Georgia State University President Mark Becker announced Tuesday the formation of an 11-university alliance committed to increasing the numbers of low-income students who start and graduate from college.

Becker is vice chairman of the newly formed University Innovation Alliance, which has raised and will match $5.7 million to facilitate the sharing of ideas and to scale proven interventions, with the intention of developing a national “playbook” that will benefit low-income and first-generation college students.

High-income students are seven times more likely to attain a college degree than are low-income students. The American economy will face a shortage of at least 16 million college graduates by 2025. The founding members of the UIA are focused on addressing the achievement gap and pending shortage at a time when public funding for higher education has been decreasing.

The 11 alliance members serve large numbers of low-income and first-generation college goers, and each institution has pioneered programs to help students succeed in various aspects of their college program. The goals of the UIA are to collaborate to share innovation and adapt successful programs.

The 11 Innovation Alliance members are:
Arizona State University                 The Ohio State University
Georgia State University                 University of California, Riverside
Iowa State University                       University of Central Florida
Michigan State University              University of Kansas
Oregon State University                  The University of Texas at Austin
Purdue University

The UIA member universities will share practices that have yielded significant gains for low-income students. For example, universities such as the University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University and Georgia State have used predictive analytics to aid the academic trajectory of students of all backgrounds. Georgia State successfully used predictive analytics and proactive advising interventions to increase its semester-to-semester retention rates by 5 percent and reduce time-to-degree for graduating students by almost half a semester. This means 1,200 more students are staying in school every year, and the Georgia State Class of 2014 saved $10 million in tuition and fees compared to graduates a year earlier. If these same innovations were scaled across the 11 UIA institutions over the next five years, it is estimated an additional 61,000 students would graduate from UIA institutions and save almost $1.5 billion in educational costs to students and taxpayers.

“That is the kind of transformation the UIA is after,” Becker said.

In generating $5.7 million in funds to start this endeavor, the alliance has garnered the attention and funding support of six major funders, and partnering universities are providing matching funds.

Supporting foundations and charitable organizations are:
Ford Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Kresge Foundation
Lumina Foundation
Markle Foundation
USA Funds

For more information visit University Innovation Alliance