We have noted that the drumbeat for dramatic improvement in RTG rates is growing and now the nation’s state governors have weighed in. InsideHigherEd.com reports that Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, incoming chair of The National Governors Association has announced that he will make productivity in higher education the group’s top priority during his term. He noted that if the United States is actually going to make meaningful progress on increasing the number of Americans with college credentials, it’s going to be up to the states — whose public institutions enroll roughly four of every five students — to get the job done. And systemic change in the states will occur only if their chief executives — governors — get with the program.

One focus of the NGA initiative will be to create shared information and common metrics on both outcomes and progress toward graduation. The outcome metrics would include: degrees and certificates awarded, graduation rates, transfer rates, and time and credits to degree; the progress metrics would include enrollment in remedial education, how students fare after they leave remedial education, success in first-year college courses, credit accumulation, retention rates, and course completion.

The other parts of the NGA completion initiative involve a set of efforts aimed at drawing attention to (and potentially funding, through a grant program) successful practices that certain states have adopted in recent years in areas such as performance-based funding, remedial education, and more efficient ways of teaching lower-level courses and offering academic credit, especially for adult and other nontraditional learners.