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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 10 > Entry
Editorial: Focus on grads right move
It would be inexplicable if Ohio didn’t have a number of cities — including Dayton — joining a national competition to raise the number of college graduates in their metropolitan region.
All of Ohio’s metros are struggling, to one degree or another, even as the state and its cities have an abundance of colleges. Meanwhile, there’s a widespread understanding that the state, if it wants to prosper, has to have a better educated workforce. Many employers won’t even consider hiring individuals who don’t have a degree; jobs today require higher skill levels.
Of Ohioans who are 25 and older, about 29 percent have a college degree; the national average is a bit higher.
A Chicago non-profit — CEOs for Cities — is sponsoring the competition, which carries a $1 million prize. Fifty-seven cities have committed to spending the next three years trying to raise their per capita graduation rate.
Associate degrees will count in the calculus, but bachelor’s and advanced degrees will count more. The Kresge and Lumina foundations are putting up the money.
Dayton, Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland and Columbus are competing, making Ohio the state with the most cities in the contest.
When you read the media reports about cities that have stepped up, you get the feeling that they have a lot in common with one another, that the things Daytonians worry about are almost universal. But some communities are better at diagnosing their problems and then actually doing something that might help.
If there’s one thing that is in Dayton’s DNA, it’s an ability to be introspective, to acknowledge where it falls short. (That ability sometimes gets in the way of recognizing what the community has going for it and promotion of its assets.)
There’s nothing but good that can come out of the competition — here and in other cities. All will be watching one another, and they will learn from each other. The initiative also gives local colleges another reason to work together, to make sure they’re complementing and leveraging one another.
The Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education is taking the lead on making sure that everyone is on the same page and looking for more ways to get students through the doors and ultimately to graduation. Increasingly colleges are working with students in high school to allow them to earn credit for college courses; they’re creating options that allow students to start out at a cheaper community college, then move on to a four-year school, and even on to a graduate degree.
If Dayton or any of the communities are going to move the needle on their number of graduates, they won’t be successful by just focusing on traditional students. Of course, some college-bound students do burn out or flunk out or drop out, and colleges are trying to identify those people at the first sign of trouble. But a still bigger pool of prospects are young people who would be the first in their family to go to college and adults who maybe dropped out of college or never went because they thought they could get through their careers without a degree.
Colleges all across the country are seeing changes in the demographics of their students. They’re older, more are minorities, more are attending part-time. But these traits also create new challenges for keeping students.
A million dollars won’t “fix” a community. So winning isn’t really the objective. It’s the race itself that will matter most and that, ultimately, can make the biggest difference in helping position people for better lives for themselves and their families.
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