WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As higher education leaders seek to size up the Obama administration’s proposal to tie some federal aid to the ability of states, colleges and universities to keep down tuition, a U.S. Department of Education-led symposium on Monday sought to explore ways to scale up practices that have been shown to increase completion.

“I can’t overstate how important it is that, even in these really tough economic times, and budgets getting hit at every level, that we find ways to help young people, particularly disadvantaged folks, not only to go to college but graduate,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said to dozens of attendees in an auditorium at the U.S. Education Department as the department hosted “Evidence -- Action -- Innovation College Completion Symposium.”

“We have not been doing enough to incentivize completion, and we’re trying to change that now,” Duncan said of the Obama administration’s new proposal to create a $1 billion “Race to the Top: College Affordability and Completion.”

“It’s a significant carrot to help folks scale up what’s working,” Duncan said.

While details of the proposal are still forthcoming, the administration has said the federal money would be awarded to states that implement reforms that would “reduce costs for students and promote success in our higher education system at public colleges.”

The funds would be awarded to states similar to how funds were awarded to states that successfully competed for grants from the department’s Race to the Top to initiate innovative K-12 reforms.

In addition to hosting the college completion symposium on Monday, the Education Department also published in the Federal Register a “Request for Information” that asks institutions of higher education, nonprofits, states, researchers and others to provide the department with “promising and practical strategies, practices, programs, and activities that have improved rates of postsecondary success, transfer and graduation.”