WASHINGTON – Building on the movement to boost college completion rates in the United States, the College Board on Thursday released a new report meant to be the first “scorecard” in a series of assessments on how well the nation is doing at getting more of its citizens to earn college degrees.

Referring to America’s declining rate of college degree attainment in relation to other industrialized nations as an “education deficit,” Dr. William Kirwan, chair of the advisory committee for the College Board’s Policy and Advocacy Center, said the report and a state policy guide released in tandem with the report could help guide policy-makers in the effort to turn things around.

“We need a scorecard that shows progress toward our goal of increasing college completion,” Kirwan said during a College Board presentation attended mostly by College Board officials, collaborators and Capitol Hill staff members Thursday at the Rayburn House Office Building.

The report, which sets a goal of having 55 percent of Americans earning a post-secondary credential by the year 2025, adds to the growing number of voices in  government, policy and philanthropy circles that are calling for higher college completion rates in the United States.

The report notes how the percentage of Americans with an associates degree or higher stood at 40.3 percent in 2007, placing the nation at sixth in the world, far behind the Russian Federation (54 percent) and significantly behind Canada (48.3 percent) and, to a lesser extent, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand, where the rates are 43.6, 41, and 41 percent, respectively.

The United States lags even further behind other nations—12th in the world—when it comes to college degree attainment for 25- to 34-year-olds, the report states. Historically, the nation has ranked first in the world in postsecondary degree attainment—a status the Obama administration is trying to reclaim with its goal of getting 60 percent of all of America’s citizens to earn a postsecondary degree by the year 2020.