APLU launches effort to increase college access, equity and postsecondary attainment

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) on Sunday announced what it is calling the “largest ever collaborative effort” to increase college access, close the achievement gap and award “hundreds of thousands” more degrees by 2025. The initiative, called Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success, includes 130 public universities and systems working within clusters of four to 12 to both advance those goals and share aggregate data. The diversity of the institutions that are participating is intended to help create a playbook of success reforms that can then be used at other institutions.

The clusters are grouped into focus areas for their work. For example, one cluster will work to integrate career advising early into a student’s path to speed their way to a degree and better prepare them for the workforce. The effort will be overseen by APLU’s Center for Public University Transformation with guidance from a national advisory council of higher education leaders.