Diverse: Issues in Higher Education recently posted an article, New Report Finds Stark Inequity in Chicago Higher Education, about (GFF grantee) The Partnership for College Completion’s recent report based on a regional study of college enrollment and graduation rates for low-income and minority students in and around Chicago.
According to the report, none of the Chicago-area four-year public universities, as of 2016, have been able to graduate more than half of their Black and Latinx students. The seven-county Chicago area is home to 54 schools – including public, private, non-profit two- and four- year institutions – which enroll 319,000 undergraduates.
“One of our goals as an organization and in our work is, number one, lifting up data, research and information to really highlight the college completion crisis in the state of Illinois, and that reflects a broader college-completion crisis across the country,” said Lisa Castillo Richmond, the managing director of the Partnership for College Completion. “We want to drive action.”
“We’re really interested in hyper-localizing issues of reform,” said Kyle Westbrook, the executive director of Partnership for College Completion. “We do feel really strongly that most of the changes that we need to see happen will happen at the state and local level, where folks are closer to the issues, closer to the solutions and closer to our students.”
The full report: College-Going and Completion in the Chicago Area: A Regional Analysis is available on The Partnership for College Completion’s website.