To flourish as a society, we need to maximize the number of people who possess the skills and knowledge necessary for success. That threshold is currently defined as being commensurate with at least two years of postsecondary education.  In order to ensure students ultimately attain at this level, we must improve the current education pipeline.

We must improve academic outcomes for a much greater number of students. We also need to minimize the number of students - especially those from underserved populations - who dropout. To serve these interrelated purposes, we need to improve the quality and increase the variety of our educational pathways by investigating how to better engage and retain students.

Questions we aim to investigate through our Pathways to Higher Learning initiative include:

• What are the skills and knowledge necessary for success in today’s world?
• What are the barriers to creating an effective, flexible K-14/K-16 lifelong education continuum in order to achieve these outcomes?
• What innovations in practice and related policy advancements hold the greatest promise for moving New England’s underserved toward extraordinary education results?
• For students, what does it mean to be college-ready? What do postsecondary institutions need to do to become more “ready” for the widening variety of students they serve?
• What do we need to learn about public understanding to move the work forward?

To that end, investments made through the Foundation’s Pathways to Higher Learning initiative currently focus on: identifying and investing in innovative programs that increase student engagement as a method of increasing student achievement; the development of college-level retention programs; the promotion of new and revised student achievement standards and accountability systems that may provoke innovation concerning where, when, how, and with whom students learn.

Also, certain programs - previously funded under the Foundation’s College Prep and Minority High Achievement initiatives - are now funded under the Pathways to Higher Learning initiative.

The Foundation also supports strategies that aim to enhance public understanding of the need for improved and varied pathways to higher education in New England.