David Leonhart is right. (NYT, 9/8/09, “Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates“). We need to graduate more of the students who currently enter college at age 18. And he is right again when he identifies the shortage of skilled college graduates as a significant threat to our social, civic, and economic welfare.

But relying on the logic in ”Not Crossing the Finish Line”, a recent book by William Bowen and Michael McPherson, doesn’t solve the problems identified. Graduating a higher percentage of current learners as Bowen and McPherson advocate is, at best, only 50% of the solution. As a Princeton Alum, president emeritus of a community college (Community College of Vermont) and a state university (Cal State Monterey Bay), I’d love to agree with them. But their proposal, getting the existing institutions to do better and graduate more 22 year olds, is neither broad enough nor deep enough to succeed.

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