The University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a national consortium of innovative public research universities working to improve student success, announced that they have exceeded graduation targets set during President Barack Obama’s College Opportunity Summit.
Georgia State is a founding member of the UIA, which launched in 2014. At its launch, the UIA presidents set a goal to graduate an additional 68,000 students above their baseline projections over the course of 10 years, and committed that half of those students graduated would come from low-income backgrounds. Six years in, the UIA schools have exceeded that goal by graduating an additional 73,573 students, increasing the number of graduates from low-income backgrounds by 36 percent and graduates of color by 73 percent. The institutions are now projected to graduate a total of 136,000 by 2023 — double the original goal launched at the White House College Opportunity Day of Action in 2014.
Since the launch of the UIA, Georgia State has graduated more than 3,000 additional undergraduates per year and has increased the number of economically disadvantaged and students of color by more than 100 percent.
“Georgia State is proud to have played an integral role in the formation and success of the UIA. Our innovative student success programs have proven to be highly effective when replicated at universities nationwide. It is wonderful to see tens of thousands more students achieving their dreams of a college degree, and the career opportunities that come with graduation, as a result of this work,” said President Mark Becker.
As part of the Alliance’s next phase of work, campuses will focus on eliminating disparities in educational outcomes based on race and ethnicity, income, generational status, gender, and geography, all the while continuing to produce more graduates, innovate together, share data transparently, and hold down their costs.
Since its founding, the Alliance has worked together to test, iterate, and scale proven student success initiatives across its network. To date, its work has included the scaling of predictive analytics, proactive advising, completion grants, student success chatbot, and new career services practices across the member institutions. The Alliance will continue to report out against its defined goals, and share the lessons learned from its work together. Most recently, the Alliance released its Completion Grant Playbook, based on its pilot to provide $3.6 million dollars’ worth of small grants to help nearly 5,000 students complete their degree or remain enrolled in the university.
“Georgia State and its leadership have been a critical partner in our efforts to advance an ambitious agenda on the behalf of students,” said UIA Executive Director Bridget Burns. “The campus should be very proud of its progress to date, but we all know there’s more work to be done and we look forward to this next phase of collaboration and innovation.”
To learn more about the University Innovation Alliance’s work to date, visit https://theuia.org/
Originally published at the Georgia State University News Hub.