North Central Indiana Complete Initiative

For well over a decade now, Indiana has recognized we have a major problem related to educational attainment. We are seriously lacking in the number of college-educated adults who call themselves Hoosiers. We've tried lots of strategies and some are working better than others. Many of the things we've tried are long-term efforts and we won't know for another decade whether or efforts will pay off. Imagine if a strategy emerged that was cheap, fast, and significantly effective. We may now be embarking on such an effort.

This elegantly simple idea was first tried at the University of New Mexico and the results were nothing short of ground-breaking. UNM realized they had a significant number of former students who got started on a degree, did well, but for one reason or another dropped out. Here is the story of one of their former students:

The story of Arellana Cordero is all too common: An honors student in high school, Ms. Cordero entered the University of New Mexico in 1993 with high expectations of becoming a college graduate. Five years later, with only 15 credits remaining to receive her baccalaureate degree, she abandoned her goal and dropped out.

Cordero's problem was not low grades or a lack of money. Rather, she left because, after five years, her college career had gone astray. She lived at home, felt disconnected from the university and had begun to doubt she would ever receive a degree, however close it might be. So when outside pressures of a job and marriage began to tug at her life, she walked away from college.

Through UNM's program, Cordero was prompted to get back in school to complete here degree. She did and is now working on a graduate degree. UNM has tons of stories like that. You can read a great article about the program here.

So, what's this got to do with Indiana? Well, the WIRED effort in North Central Indiana is importing this idea to their region - only this time they are taking the mission of "transforming the North Central Indiana economy" to heart by enlisting four educational institutions in the project. Purdue University, Indiana University Kokomo, and Ivy Tech Community College of both Lafayette and Kokomo will work together to launch the North Central Indiana Complete Initiative. WIRED funds will be used to provide up to fifty $1,000 scholarships per institution (for a total of 200) as incentive to get these walkaways back in school to complete their degrees.

What could this mean the the regional economy? Well, consider the fact that the average wage for non-college degreed Hoosiers is about $27,000 per year and the average for their college-educated counterparts is $58,000 annually, this could do quite a bit for the regional economy. If this pilot works, the State, I'm sure, will take a serious look at how to take this effort beyond the pilot.