Gates Funds State Competition For College Completion

Starting today, Governors from all 50 states are invited to take up the Completion Innovation Challenge, a new competitive grant program from Complete College America with funding support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

States that demonstrate a commitment to develop and deploy innovative, state-wide strategies to substantially increase college completion are eligible to earn one of ten $1 million, 18-month implementation grants.

Complete College America aims to leverage the Completion Innovation Challenge grants to inspire states to new thinking and action in key policy areas essential for real and lasting impact:

• Shifting to Performance Funding to reward for more student success, not just higher headcounts.

• Reducing Time-to-Degree to accelerate achievement, prevent damaging delays, and cut costs.

• Restructuring Delivery for Today’s Students to help the new majority of students balance the jobs they need with the higher education they desire.

• Transforming Remediation to move students into first-year, full-credit classes as quickly as possible so precious time, motivation and money are not lost.

• Deploying Transformative Technology to customize, accelerate and support student learning for added convenience, efficiency and affordability.