* Press release…
As 2025 draws to a close, Illinois has reached a critical inflection point in its 16-year effort to boost educational attainment. The state set an ambitious goal in 2009: 60% of adults would hold a postsecondary credential by 2025. The result? Illinois hit 57.1%, falling just shy of the target—but the real story is what comes next.
Our new analysis, published by the Education Systems Center at Northern Illinois University, examines what this milestone means for Illinois’ future. We’ve found that while the state lacks a new vision to guide its next steps, the groundwork laid over the past 16 years offers valuable lessons for state and local leaders working to improve economic mobility.
Key findings:
• Progress made: Illinois increased adult postsecondary attainment from 38% in 2009 to 57.1% today—significant growth that occurred across all demographic groups.
• Persistent gaps: Despite overall gains, disparities remain stark for students from low-income households, students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities.
• Local innovation thrives: The Illinois Education and Career Success Network’s 20 Leadership Communities demonstrate that collective impact models work, especially during crises like the pandemic.
• Critical missing piece: Without a successor goal or statewide coordinating infrastructure, Illinois risks losing momentum on cross-agency collaboration that drove much of the progress.
What makes this timely:
As states nationwide grapple with declining college enrollment, workforce shortages, and equity gaps in education, Illinois’ experience offers a roadmap of both successes and cautionary lessons. With emerging industries like quantum computing, clean energy, and AI transforming Illinois’ economy, the need for an educated workforce has never been more urgent.
Why this matters now:
Illinois leaders haven’t yet developed a new postsecondary attainment vision for 2025 and beyond. This creates both a risk and an opportunity. Our report outlines two critical strategies: building a table of champions across education, workforce, and economic development systems, and investing in robust data infrastructure for continuous improvement.
Full report available at: https://edsystemsniu.org/illinois-60-by-2025-postsecondary-attainment-goal-outcomes/
* From the report…
What Should Happen Next
As Illinois’ economy continues to diversify and its economic prospects improve as a result of recent developments in nascent industries such as quantum computing, clean energy, and artificial intelligence, it is even more important that Illinois’ public institutions organize around a collective vision of how public systems and resources, coupled with private sector investments and opportunities, can provide true economic mobility for all Illinois residents.
Such a goal will require two key strategies:
1. Building a Table of Champions
An inclusive vision should galvanize all sectors of Illinois’ education, workforce development, and economic development systems to see their place in providing economic mobility for all Illinoisans. Centering economic mobility can pressure our education and workforce systems to improve how learners are prepared for the jobs of tomorrow, and can drive employers to improve job quality. To ensure this goal can be achieved, the state should cultivate a table of statewide and local champions who can hold the vision and monitor and identify strategies to drive toward this vision throughout the P-20 and workforce pipeline.
2. Invest in Data
The state should invest in robust data systems and integration to ground both initial goal-setting and continuous improvement. State and local leaders need access to quality, longitudinal data to target and operationalize strategies that improve progressions through education to employment, and to evaluate where policy and programmatic interventions are generating the most impact. As federal data infrastructure and resources continue to weaken, this is even more essential to shore up at the state level.
I admit that the jargon is confusing me. Sounds like a task force and more study money.
Your thoughts?
- thisjustinagain - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 12:20 pm:
No, Rich, you read those awfully bureaucratic buzzword-laden paragraphs correctly. Study groups, money for data tracking and analysis, and lots more paragraphs like the first two to follow even if nothing ever actually gets done.
- Iron Duke - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 12:53 pm:
Obviously written in the faculty lounge by a team who has never set foot in a corporate boardroom.
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 12:55 pm:
Rich -
There are a few other experts on both The Collective Impact Model and Performance-based Budgeting/Public Performance Measures. I am by no means the statehouse’s leading expert, and I agree its a bit jargony.
The Collective Impact Model uses data that is collected and analyzed independently from the service providers, but then shared colloboaratively with all stakeholders to drive decision-making and make iterative improvements and sustainable gains.
Data is collected and applied almost in realtime, and it has to be collected while services are being provided so you can onjectively determine their impact.
So, this is not “lets conduct a study and then gather a bunch of talking heads to argue what should be done.”
I don’t know who is already at the table, but I would agree that you need educators at ell levels, employers, professional associations, and the state and local economic planners in the room.
It’s not enough to have 60% post-secondary certification (trade, associate or bachelor), you need to make sure you are producing the kinds of degrees the market demands, and that colleges, local economic development, DCEO, and IDES know how, where and when to plug people into those jobs.
Last I heard Illinois manufacturers had 30K jobs they could not fill with qualified applicants in Illinois. IMA, Chicago Federation of Labor, and many others need to be at the table to align our education and job training to fill that pipeline, and philanthropy has an important role to play as well.
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 12:57 pm:
On its face, going from 38% to 57% through the Quinn, Rauner, and Pritzker administrations is impressive. Illinois probably has one of the best educated workforces in the country, and I would love to see how those numbers stack up,
- Excitable Boy - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 1:02 pm:
- State and local leaders need access to quality, longitudinal data to target and operationalize strategies that improve progressions through education to employment, and to evaluate where policy and programmatic interventions are generating the most impact. -
My 6th grade teacher would have flunked me if I wrote that sentence.
- ArchPundit - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 1:35 pm:
That’s not written by faculty, that’s written by workforce dev folks. But make fun of the line workers (faculty) because they are goofy and think about stuff.
