Keynote Atwell Lecture to American Council on Education by Nancy Zimpher, Rockefeller Institute Senior Fellow and Professor at the University at Albany
Albany, NY — Nancy Zimpher, senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government and professor at the University at Albany, delivered the keynote Atwell Lecture this evening at the 100-year anniversary conference of the American Council on Education, “the nation’s most influential, respected, and visible higher education association.”
In a new Rockefeller Institute blog post based on her speech, Zimpher urges higher education institutions to address the nation’s low college completion rates, which currently average just under 60 percent, and are significantly lower for non-white students. She also calls for improved measurements of the quality of colleges and universities that focus on student outcomes.
“At our current rate of improvement, if one can really call it that, college completion targets originally set for the years 2020 and 2025 now won’t come close to being met until the years 2037 and 2054,” she writes. “That’s generations of students we’re losing because we’re not getting the improvement we envisioned. We need to do so, so much better. So let’s get to it. Solving the college completion puzzle will take strong leadership at even our most prominent colleges and universities, including a bold willingness to disregard those annual rankings by popular periodicals, ratings that have more to do with prestige than actually serving students.”
The Rockefeller Institute’s Center for Education Pipeline Systems Change, led by Zimpher, will continue to tackle these issues to help improve the education system for all students, from cradle to career.