New Mexico Business Weekly

College with a purpose
Reed Dasenbrock, New Mexico's cabinet secretary for higher education, aims to increase graduation rates without reducing access. His ultimate goal is a population ready to take on higher-wage jobs.
by Thomas Munro NMBW Staff

The United States is beginning to fall behind in rates of higher education, and New Mexico is trailing the rest of the country by a wide margin.

New Mexico Cabinet Secretary of Higher Education Reed Dasenbrock's response to that challenge begins with one of the state's brighter spots: It ranks 12th nationally in the percentage of its high school graduates who start college.

Then something -- or a number of things -- go wrong, and at the end just 28 percent of the state's population has an associates degree or higher. The number is 39 percent for the U.S. as a whole; a majority of the population of Canada now has degrees, as do majorities in Japan and South Korea. Six-year graduation rates do not necessarily account account for all the routes students take to graduation, but the nationwide comparison is still meaningful.

"At a moment when education is more important than ever, the U.S. has lost its position of leadership," Dasenbrock said. "Countries around the world have committed to the democratization of education."