You might call it a bachelor party: Rhode Island saw an almost 4% increase in bachelor’s degrees in 2022, according to from a higher education foundation.

“We did not see this much increase in any other state’s bachelor’s degrees,” said Courtney Brown, vice president of impact and planning for the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation. “And it looks like it’s been going up over the last few years. Sometimes, especially in smaller states, it could be a fluke. Maybe it’s a one-year blip. But when I look at the data from 2017 to 2022, the data have been growing pretty tremendously.”

The foundation focuses on postsecondary attainments — which includes bachelor’s degrees, associate degrees and other post-high-school certifications or certificates. Since 2009, Lumina has tracked the trend of state-led goals for attainment, with a nationwide goal of 60% attainment by 2025.

Rhode Island’s overall attainment rate is 56.7% — still a ways from the 70% goal for 2025, during the administration of former Gov. Gina Raimondo. With 2025 a not-so-distant horizon anymore, the state’s new finish line is 70% postsecondary attainment by 2030, according to a presentation by Shannon Gilkey, the state’s commissioner of postsecondary education, at a Feb. 7 hearing before the Senate Committee on Education.

Rhode Island’s degree-toting population has quietly climbed in number since 2017, Brown noted: “People sometimes think, ‘You know, maybe that’s because there are more people with certificates or certifications.’ But that’s not true in Rhode Island. All of the change has been on degrees.”

While associate degrees haven’t changed much — 8.4% attainment in 2017 versus 8.1% in 2022 — bachelor’s degrees have seen a meteoric rise, especially among people aged 25 to 34. This demographic’s baccalaureates rose from 23.7% in 2017 to 32.5% in 2022.

“A 10-percentage point increase over five years is attributable to something that’s happening in the higher ed system,” Brown said. “There are practical policies that had to have been put in place years ago, to help more people get into and complete a bachelor’s degree…None of this was overnight.”

From a national vantage point, it wasn’t immediately clear to Brown what fostered the change. She estimated these structural changes may have taken place about a decade ago. The numbers are also something of a mystery to education commissioner Gilkey, whose featured the Lumina data.

“We still need to have a deeper understanding about what’s really happening underneath the hood, if you will, of this attainment goal and progress towards that attainment goal,” Gilkey testified.

One factor might be the founding of the Promise scholarship in 2017. It helps students attend the Community College of Rhode Island tuition-free, easing access to a four-year degree if a student decides to pursue that path.

“[A transfer] helps with affordability,” Brown said. “I can more affordably complete a two-year [degree] so I only have to think about financing two years of the four year degree.”

The Lumina Foundation’s data paints a generally positive picture of postsecondary education stateside — after all, Rhode Island was only at 42% attainment in 2009 — but it’s not pollyannaish. Brown noted that Rhode Island’s recent successes aren’t excused from the usual disparities involving access and race.

“There’s a slight decline in the Black attainment population, which makes me wonder if a number of people who identify as Black Americans have left Rhode Island,” Brown said.

Black Rhode Islanders went from 34.7% attainment of associate-or-higher degrees in 2021 to 31% attainment in 2022. The Hispanic population’s attainment rose from 22.9% to 25.8% in that same time period.

Several states like Utah, Colorado and Massachusetts have reached the 60% goal. Washington, D.C. — a typical outlier — is highest, with 75.4% of its population holding a postsecondary credential.

But numbers only tell so much of the story: Education after high school, Brown noted, is about more than diplomas.

“It’s not just about increasing the number of people with bachelor’s degrees,” she said. “[People] want bachelor’s degrees that can get…a good job and a good life.”

Nationwide results, including Rhode Island, are available in Lumina’s report.

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InsideTrack coaches, many of whom are former social workers and teachers, will serve as virtual mentors throughout the academic year. They will support students in addressing barriers to college completion — developing plans for everything from employment and financing car repairs to communicating academic or mental health needs to professors.

“We know, during this particular period, there’s a lot of challenges that have been exacerbated for students. We want the coaching to help students develop critical, non-academic skills to be able to finish their degrees,” said Dennis Olson, commissioner of Minnesota’s higher education office, citing time management and the ability to balance academics with family commitments.

“When we’re on the other side of this pandemic, in economic recovery, we know we’re going to need students to have those skills into the future.”

The partnership comes at a time when, nationwide, students are and changing their enrollment plans at rates intensified by the pandemic.

With sustainability in mind, the nonprofit will also coach state employees on how to use their mentorship and success model. In two to three years, Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education hopes to run and expand the coaching program in-house to support more than just first-time borrowers, encompassing those who may be nearer to graduation or who have re-enrolled years after their initial loan.

Olson said that the coaching initiative will help the state reach its of having 70 percent of the state’s population aged 25-44 completing some level of higher education or credential by 2025. Minnesota faces education opportunity gaps along race and income lines.

The state’s 2020 estimates show that almost 69 percent of white Minnesotans have earned higher education credentials, while 37 percent of Black Minnesotans and 28 percent of Hispanic/Latino adults have done so.

For years, higher education institutions in Minnesota have offered financial counseling for their students and resources for first-generation students, but “we wanted more”, Olson told ����Ӱ��.

“This isn’t just another form of student loan counseling, we wanted students to really have access to student success coaches at the state level. This is important — that the state agency be the one leading this effort and providing the service. We want students to have an opportunity to achieve their goals to make sure they understand how to navigate all those obstacles they may encounter,” he said.

In the 2021-22 academic year, $25,000 in emergency funds will also be available for students involved with the InsideTrack partnership facing urgent circumstances that could derail their college careers, like car breakdowns, child care needs or food insecurity. This funding is in addition to .

While InsideTrack also supports Indiana by providing residents with career coaching, the scope and scale of its Minnesota work is a first for the organization, founded in 2001. Historically, they’ve maintained relationships with institutions directly, including California State Universities.

“Institutions have 100 things going on and things that they’re trying to prioritize every day for their students. It can be hard to take an issue like their students’ progress towards graduation over something like student safety,” said Ruth Bauer White, InsideTrack’s president. “[State-level partnerships] are a way for us to have access to students and to prioritize that aid without an individual institution having to make that decision.”

InsideTrack’s coaches walk through “focus wheel” areas with students to understand their daily needs and what plans should be put in place to stay on-track for graduation. Some topic areas are managing commitments, mental and physical health, financial security and motivation for, or belief in, completion.

Mental health has been the most common focus area for InsideTrack nationally this year, according to Bauer White. The organization developed a crisis response team that Minnesota college students can be referred to for more resources and support.

Quantitative and qualitative data will be routinely shared with Minnesota’s higher education office, including which focus areas students cite most often with their coaches.

“Those are the things that we can bring to life for the state of Minnesota in a way that you can’t do if you’re not having that daily contact with students,” Bauer White said.

The program’s impact will be evaluated by University of Minnesota researchers, who will compare student success measures for the 1,500 randomly selected coached students to those of first-time loan borrowers in a similarly sized control group who did not receive coaching.

“[Data] will help inform particular asks, legislative initiatives and priorities,” said Thomas Sanford, the higher education office’s assistant commissioner for operations. “It’s a feedback loop that we can utilize to help support all of Minnesota.”