Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board Executive Director Ann Daley has co-signed a letter along with dozens of other national higher education leaders to presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain urging them to address the nation’s major higher education challenges.
The letter states that by the end of the next President’s first term, the U.S. will have created three million more jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree with not enough graduates to fill them and that global competition will require research and innovation on a scale that even the U.S. is not prepared to sustain.
The letter further calls for the next President to increase by one million the number of postsecondary degrees and certificates and to increase investments in basic research. A white paper which provides more details on the proposal was also sent to the three major candidates.
UPDATE: This editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer talks about this letter from national higher education leaders and calls on the major presidential candidates to focus more on higher education.