Office of Planning & Budgeting

college completion


November 1, 2012

Pell Grant Changes Hit Transfer Students Hardest

One of several recent Pell Grant changes has made it harder for some students to finish school and earn a degree, according to Inside Higher Ed. Effective July 1st this year, the federal government decreased the duration of Pell eligibility from 18 semesters to 12 semesters as a means of both cutting costs and incentivizing…


October 18, 2012

Universities Propose Innovative Deals in Attempt to Stabilize Tuition Rates

A recent Insider Higher Education article describes the inventive deals that a handful of public universities are pursuing in an effort to keep tuition rates from rising. By offering tuition freezes in exchange for either (1) increased state funding or (2) individual student efforts to graduate on time, universities hope to meet public demands to…


May 23, 2012

Brookings State Grant Aid Study

Released last week by the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, Beyond Need and Merit: Strengthening State Grant Programs describes the scope and type of state grant programs across the US, and provides recommendations for improvement. Such programs currently provide over $9 billion in aid to students each year and comprise, on average, approximately 12 percent…


April 13, 2012

Increasing Latino College Completion

Excelencia in Education has produced a report that summarizes college attainment rates within the Hispanic population in all fifty states. The report is intended to highlight the importance of increasing higher education participation and graduation rates among Hispanics if the US is to reach its ambitious attainment goals. According to the report, Latinos are expected…


April 9, 2012

Pace of College Enrollment Slows

At the beginning of the economic downturn in late 2008, a higher than expected number of Americans turned to higher education, leading to a 7.1 percent increase in college enrollment for 2009. This phenomenon is typical of recessions as many need to refresh their qualifications and/or increase their skill sets when faced with a volatile…


April 3, 2012

College Attainment Rising, But Not Enough

 The Lumina Foundation set an ambitious goal to increase the percent of Americans with a two or four year degree from 37.9 percent to 60 percent by 2025. This goal has been picked up and echoed by many, including President Obama. In its latest status report, A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education, the foundation finds…


January 23, 2012

More Science and Engineering Degrees Awarded in WA

A new report put out by the National Science Foundation examines math and science education at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary level. In general, the news is sobering: elementary and secondary proficiency in science and math is languishing below 40 percent nationwide. Chapter 8 of the report focuses on state indicators, featuring state-by-state breakdowns of…


January 13, 2012

For Employment and Earnings, Major Matters

The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce issued a new report,  Hard Times, which focuses once again on why a college education is so important to employment and earnings in the US economy. While persistent critics of the value of higher education point to the recently rising unemployment rate for new college graduates, 8.9…


December 14, 2011

Higher Education Steering Committee Report Released

Last year, Washington State Senate Bill 5182 abolished the Higher Education Coordinating Board and created a Higher Education Steering Committee to assess the state’s need for a redesigned statewide coordinating agency for education. The 13 person Committee met four times and was chaired by Governor Gregoire, and also included UW President Michael Young. The Final…


September 29, 2011

NCES Projects Growth for Higher Ed, but Short of National Goals

The National Center for Education Statistics recently released a report entitled Projections of Education Statistics to 2019. The Center seeks to predict future trends in enrollment, completion, and diversity in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions. The Center uses census data and economic forecasts to make its projections; however, such predictions are complicated to produce and…



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