Promise is on course

While running for governor in 2009, Bob McDonnell vowed to put Virginia colleges on a path to awarding 100,000 additional associate and bachelor degrees to in-state students over the next 15 years.

We examined this promise early last year and found that McDonnell was off to a good start. The General Assembly in 2011 passed a series of initiatives to reach the 100,000 additional degrees by raising enrollment of Virginia students in college, improving graduation and retention rates and increasing the availability of financial aid to middle and low-income students.

But there was a problem in assessing the progress on the pledge: Enrollment projections by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia only went through the 2017-2018 school year -- just halfway into the 15-year timeline the governor set. So we rated this a promise that's "In the Works" and said we'd take another look before McDonnell last day in office -- which will be this Saturday.

Here's an update. Two things have changed since our last writing.

For starters, SCHEV has extended its enrollment projections to the 2019-20 school year, making it easier to analyze whether McDonnell's promise is on course.

The second thing is that the McDonnell administration said our initial story assumed all of the 100,000 promised degrees would be awarded by public colleges when, in fact, the governor's pledge encompassed public and private schools. We found that to be a reasonable point; McDonnell's policy paper making the vow did not specify one type of college or the other.

So, for the purpose of this Bob-O-Meter, we're using SCHEV's 2019-20 enrollment projections for public and private colleges.

Before getting to the bottom line, there's an important term to define. McDonnell's enrollment initiative called for colleges to award 100,000 "cumulative additional" bachelor's and associate's degrees. Let's look at what that "cumulative additional" estimate means:

Virginia awarded 48,400 such degrees during the 2010-11 school year, according to SCHEV. That's the starting point for McDonnell's count. If the same number of degrees was awarded during the 2024-25 school year, the cumulative growth would be zero.

McDonnell wants to ensure that the number graduates continues to rise each year so that over the 14-year by period, a total of 100,000 more degrees will have been awarded than if the number remained flat from the starting point.

To get there, the number of graduates would have to increase by an average of 1.8 percent every year so that in 2024-25, Virginia would be awarding about 62,300 degrees.

Virginia is expected to easily surpass that goal. The latest SCHEV projections predict a 3 percent average annual increase in bachelors and associated degrees from 2010 to 2020. SCHEV projects 63,205 of the degrees be awarded during the 2019-20 school year.

If you add all the extra diplomas that would be awarded each school year from 2010-11 through 2019-20, SCHEV estimates that 93,135 cumulative additional degrees will have been conferred. In other words, Virginia will be 93 percent of the way towards meeting McDonnell's goal with five years left to go.

SCHEV officials stress that their projections are not guarantees. In a January 2013 report, they noted students are finding it more difficult to pay for college and that the number of Virginia's high school graduates has fallen in recent years. Spokeswoman Kristen Nelson said the council will release a report this month showing "there is a softening in (college) enrollment, but that we still are on track to meet the approved enrollment and degree projections and remain confident that we will achieve the 100,000 goal by 2025."

To help colleges expand, the General Assembly has increased higher education spending by about $250 million during McDonnell's term.

Tod Massa, the director of policy research and data warehousing at SCHEV, told us when we first  examined this pledge that McDonnell's higher education initiatives have been a "significant factor" in propelling the state towards its degree goals. We asked him whether the state could have reached the goal without the new laws. "I really don't know, I think possibly," he said.

The bottom line is that the state is clearly on track to reach its 100,000 "cumulative additional" degrees by 2025. So we rate this a Promise Kept.