colleges in achieving the degree attainment goals put forth by the Obama administration, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Lumina Foundation for Education. In addition, Thomas Bailey discusses the extent of degree production that would be necessary to meet these goals. The chapter concludes with some discussion about what colleges might need to do to significantly increase their degree production.
This chapter appears in Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education, edited by Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider.
