Stepping It Up: Building Pathways to College Success In Pennsylvania and Nationwide

This paper addresses how higher education might assume responsibility for the uplift of the many Americans whose futures are uncertain: the unemployed, returning veterans, low-income populations, and current and future generations of college bound Americans. Framed around policy recommendations and institutional practices that were presented by national and state higher education leaders at the first Pennsylvania Governor's Conference on Higher Education: Pathways to College Success, held March 16-18, 2009, a four-step agenda for increasing access to higher education and successful degree completion for all college-goers is detailed: identifying the challenges to increased college success, creating an action plan, putting the plan into action, and working together to increase colleges success in Pennsylvania. The paper culminates in a call to action for steady and intentional progress at the state level's both within and between institutions to increase student success and restore the public's faith in higher education.

Program: Education