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Academe is worth a regular bi-monthly look. The AAUP provides quality content. Access is not restricted. In the current issue, using its own words:

The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Tech Therapy" section interviews Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, about the value of analytics for higher education leaders. (We recommend moving the slider over and beginning to listen to the podcast at 15 minutes in unless you want to hear a couple of ads and some talk about iPads.)

The first story Hrabowski tells is about a discussion with a senior faculty member in engineering who, anecdotal information, was firm in his belief that everyone who started after a PhD in that program got one. Hrabowski notes that he had hard data that it was more like 50 percent, and was able to get data-informed decisions made. Why did the professor think everyone finished? Perhaps because the students who did not finish were not very visible to him as they slipped through the cracks. With the data, the school was able to better address retention issues.

[P]rovide a layperson’s guide to the most commonly reported graduation rates and the databases used to calculate these rates. More specifically, this report provides policy makers and policy researchers with a history of the databases that are most often used to calculate graduation rates as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each database (this information also can be found in a summary table in the appendices). Additionally this report suggests several factors for policy makers to consider before using graduation rate data from existing databases as a way to assess institutional success….

Overall, this report highlights the complexities of measuring what many policy makers view as a simple compliance metric with the existing national databases. Just because the existing databases used to calculate graduation rates were not designed with the current policy demands in mind does not render them useless. The databases referenced in this report provide valuable information on graduation rates; however, as the disadvantages of these databases reveal, users of these data should take care in using them to measure the overall effectiveness of postsecondary education institutions.

An education panel in Utah, sets a goal for 66 percent of Utah residents to hold at least a postsecondary certificate by 2020 - that's the percentage of jobs in that state that are expected to require such credentialing by that time. Here's a Salt Lake Tribune article about that, and here is another - from two days later - that take a look a enrollments and retention in Utah.

The commission, which includes education leaders, lawmakers and members of Utah’s business community, approved that goal Tuesday after months of work. State Superintendent Larry Shumway said about 35 percent of Utah adults now have postsecondary degrees and about 10 to 15 percent have certificates, earned through training in areas such as diesel mechanics or medical assistance.

“We believe it’s an attainable goal without a huge investment,” said William Sederburg, Utah’s commissioner of higher education and a commission member. “We, frankly, don’t have a choice not to do it. If we don’t try to meet these needs, Utah is going to slide down. The economy is going to demand we step up and do this … .”

and

It’s a watershed moment for the institution and our role within the state system,” said a statement from UVU President Matthew Holland. “These numbers bear out what we’ve been feeling for a long time. UVU offers a uniquely attractive educational option for students from Utah Valley and from around the state. The big story is that they are staying. Our biggest jumps come in our junior and senior class.”

If community colleges were to find all the formerly enrolled students whose academic records qualify them for an associate degree and retroactively award them the credential, then the number of associate degrees awarded in the United States would increase by at least 12 percent.

That's what David Molz writes in Inside Higher Ed, reporting on the Lumina-funded Project Win-Win. Project Win-Win is seeking out the low-hanging fruit which can boost states' goals of increasing the graduation rates. The project is supporting 35 institutions in sorting out awarded credits, complicated student records, and identifying students who actually do have enough credits to graduate, but who for some reason have not been awarded a degree. They're also identifying students ho are very close to a degree, and contacting them about opportunities to finish it.

Note that Predictive Analytics: Building a Crystal Ball for Student Success is a SCUP September 29 webcast which will focus on many ways that better, real-time data analytics will play a role in the country's completion agenda. More details about that will be available on SCUP's website soon.

In Florida, they definitely seem to be mostly going for that mile. And it's not primarily competition with 4-year colleges that worry many, it's a concern that community college 4-year programs might dilute the original community college mission. 

“There are a lot of different types of students who knock at the door of community colleges,” said Hagedorn, who before moving to Iowa State was a longtime educational policy researcher at the University of Florida. “I just worry that they’re not going to be able to serve all those different types if they’re bringing in more four-year program students. There will be less room for remediation and truly vocational programs. Some are not going to be as well-served as others. We have to remember the reason community colleges were established in the first place.”

Still, Hagedorn conceded that scholars do not know enough about these community college baccalaureate programs to say whether they have adversely affected existing two-year programs. As to why the furor in Florida over these degrees had died down, she said the answer was simple.

"The cry that ‘oh my god, the community colleges are going to be taking away our students’ didn’t happen,” Hagedorn said. “There’s no shortage of students going to the University of Florida or the University of Central Florida or to any of Florida’s other universities right now.”

Like the foundations, most states are also responding to the call, with many planning or already carrying out the completion agenda. So are many individual colleges. It is unlikely than any community college, or any educational institution, will be untouched by the completion agenda. There has never been a “movement” in the community college world so widely joined and supported by such deep pockets. The completion agenda is, indeed, a tectonic shift.