Achieving Obama's college completion goal

In a recent feature article in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Kevin Carey writes about achieving President Obama's college completion goal. A lot of this article is about being more serious about increasing graduation rates. I agree that we have to do this, but when I hear things like this, I worry that in focusing on increasing graduation rates, we might get distracted from what's more important and more fundamental - improving our students' learning. I don't want to graduate a larger number of students if they don't know more and if they're not able to do more. The right way to increase graduation rates is to improve learning and the instructional methods that contribute to that end.

Thankfully, reading farther in this article gets you to this:

Some might argue that a single-minded focus on graduation will tempt institutions to lower academic standards. But that's why accountability should be multidimensional, gathering information about learning, engagement, scholarship and a whole range of outcomes tied to each institution's unique mission.

And now, for the rest of the story...