Degrees When Due (DWD) is an innovative, nationwide completion initiative led by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). DWD helps participating institutions improve their student completion rates by sharing data-driven strategies and tactics through a free web-based platform. Institutions apply an equity lens to their own real-time student data to ensure that todays’ students – students of color, low-income students, working students, student parents, and others – are re-engaged to cross the finish line. DWD helps institutions successfully navigate the technical work of data mining and degree auditing in the course of fundamentally rethinking their campus completion culture, addressing equity gaps, and tackling institutional policies in order to remove barriers that cause adult learners to stop out before completing.
Across the country, 36 million adults have earned some college credits, but stopped out before earning a degree. DWD builds on the evidence-based and equity-focused degree reclamation lessons learned from two earlier models - Project Win-Win and Credit When It’s Due (CWID) - to help campuses and postsecondary systems optimize policies to identify and support returning students.
Launched in 2018, the initiative has grown to include 20 states and more than 150 institutes of higher education. IHEP will open the application process to join the third Degrees When Due cohort in spring 2020.