The data is critical and not just for study. We need it to meet the Workforce Pell requirements, but also it allows us to understand the job market and the skills that are in demand. Most importantly, it lets us see if we are actually producing life long learners. Current tracking systems tend to do well with full credentials like an AA, AS, AAS, BA, etc, but we need to see if people are getting short-term high-quality credentials and then using their stackability to pursue further education and we need the data to target those individuals for continuing that education. North Carolina is leading on this, but it’s the thing I’m trying to get my system to do as well.
A lot of it is jargon and I know that’s annoying from the outside, but the feds drive this discussion so take it up with the US DOL, Dept. of Ed, and other agencies if you don’t like language. All state leaders are doing is trying to reach students and meet the federal requirements and usually seeking federal grants for the work.
==Last I heard Illinois manufacturers had 30K jobs they could not fill with qualified applicants in Illinois. IMA, Chicago Federation of Labor, and many others need to be at the table to align our education and job training to fill that pipeline, and philanthropy has an important role to play as well.
Correct, and it’s harder to get everyone to the table than people think because it’s regional leaders as well as state leaders and we do this at every community/tech college, but not very well because faculty are often responsible for advisory councils and they are busy teaching. Teaching welding all day (15 credits a semester) and then maintaining relationships is difficult. Some are superstars and do it, but others are human.
- ArchPundit - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 1:41 pm:
Also, I’m sorry, but making fun of the faculty lounge ignores what higher education looks like now and especially in this area. We have people teaching welding, machining, electrical, all sorts of trades sometimes in conjunction with the unions and sometimes without, IT, health care, etc. These aren’t Harvard faculty in the workforce development area, it’s people who were practitioners who somehow we talked into taking a pay cut to teach the next generation. And yet they get made fun of as ‘college professors.’
Everyone says they want more pathways than BAs and here it is. This is what it takes.
- Think again - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 2:06 pm:
=Illinois very near its 15-year goal of 60 percent of adults holding ‘postsecondary credentials’=
We are very close to the established goals, and yet the directional universities are suffering mightily
- Grimlock - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 2:10 pm:
When Illinois first started on this “goal,” ICCB immediately started looking at ways to cook the books. For example, students who transferred without getting an associate’s degree were given the degree so if they finished the bachelor’s they ended up getting counted twice, once for each degree. ICCB and community colleges started packaging a few courses together to call it a “certificate” and then you could count students as hitting this goal after completing just a couple courses.
- ArchPundit - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 2:25 pm:
==When Illinois first started on this “goal,” ICCB immediately started looking at ways to cook the books.
Some of this isn’t cooking the books though. First, you don’t get counted twice if you do get an AS/AAS and then BS. The point of these tracking systems is that we can see the higher ed history of a person and if the goal is 60 percent that was met at AS and not repeated at BS. Places started to make sure people got their AS/AAS/AA because it is a measure of how community and tech colleges are monitored for success. Oddly, getting a year of courses at the community college and transferring is counted as not successful. More than that though, students who have done the work should get the degree. What if they don’t finish their BS? They are going to wish they had the AS/AAS.
The certificate issue is also far more complicated as most systems are now moving those to be steppingstones to degrees as per federal policy. So if you get a certification such as A+ in IT, that’s a course in an AAS or BS program. Often students take that in workforce training but by faculty who teach it on the for-credit side, so we want to capture that learning and allow students to get credit for prior learning credits for it regardless of whether it was provided on the for credit or non-credit side of things. This does have to be approved by faculty and meet about 75 percent of the learning objectives. However, if recorded as credit, the student can use that later in pursuing a AAS or BS because it is on a transcript. Should that be counted for a post-secondary credential? IN this case probably not as it is just 3-4 credits, but is a 16 credit bundle a postsecondary credential? Probably and it should be created so all that credit can go to a future attempt at a degree. It’s a matter of doing the paperwork and planning which isn’t nothing but makes community and tech colleges far more flexible and adaptable to meet both student and industry needs.
- 47th Ward - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 2:34 pm:
I was at a few of the early IBHE meetings when this plan was being developed. I was a little skeptical that the state could make this kind of progress. Kudos to Judy Erwin, who never wavered in her commitment to making this happen. Well done.
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 3:18 pm:
=== We are very close to the established goals, and yet the directional universities are suffering mightily ===
That does raise questions about their utility, but it also creates an opportunity to reimagine their role.
For example, could Governor’s State focus on the Health Care sector, the way that ISU became known as a teacher’s college?
=== When Illinois first started on this “goal,” ICCB immediately started looking at ways to cook the books. ===
As ArchPundit points out, that is pretty difficult to do, and that is part of the reason/benefit for the Collective Impact Model. The central organization that collects and analyzes the data is generally not a service provider, they provide independence.
At the same time, the P-20 Council (I just looked) includes stakeholder organizations like the Illinois Manufacturers Association, Illinois AFL-CIO, Advance Illinois, Civic Committee that hedge against the tendency of all organizations - government, nonprofit and corporate - to embelish outcomes.
I am not saying groups will not try to pad their numbers, it is human nature, just that the structure guards against it and makes it highly unrewarding. Keep in mind that the educators are all frenemies, so if the U of I believes the community colleges are cooking the books, they are going to call them out.
- Friendly Bob Adams - Friday, Dec 12, 25 @ 4:26 pm:
I have a lot of respect for the workforce development people and appreciate the layers of requirements they deal with. This proposal seems to be another layer on top of all that.
Having said that, I think it’s great to reach the goal. Everyone that’s earned a credential is better off, as is the state of Illinois.