Cost, Commitment, and Attainment in Higher Education

Résumé du livre

Jobs for the Future commissioned this report to provide an international perspective on the productivity agenda of "Making Opportunity Affordable," a multi-year initiative focused on increasing productivity within U.S. higher education, particularly at two-year and four-year public colleges and universities. The report also has implications for the community college improvement goals of Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. The authors compare and analyze data on: (1) Cost, the amount that countries spend on tertiary education per student; (2) Commitment, the share of GDP a country spends on tertiary education; and (3) Attainment, the share of working-age adults holding a tertiary education degree. The report suggests three approaches that the United States should consider to achieve higher attainment at sustainable levels of costs and commitment: (1) Focus more resources and attention on community colleges; (2) Pay more attention to developing and implementing strategies to improve completion rates at both two-year and four-year institutions; and (3) Consider increases in enrollments as a means for moderating costs per student and improving productivity. (Contains 20 endnotes, 5 figures and 8 tables.).