Obama’s Bold Goals for Higher Education

In his speech last night, President Obama said, “By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal we can meet.” Not long afterward, a friend emailed to ask if I though this was realistic. Answer: it depends, as these things often do, on exactly what the president means.

President Obama is almost surely referring to educational attainment statistics compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD statistics showing that America has lost its long-standing lead in the percent of adults with a college degree are frequently used in education policy circles as evidence that we need to repair various parts of our leaky education pipeline. (As someone who’s written a lot about low college graduation rates, I was glad the president noted that this is substantially a problem of people starting college but not finishing.) The relevant statistics, if you’re interested, can be found here, by clicking on “Indicator A1: To What Level Have Adults Studied?” and then selecting Table A1.3a on the spreadsheet.

Put another way: As long as we’re the best of the biggest and the biggest of the best, we’ll be okay.