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BHEF Vice Chair Kirwan Establishes Fund to Support Degree Completion
University System of Maryland chancellor utilizes 2009 Carnegie Corporation’s Academic Leadership Award grant
Contact: Pamela Lessard 202-367-1284, Alex Sittig 202-367-2393
Washington, DC (July 7, 2010) — Underscoring the Business-Higher Education Forum's (BHEF) goal to increase college and university degree completion, BHEF Vice Chair William E. Kirwan, II, "Brit", chancellor of the University System of Maryland (USM), has used his 2009 grant from the Carnegie Corporation's Academic Leadership Award to establish a fund that supports degree attainment in the state of Maryland.
Using the Carnegie grant as a starting point, the USM Board of Regents has raised an additional $2 million to support the A Matter of Degrees: USM Leading the Way in College Completion fund, which is designed to increase Maryland’s college-educated population from 41.1 percent to 55 percent by 2020. To that end, the fund will build a strong pipeline of students prepared to attend college, particularly among Maryland's growing population of minority and disadvantaged students; increase opportunities for student success after admission; and support degree completion for those who have left school due to financial need.
"Given the demographic changes under way in our country, if current college participation and completion rates continue, the proportion of young adult college degree holders would drop below 35 percent by the end of this decade," says Kirwan. "This would mean that over the past several decades, the United States would have gone from first to last in college completion rates among the world's industrialized nations.
This threatens not only America's and Maryland's economic leadership, but also the very cultural and social fabric of our nation. We can’t be the America we have been and want to be in the future if we don’t change these trends and numbers."
Established in 2005, the Academic Leadership Award program recognizes higher education leaders who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in undergraduate education; the development of major interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs that aim to bridge the gulf between the theoretical and the practical; university outreach to their respective communities and cooperative efforts with business, civic, and education leaders on initiatives such as K-12 school reform; and international initiatives.
"In an increasingly globalized world, a high-quality education that leads to a college degree is the key to developing the critical skills of creativity and the ability to think deeply and analytically," says Carnegie Corporation of New York president Vartan Gregorian. "Hence, we must not only increase college completion rates, but we must ensure that a college degree stands for quality....Brit Kirwan's efforts to increase college completion rates in Maryland remind us that democracy and excellence are not mutually exclusive. Our hopes for preserving a vibrant democracy and the promise of social mobility that lie at the heart of the American dream depend on more students earning their college degrees."
About the Business-Higher Education Forum
BHEF brings together a coalition of corporate, academic, and foundation chief executives who provide leadership to improve U.S education and competitiveness. Learn more at www.bhef.com.
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