LOS ANGELES  - States' higher education systems must dramatically overhaul themselves if they intend to fulfill President Obama's goal of remaking America home to the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020, experts said during a conference held by the University of Southern California.

 "We have high performing institutions that collectively are not meeting our public goals," said Jane Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability, a research and policy group."The state policy agenda is weaker than what it was 20 years ago," helping prompt a public opinion that universities don't deserve more funding, she said.

"We really need to rethink public policy. Having said that, institutions have got to step up their responsibility in the agenda. In way too many states, the language about institutions' responsibility is somewhere between muted and negative," Wellman said.

 Analysts and experts identified challenges and solutions for higher education during a conference entitled "What Matters Now: College Access and Success in the Age of Obama," hosted by the USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice and sponsored by the Lumina Foundation and College Board.

 Policy makers, nonprofit leaders, and university enrollment officers heard how Obama's multi-billion education initiative promises to make over college systems. "The conference seeks to provide the road map to educational progress and success over the next decade," said Jerome Lucido, executive director of the USC center.

 One panelist, Dennis P. Jones, president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, recommended that the 50 governors hold a summit to renew their commitment to boosting the degree pool. Most funding does not come from the federal government but rather from student tuition and state coffers."I get two responses (about improving educational attainment), and the first one is ‘we already got the best education system in the world and why mess with a good thing,'" Jones said.