Closing the Gaps created an urgency and an agenda for improving higher education in Texas between 2000 and 2015. It focused on four areas: participation (college going), success (graduation), excellence (highly ranked universities) and research.
For the goal of participation and success, Closing the Gaps called tracking African American, Hispanic, and White results separately and, thus, established an equity agenda for post-secondary education.
Great strides were made in goal area.
Now the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has laid out ambitions for the next fifteen-year period. To accomplish its task, the Coordinating Board convened an all-star planning committee that included members from Greater Houston or once associated with Greater Houston: they are Laurie Bricker, Shirley (Neeley) Richardson, Larry Faulkner, and Steve Murdock.
The results: a 2015-2030 Strategic Higher Education Plan for Texas called 60x30TX.
- Thanks in large part to Laurie Bricker, this plan regularly connects ambitions for post-secondary education back to success in P-12, very much in the spirit of our “cradle to career” framework.
60x30TX has staked out four goal areas, but they are articulated very differently from the goals in Closing the Gaps.
The first goal is the plan’s signature and overarching goal:
- 60x30TX: By 2030, at least 60 percent of Texans ages 25-34 will have a certificate or degree.
The other three goals address:
- COMPLETION: By 2030, at least 550,000 students in that year will complete a certificate, associate, bachelor’s, or master’s from an institution of higher education in Texas.
- MARKETABLE SKILLS: By 2030, all graduates from Texas public institutions of higher education will have completed programs with identified marketable skills.
- STUDENT DEBT: By 2030, undergraduate student loan debt will not exceed 60 percent of first-year wages for graduates of Texas public institutions.
We encourage you to learn more. Here’s a link for downloading the entire plan: 60x30TX