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Winning by degrees: The strategies of highly productive higher-education institutions

The U.S. could dramatically increase the number of people who obtain a higher-education degree, if it applies the winning strategies of highly productive colleges and universities.

November 2010 | Byron G. Auguste, Adam Cota, Kartik Jayaram, and Martha C. A. Laboissière
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Increasing the proportion of the adult population with a higher-education degree is critical to creating opportunities for individuals and sustaining the country’s economic growth. Yet college attainment rates in the U.S. have remained nearly flat for the past 10 years, whereas they have continued to rise in most industrialized nations. Based on a recent analysis, we estimate that the U.S. needs to graduate roughly one million more people a year by 2020 to ensure that the country has the skilled workers it needs to maintain economic growth.

How could higher education systems achieve that objective in the current fiscal context, when states are much more likely to cut education budgets than expand them?

In a new report “Winning by degrees: the strategies of highly productive higher-education institutions”, we show that to graduate up to one million more students per year without increasing public spending or compromising quality, the U.S. higher-education institutions would need to improve their degree completion productivity by an average of 23 percent. This sounds like a formidable challenge but our research shows that it is feasible by boosting graduation rates and improving cost efficiency, as has been demonstrated by top quartile U.S. institutions that are already 17 to 38 percent more productive than their peer group average.

Through an in-depth study of detailed data on performance, costs and practices shared by eight highly productive schools, we identified five winning strategies, focusing on raising the rate at which students complete their degrees and improving cost efficiency. Together these strategies can result in over 60 percent higher degree productivity.

For more information, read a related article from McKinsey Quarterly: Boosting productivity in US higher education.

  • Joijoi615

    this is my way of school systems we have to look at the place and see what they need so we could improve it one at the time and we have to be fair to each country the same way and we need good system for each one of them and after few year past by we will see the performance from each of country we can’t have war no more because is damage please and waste money cause we could use the money for good thing for kid future is better to me the way and use the money fix our home call earth thank you

  • StudentLearning?

    This report makes a set of assumptions that are very questionable. The first one is that degree completion and student learning are the same thing. As colleges across the country are struggling with the declining academic skills of students as a result of No Child Left Behind, this organization wants colleges to push students through some cookie cutter curriculum that is not focused on student acheivement rather their ability to get through. I don’t know who the McKinsey group is, but this report is extremely questionable.