The Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Teresa Lubbers addressed a group of 400 students and family members to launch the “15 to Finish” campaign today at the Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis Campus Center.
The campaign is encouraging undergraduate students to take 15 credit hours per semester to obtain their degree within four years.
Rebecca Torstrick, director of the IU Office of Completion and Student Success, said the state is using this campaign to attract attention to the message that IU has begun to share with its students.
“The state is basically helping to publicize and get the message out to students and to their parents that if you want to finish a college degree in four years, then you have to take 30 credits an academic year,” Torstrick said. “Otherwise, it will take longer than four years.”
The program was adapted from an initiative implemented in Hawaii that boosted college graduation rates within the state. Indiana announced the program last fall and worked throughout the year with colleges and universities in the state to modify the program, Jason Bearce, associate commissioner at Indiana’s Commission for Higher Education said.
Torstrick said the latest push to boost graduation rates is part of a national campaign in response to the national rate of student debt. Indiana is pushing the initiative across institutions in the state as an investment in its economic future.
“Within Indiana, the state sees increasing the number within Indiana of citizens, people in the state who have a college degree as an absolute must for the future economic welfare of the state,” Torstrick said.
“More and more jobs in Indiana are going to require that people have a college degree and they’re very concerned about making sure that more and more Indiana students are going to college and are completing."
Carmen Heredia Rodriguez
