Associate students completion rate jumps to 16th in the nation (still too few completions)

31 percent of full-time students entering Kentucky associate programs in the fall of 2006 had graduated by the summer of 2009. That's a big step up from 26 percent the year before.

Naturally, 31 percent is not a completion rate Kentucky should be fully satisfied to see.  It would be better to see a rate twice or even three times as high.

Still, there's good new--important good news--here.   On this measure (using data from HigherEdInfo.org), our postsecondary schools delivered major improvement last year, pushed past national average, and in fact shot up to 16th among the 50 states after being 28th just one year earlier.

Work like this puts Top 20 by 2020 even closer to being reality!