Getting to college isn't enough. We need to help more students finish.

It probably won’t surprise you that as the chair of a governing board for a university with an urban mission, I am unapologetic ally supportive of policies that expand underrepresented minority students’ access to four-year college degrees.

It bears noting, however, that institution I serve — Wayne State University — hasn’t always done the best job of helping black and brown students cross the graduation finish line.  

When I was elected to the WSU board, the university had one of the lowest minority graduation rates in America. Happily, Wayne appears to be on the right track now. In recent years, we’ve doubled the number of black students who earn degrees within six years and have earned national awards and attention for our efforts to boost student success. 

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While Wayne State has made great strides, we still have a long way to boost the number of African American, Latinx and Native American students who earn bachelor’s degrees.

Sadly, we’re not alone. The so-called achievement gap between white students and students of color is a national disgrace that deserves immediate and focused attention from policymakers and stakeholders. The numbers are stark. While 37% of all Americans have bachelor’s degrees, only 22% of African American and 21% of Latinx Americans do.

There is ample evidence that communities that have high rates of degree completion have more prosperity and well being. According to a 2016 study by the College Board, college degree holders are healthier, make more money, are more likely to be employed, and are more engaged in civic life than their peers without degrees. 

A newly released report from Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a charter school operator with 224 schools across America, calls out the lack of attention the higher education achievement gap is currently receiving and urges key decision makers to leverage the long-stalled Higher Education Act reauthorization as an opportunity to redirect their energy to fixing it: “Current outcomes are not inexorable; they are unquestionably the product of decisions adults make, from the classroom to the U.S. Congress. What decisions will we make going forward?”

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The report doesn’t just raise provocative questions. It offers several promising strategies to address the higher education achievement gap, including: 

• Building a funding source into the Higher Education Act to reduce the ridiculously high student-to-counselor ratios that have made college counseling programs so ineffective. Without question, Wayne State’s decision to invest in more and better-trained counselors has been a major factor in our student success gains.

• Making college more affordable for low- and middle-income families through increased state funding and stronger state-federal partnerships. For the past two decades, Michigan has disinvested in higher education. Since universities generally rely on two sources of funding — tuition and state funding — parents and students have had to pay more tuition costs out of pocket. State leaders should prioritize higher education spending as a public good that will lead to a stronger and more attractive state for talent and business location. 

• Establishing a federal fund to reward institutions who form partnerships to execute innovative college access and retention ideas. Higher education experts have published a redwood forest’s worth of papers promoting evidence-based educational innovations that are worth trying but colleges and universities often lack the resources to execute them.

• Addressing the lack of connection many first-generation underrepresented minority students feel on some campuses by boosting federal support for colleges and universities that traditionally serve these student populations. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) have trained some of the most brilliant black and brown minds in America from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Why not use federal resources to expand their reach and impact? The KIPP report authors also make a compelling argument for allowing undocumented students access to federal financial aid.

• Building strong pipelines to expose students to the world of work at an early age. Students are more likely to thrive in educational programs that lead to careers that interest them, but they need more exposure to career paths to ignite their interests in specific fields. 

KIPP’s ideas for rebooting higher education are worth exploring. Here’s hoping that leaders in Lansing and Washington — and the business leaders they seem to answer to more than not — will take a look at these ideas and put energy and resources behind efforts to close the higher education achievement gap.

Kim Trent was elected to an eight-year term on the Wayne State University Board of Governors in 2012. She previously served as the director of Governor Jennifer M. Granholm's southeast Michigan office.