Regional Stewardship Awards

2008 Organizational Champion Award Winner:

Graduate! Philadelphia is the first regional initiative in the US aimed at building a competitive regional economy that offers opportunity to all by helping working adults with some college credits complete their degrees. This innovative effort targets the region?s most pressing competitive challenge: talent. As a six-county (in PA and NJ) collaborative effort of nine participating colleges and universities, the City of Philadelphia, the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, Graduate! Philadelphia demonstrates the region?s ability to work together and collaborate across borders and boundaries.

Human capital development is the most pressing and serious economic and social challenge facing the Philadelphia region. Philadelphia ranks 92nd out of the 100 largest US cities in postsecondary educational attainment, despite having the second highest concentration of postsecondary institutions in the country. Only one in six adults 25-49 years old has an associates or bachelor?s degree (roughly 18 percent; another seven percent have an advanced degree.) With a workforce consequently largely under-prepared for the 21st Century economy, Philadelphia struggles to attract and retain private industry. Further, the small hiring pool of highly skilled workers does not mirror the racial and socio-economic composition of the region

Graduate! Philadelphia views college non-completion as a regional economic, social, and systemic problem, and addresses solutions accordingly. A few systems exist to remedy low postsecondary educational attainment levels, but they are focused on broadening the pipeline of high school students preparing and applying to college. Graduate! Philadelphia is the region?s first systemic attempt to address adult college completion. Providing supports to motivated adults so they can complete their college degree will change the face of the region
Launched in 2006, Graduate! Philadelphia has already achieved breakthrough results, has been replicated in at least one other region, and stands to serve as a model for the kind of regional human capital development strategies necessary to build innovative, inclusive regions.