Gates Sets Sights on Higher College-Completion Rates

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this week announced a new institutional goal with potentially wide-ranging repercussions for higher education: to more than double the proportion of low-income young adults who earn a college credential or degree by age 26, and to accomplish that by 2025.

The effort, which would increase the number of postsecondary graduates by more than 250,000 each year, was announced at a meeting of educators convened in Seattle—the foundation’s home base—along with other plans to revamp the education efforts of the grantmaking colossus.

“For the last 40 years, the U.S. has been encouraging enrollment and access,” foundation co-chair Melinda Gates told the gathering. “But the payoff doesn’t come with enrolling in college; the payoff comes when a student gets a postsecondary degree that helps them get a job with a family wage—and that’s...