In the words of St. Petersburg College president Dr. Bill Lee, it's pretty easy to get into a community college in Florida, and just as easy to leave.
That's why Lee and several of his brethren at Tampa Bay colleges and universities came together Monday morning in downtown Tampa to discuss Graduate Tampa Bay — a collaboration between higher education and business officials in the region to increase the number of local residents with college degrees — with their first target being the hundreds of thousands of those residents who have served some time in college but never graduated.
And the motivation behind the movement? Officials say such an effort will boost the region by billions in new revenue. Oh, and also the region is in a national competition with other cities in the U.S. to see who can generate the highest increase in post-secondary degrees through next year.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2012.