College Completion Will Lag Without Better Leadership At All Levels

From Gay Clyburn of Carnegie Foundation:

A LACK OF LEADERSHIP
Between them, Patrick M. Callan, Jane Wellman and Dennis P. Jones have seen close-up plenty of incomplete and unsuccessful efforts to improve higher education. And as veterans of the higher education policy landscape, they have well-developed reputations as — depending on your perspective — constructive critics or never satisfied “lamenters.” The latest exhortation from these three wise people of higher education policy and their organizations — the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (Callan), the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability (Wellman), and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (Jones) — is likely to reinforce those reputations. In a report published today in the public policy center’s National CrossTalk the three groups argue that the lofty college completion goal that has emerged as the closest thing to a national higher education strategy in a half century will not succeed without much more aggressive leadership than national, state and higher education leaders have shown so far.