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The first “Building a Grad Nation” summit was held on March 22nd in Washington DC. In keeping with our President’s commitment to enhancing rate of completion in colleges, Joe Biden, the Vice President announced many initiatives.

In order to help higher education institutions enhance completion rates, there will be a new grant competition. Apart from this, governors and states will be aided with idea generation with the release of the college completion tool kit. Governors were asked to hold college completion summit by Biden.

As we know, one of the major agendas initiated by our President is to enhance college graduation rates by 2020. In line with this initiative that focuses on improving rates of graduation, our country must, by the end of the decade, must produce a minimum of eight million graduates. It goes without saying that every state must produce their share of graduates calculation for which will be released by the administration.

According to the Vice President, who spoke at the summit, our education system must essentially work like a pipeline. However it is now working more like a funnel. Just as we took efforts to bring in people to the registrar’s office, we must also commit ourselves sincerely to getting them to graduate.

Many low cost and seven no-cost strategies are listed in the new tool kit released by the administration. This can be used by the governors to take necessary action. There are 15 related actions recommended for the governors who will be utilizing resources from the current federal resource streams. The funds drawn will hitherto be used to finance their actions.

College placement standards and high school exit alignment, boosting rate of completion by linking college success to state funding, re-engaging adults with only college experience without a degree and easing out the process of credit transfer between colleges are some of the potential strategies recommended.

Interested states can now apply for and benefit from the 2011 Comprehensive Grant Program. This program is a part of the FIPSE or the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Colleges will be provided with at least twenty million and these funds can be used by them to bring into effect plans to enhance productivity and thereby success for postsecondary schools.

Apart from this, there are other grants on offer too including the College Completion Incentive Grants amounting to $50 million and competitive funds of around $123 million for programs that help devise innovative methods to bring down tuition that boost completion and accelerate learning.

There is a high expectation that the quality of K-12 education will improve due to investment in school reforms state-wide through Race to the Top Fund amounting to $4.35 billion. Similarly, the aim of launching the above initiatives and investments is essentially to give a push forward to our country in the right direction.

We severely lag behind many other countries in terms of college graduates and must work together and strive to enhance every single aspect of our education to ensure a better economic future.