New Report Says 2-Year Degrees Are Keys to Obama's Goal

Washington — President Obama told a joint session of Congress in February that the United States should have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. An author of a new report on how the nation fares in higher education compared with other developed nations says that the United States is not really that far back because of how other nations measure degree attainment.

Canada is cited as the country with the highest proportion of workers with some sort of postsecondary degree, 47 percent, according to the “Education at a Glance” report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But Canada is one country that may include “recipients of some degrees or certificates that might more typically be considered high-school graduation in other countries,” says the new report, which was commissioned by the Boston-based nonprofit group Jobs for the Future.

In addition, the authors of the report say that the OECD’s 2008 data on degree attainment undercounted the percentage of American students who earned an associate or similar degree by half, says the Jobs for the Future report.

However, there are still some challenges to meeting the president’s goal, said Arthur M. Hauptman, an independent higher-education consultant and one of the new report’s authors. The nation spends the most in the world per-student on higher education, with the lion’s share flowing to four-year institutions. Instead, more money should be focused on helping students complete community college, Mr. Hauptman said.

While the United States is second only to Norway in the percentage of its working-age population with a bachelor’s degree, it is ninth among countries in the proportion of two-year degrees that its residents hold. In addition, the report recommends, the money should be given to institutions based on their degree completions, not their enrollment. —Eric Kelderman