Today, Vice President Joe Biden will formally announce another round of competitive, federal education grants, this time for colleges. According to the New York Times, the grants are designed to help the administration ?meet its goal of adding eight million college graduates by 2020? and making the U.S. the nation with the highest percentage of its population in possession of college degrees. ?Sounds fine, but ?as has been noted many, many times, there are many, many ways to increase graduation rates, most of them meaningless. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said yesterday that ?the best jobs and fastest-growing firms will gravitate to? places ?with a highly qualified work force.? A diploma does not necessarily equal highly qualified, of course.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow