Oakland County Executive David Coulter sets ambitious college completion goal

David Jesse
Detroit Free Press
Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter applauds for Governor Gretchen Whitmer during the State of the State address at the State Capitol in Lansing, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020.

Oakland County Executive David Coulter has set an ambitious goal of having 80% of the county's adults have some form of postsecondary training. He will announce the goal and partnerships with the county's higher education institutions during Wednesday night's annual State of the County speech.

in doing so, he is upping the ante for his county from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's goal of 60% completion for the state.

Coulter, in an interview with the Free Press, said he was inspired by Whitmer's goal and wanted to see Oakland County do better.

"This is an aspirational goal," he said. "We know the county can't do it by itself. The days of government solving problems by simply throwing money at it are gone. We need to work with our partners on this."

The current postsecondary attainment in Oakland County is 61%. That counts any type of postsecondary credential or degree.

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That work has already begun, Coulter said. Representatives from the county, Oakland University, Oakland Community College, Walsh College, Baker College and from trade union groups met recently to start talking about how they could meet the goal.

Coulter did not outline specific plans. Those will come later, he said, as the group works together.

In her State of the State address in late January, Whitmer announced a proposal to fund the Michigan Reconnect program, which would provide free skills training and degree programs for adults and help reach a goal of 60% postsecondary attainment by 2030.

Michigan currently ranks 21st in the nation in high school graduation rates. It ranks 33rd in percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree. Also 51% of the state’s adults have an associate’s degree or higher. That rate is 54% nationally. 

"Our business community supports Michigan Reconnect," Whitmer said in her speech. "And here’s why: We have over one hundred thousand in-demand jobs to fill. These are good paying jobs — jobs in construction, IT, and advanced manufacturing. But they demand specialized skills training."

A key to upping the completion rate is getting adults with some college, but no degree or credential, back into school.

In early 2019, Wayne State and Oakland universities, along with Henry Ford College, announced a stepped-up debt forgiveness program for those coming back to school.

That means that at Henry Ford College, where tuition is about $100 per credit, up to one half of total outstanding debt will be forgiven.

Oakland University’s Golden Grizzlies Graduate program and Wayne State’s Warrior Way Back program will forgive up to $1,500 in debt. Tuition at Oakland costs about $12,000 per year; at Wayne State it's about $12,500 per year.

Students who don't complete college often leave school with debt. Under most schools' rules, those students aren't allowed to re-enroll until the debt is paid off. That is waived if a student enrolls under this debt-forgiveness program.

In metro Detroit alone, about 693,000 adults attended some college but didn’t graduate. About 13,000 of those went to Wayne State, while 11,600 went to Henry Ford and another 8,300 attended Oakland.

Records showed in 2019 that 25% of students at the three schools — 24,016 students — who stopped going left with some sort of financial hold on their accounts.

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj