WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s goal to increase the number of two- or four-year degree holding Americans by 2020 will require significant investments in educating nontraditional-aged college students, a U.S. Education Department assistant secretary Wednesday told TRIO program administrators at the Council for Opportunity in Education’s annual seminar with the Education Department in Washington.
Obama said he wants America to reclaim the status as the nation with the highest proportion of the population with college degrees in the world by 2020.
“Adults are crucial to achieving the president’s vision,” said Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier, assistant secretary of vocational and adult education with the department of education.
The U.S. ranks 10th in college-completion rate for 25- to 35-year-olds; 75 million working-aged adults don’t have college degrees and aren’t enrolled in college; 35 million have difficulty with reading comprehension of short passages; more than 13 million have low literacy skills, Dann-Messier said.
Under the Obama administration, national education priorities include expanding services to low-income adults and youth and TRIO administrators can submit proposals for projects that will help more adults return to school, Dann-Messier told TRIO grantees.
TRIO is a set of federally funded college programs that support low-income, first-generation students from disadvantaged backgrounds in their pursuit of a college degree. More than 850,000 sixth-graders through college graduates participate in about 2,800 TRIO programs across the country.
TRIO programs provide academic tutoring, personal counseling, mentoring, financial guidance and other support for educational access and retention. The programs include: Upward Bound; Upward Bound Math/Science; Veterans’ Upward Bound; Student Support Services; Educational Opportunity Centers; and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program. The Educational Opportunity Centers primarily serve displaced and underemployed adults in 130 locations around the U.S.
