INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana has about 730,000 adults who have attended college without earning a degree, which a new study found is a factor in the state being below the national average in degree completion.
The Lumina Foundation for Education's study using U.S. Census data for 2008 found that only 33.4 percent of Hoosiers between the ages of 25 and 64 have at least a two-year college degree, behind the national average of 37.9 percent.
The Indianapolis-based foundation is encouraging a goal to raise that number to 60 percent in the next 15 years to meet the demands of a changing job market, the Indianapolis Star reported Wednesday.
Indiana University Vice President John Applegate, who oversees regional campuses, planning and policy, told the newspaper that the goal "seems aggressive."
"My feeling is that the exact number is not as important as the need for aggressive action," Applegate said, "and IU certainly supports that."
Reaching the goal would take dramatic improvements in student retention, degree completion and enrollment rates, Applegate said. Over the next 15 years, the biggest boost in those numbers will continue to come from more traditional students seeking four-year degrees, he said.
The Lumina study said Indiana needs to add nearly 6,500 new college degrees each year for the next 15 years to reach the 60 percent mark.
Many of those new degrees could come from adults like 25-year-old Kim Walker, who flunked out of Purdue three years ago while seeking a bachelor's degree.
"I began to work at a bar and was putting in 60-hour weeks and that kind of interfered with school," Walker said. "It was very hard to keep my grades up."
Walker, now a student at Ivy Tech Community College, remembers the day she had to leave West Lafayette.
"I was more embarrassed than anything and ashamed to have to tell my parents," she said.
Walker expects to graduate in December with a two-year associate's degree in event planning, then move on to IUPUI to complete her bachelor's degree.
The state's Commission for Higher Education has been trying to encourage better student retention among colleges, in part by giving schools less money for enrollment success and more for higher retention and graduation rates.
Ivy Tech President Tom Snyder said his school would adopt the Lumina goal as one of its key strategic objectives, focusing on the nontraditional students who fill its classrooms.
"It can be done by 2025 if the economy permits us to be able to grow the community college sector across the country," he said. "We feel the community college has a primary role in closing this gap."
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