By The Associated Press

Published: Sunday, March 17, 2013, 6:18 p.m.
Updated: Sunday, March 17, 2013

ST. LOUIS — Carmen Ricotta knows being a college graduate could mean higher pay and better job opportunities, and it's not like St. Louis Community College hasn't been practically begging her to wrap up her two-year degree.

The school has been calling and emailing the 28-year-old electrician's apprentice to get her to return and complete her final assignment: an exit exam. But life has gotten in the way. Ricotta has been too busy to make the 30-minute trip from her suburban home near Fenton to the downtown St. Louis campus.

St. Louis Community College is among 60-plus schools in six states taking what seems like an obvious but little-used step to boost college graduation rates: scouring campus databases to track down former students who unknowingly qualify for degrees.

That effort, known as Project Win-Win, has helped community colleges and four-year schools in Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia and Wisconsin find hundreds of ex-students who either have earned enough credits to receive associate's degrees or are just a few classes shy of getting them.

Backed by financial support from the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation for Education, the pilot project began several years ago with 35 colleges in six states. As it winds down, some participating schools plan to continue the effort on their own.

Ricotta said that at this point, she's not sure whether getting her two-year degree is necessary.

“It's a pain,” she said. “I don't feel like going down to the college to take a test I don't need. Yeah, I don't have the degree, but I still took all the classes.”

Her seeming indifference to retroactively obtaining her degree points to just one of the challenges facing two-year schools in particular as they strive to fulfill President Obama's challenge of raising college completion rates to 60 percent by 2020: convincing not just the public, but even some of their students, of the value of an associate's degree.

At central Missouri's Columbia College, the hunt worked so well that the school plans to broaden its efforts to find bachelor's degree candidates who are just one class shy of donning the cap and gown.

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