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It is imperative for all colleges in the States to strive for post secondary education completion in a meaningful manner that embraces the goal of President Obama without new public funds. This is the Lumina Foundation for Education’s Making Opportunity Affordable initiative’s thesis.

According to the argument put forth by Lumina, leaders in colleges with the help of policy makers must work out a strategic plan on using resources effectively and devise ways and means of doing more with less. This speaks of efficiency, enhanced productivity and savings which simply lead to lost jobs and lowered quality, which is exactly what is being produced by state leaders and colleges right now.

It is vital for States to bring together key personnel in order to develop strategic and smart methods of spending the funds. It is important aligning them with the agenda to increase completion rates in colleges.

With this specific goal in mind, Lumina has recently announced grants amounting to $9.1 million for seven states to work out a spending system based on new education delivery models, cost savings and financial incentives offered by States to students and colleges. States that will benefit from this scheme include Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio, Montana, Maryland and Indiana.

According to Jamie Merisotis, the President of Lumina, this will help in serving undergraduate students better. This grant is offered for a four year period and has to be renewed every year based on how effectively the State moves forward in meeting concrete goals.

All States that won the grant had some similarities in policies that were used as yard sticks by Lumina in spotlighting them. According to Lumina this could be an effective guide for policymakers and will surely point the way for other states to follow in their footsteps.

Lumina advocates a few changes that state leaders must adopt including –

•    Offering rewards for institutions that motivate students to complete their courses.
•    Rewarding students who complete their certificate or degree programs
•    Modifying regulations effectively to enhance and add strength to non-traditional and low cost education options
•    Give financial support to educational institutions that shows good results through adopting result oriented business practices.

Lumina argues that with shrinking budget due to challenging economy, it is important for state agencies, legislators, governors and institutions of higher learning to give more push towards completion of post secondary and degree certificates.

Lumina goes on to say that a cycle of effective investment and reinvestment through savings can be initiated through appropriate processes and existing budget development in order to stimulate and enhance rate of degree completion at the undergraduate level.

Applications of grantees were scrutinized based on the plans by leaders of the state to engage relevant parties including the members of the faculty said Lumina. While institutional leaders and state shoot out concepts like efficiency and productivity, professors and officials are not too happy with the scenario. However, they do recognize that they must take more efforts in fulfilling their public obligations.