WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) provided video remarks to the attendees of Complete College America’s Annual Convening in Las Vegas, Nevada.
During his remarks, Heinrich highlighted his work on the Senate Appropriations Committee to successfully establish and fund the Postsecondary Student Success Grants Program at the U.S. Department of Education.
This new grants program was based on legislation that Heinrich introduced in the last Congress called the College Completion Fund Act. Heinrich plans to introduce new, bipartisan, and bicameral legislation to authorize the program in the coming months.
“It’s crystal clear: We need to extend our focus beyond enrollment,” said Heinrich. “We need to invest in retention and completion. To help students navigate the challenges that stand between starting and completing college, we need to remove the barriers that stand in the way of their academic success.”
Complete College America is a national advocacy organization calling for dramatically increasing college completion rates and closing institutional performance gaps by working with states, systems, institutions, and partners to scale highly effective structural reforms and promote policies that improve student success.
Below are Heinrich’s full remarks:
We are facing a college completion crisis in this country.
Over the last two decades, both high school graduation and college enrollment rates have risen substantially.
There has rightly been a focus on opening more doors to higher education and putting a college education within reach for more students.
We are closer than ever to helping students more easily afford a college education.
But the stark truth is that far too many students who start their classes at both two-year and four-year institutions are failing to complete their degrees.
Only 62 percent of students enrolling in college nationwide are completing their education.
Among Hispanic, Black, Native American, and other students of color, first-generation, and low-income college enrollees, graduation rates are even lower.
It’s crystal clear: We need to extend our focus beyond enrollment.
We need to invest in retention and completion.
To help students navigate the challenges that stand between starting and completing college, we need to remove the barriers that stand in the way of their academic success.
That includes providing direct financial support for students who need help affording necessities like housing, food, and transportation.
It includes helping the college students who are also parents access affordable childcare.
Many college students also benefit from peer mentoring and personalized counseling services designed to help them navigate course requirements and stay on track.
Scaling these evidence-based, direct supports is the key to helping students make it from enrollment to graduation.
I helped secure the initial $5 million federal investment to create the Postsecondary Student Success grants program at the Department of Education.
These grants are helping colleges and universities scale their retention and completion programs.
In the first year, five colleges—and four of them historically Black colleges and universities—received these new Postsecondary Student Success grants.
In the last major federal funding law, Congress invested 45 million more dollars to support student success programs at even more colleges.
That was a nine-fold funding increase to expand this initiative.
And momentum continues to grow in Congress.
In the coming months, I will be introducing my bill to permanently authorize and expand the Postsecondary Student Success Grant program.
That will mean more permanent and stable support for these grants.
I’ve been working with my colleagues in the Senate and Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee to grow bipartisan and bicameral support.
When we strengthen our commitment and investment in student success, we ensure more students get the opportunities that come from completing their degrees.