GRADUATE NETWORK INC
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Adult learners aren’t just a trend—they are today’s students. They and their families benefit greatly when they complete a college degree. At the same time, they have busy lives outside of higher education and challenges within higher ed systems, many related to equity issues. 30 million adults in the US could benefit from completing a degree they once started but did not complete. Many communities across the country are setting goals for degree attainment related to their talent needs and many now recognize that increasing postsecondary attainment requires an ecosystem approach. However, most communities, cities and states still rely on two major talent strategies: increasing the number of youth going from high school to college, and import—and hopefully keep—college grads to meet these goals. The Graduate! Network’s model is a third strategy of investing in helping adults who started college but stopped short of a degree, return and complete a credential with market value.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Graduate! Philadelphia
Regional collaboration of colleges, employers, community building organizations, local government, and labor dedicated to increasing the number of adults successfully going back to and through college to complete their degree.
Bridging The Talent Gap
Connecting employers, higher education and Comebackers
The Graduate! Network
Connecting communities focused on improving opportunities and outcomes for Comebackers; providing research-based action; elevating approaches to increasing college completion.
Where we work
External reviews
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Every American adult who aspires to earn a college degree has access to the resources and supports they need to start and complete a college degree:
• Every American is connected to an individual who knows how to go to and through college.
• Understanding the value of a degree and knowing how to succeed in college are ubiquitous within all communities, across socio economic groups.
• Adults have affordable college options.
• The practice of investing in adults completing college is mainstream in talent, workforce, and economic development strategies.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
1. Increase awareness of the benefits of including adult completion as a regional strategy for economic development, workforce development, community building, poverty alleviation, and improving K-12 outcomes for children and youth. Specifically,
2. Influence policies and practices within higher education, employers, and private and public funding sources for individual college students. Specifically,
3. Demonstrate, develop, and promote practices that promote adult college completion.
4. Surface and address racial, gender, income, background, age and ethnic biases.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The Graduate! Network was designed to respond to systemic inequities related to access and success in higher education and by extension to family sustaining jobs and upward career mobility. 70 percent of comebackers in the urban communities we serve are people of color. When they first connect to a Graduate! program, 90 percent of comebackers have family incomes that are less than $42,000, and half of all comebackers have family incomes of less than $24,000. Most of the rest top out at $56,000 with a handful earning up to $75,000. While we have not collected extensive data on earnings outcomes, national studies show that there is a significant increase in the earnings of college graduate over those of a person with some college but no degree. The comebackers we serve come from families where no-one has completed a postsecondary degree and therefore they lack family or community knowledge or role models of how to navigate college successfully. In addition, many live in communities that do not view a college degree favorably. Many of them carry the burden of bad experiences with higher education and about a third have defaulted loans. Most have exhausted their Pell and state grants, and some cannot even access their transcripts. The majority see Graduate! as their last opportunity, and they are wary of yet another investment that may not pan out. Comebackers, by their own reckoning, had zero chance of completing college without the assistance of a Graduate!-trained advisor.
Sensitive to these burdens and barriers, Graduate! advisors empower comebackers to understand their opportunities, value and resources in the higher education ecosystem, resolve barriers, find a completion program that fits them and support them through the journey back until they earn their degree. Through the feedback from our advisors we understand more fully the systemic challenges facing the comebackers and how institutions can be more responsive and responsible for the benefit of adult completers. In 2014 we set a comebacker graduation benchmark of 43 percent at the five year post-enrollment mark, a rate higher than the national average of 42 percent college completion for all adult populations from all income ranges in 2014.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
We recognize that a 30 million person issue cannot be solved by any single intervention or organization, but we have already proven that a network of organizations can more easily and with less risk grow to work at scale. Thus, we operate as a national network of local networks, each providing a range of proven and new programming adapted to the needs of local low income adults with some college but no degree, to help them get back to and through college, at scale.
In 2019, 35 communities are affiliated with the Graduate! Network, serving upwards of 35,000 comebackers.
The State of Tennessee adopted the Graduate! model for serving 50,000 Reconnectors, and more states are interested in our model.
Our #BridgingTheTalentGap program has been implemented in 15 network communities, bringing the voices of 3000 employers and their employees to the issue of employer investment in postsecondary attainment, driving new collaborations and programming.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
GRADUATE NETWORK INC
Board of directorsas of 03/03/2020
Mr. John Colborn
JEVS
Term: 2017 -
Patrick Eiding
Philadelphia AFL-CIO
Matthew Sigelman
Burning Glass Technologies, Inc.
Hadass Sheffer
The Graduate! Network, Inc./Graduate! Philadelphia
Sallie Glickman
SJM Consulting