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Degree Completion
To close equity gaps, student must cross the degree completion finish line.
Initiative
Degrees When Due
Degrees When Due (DWD) is an innovative, nationwide completion initiative led by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP).
Today's students are more diverse than ever before, including students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, working students, parenting students, veteran and military-connected students, and returning adult students, to name a few. Furthermore, there are 36 million American adults who began college and earned credits, but didn't make it across the degree completion finish line.
To best serve today's students and future students, our system of higher education must provide a strong pathway to earn a degree of value. Those completed degrees, in turn, strengthen our families, communities, and workforce.
To promote pathways to degree completion for today's students, IHEP:
- identifies barriers to completion and degree attainment that disproportionately impact today's students;
- examines innovative approaches to promote completion at the institutional, state, and federal levels; and
- works with policymakers and practitioners to eliminate the barriers, including through the use of disaggregated data, efforts to reengage and support students, and informed policies and practices.