Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education

Mm-hmm.

Kentucky's colleges and universities awarded ninety-eight thousand three hundred forty-seven degrees and credentials in two thousand twenty-five and twenty-six, which is the most in state history according to the degree report, which was released yesterday by the Council on Postsecondary Education.

The total is up nearly forty-six hundred awards, so you could round that up to about five thousand more than, uh, last year or about five percent above the previous year, which is a twenty-one percent increase from five years ago.

And I believe that shows you the significance of the KCTCS program because once people start focusing on those and getting the two-year degrees and that type of thing, it really bumps those numbers up to set you off in the direction that you want to go.

Well, about 20% of Kentucky college students are parents, and a report released last month during National Student Parent Month showed more than 300,000 Kentucky parents don't have a degree.

The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education is hoping to address barriers that may keep parents from enrolling and graduating.

So one of the f- findings is that 375,000 Kentucky, uh, parents don't have a postsecondary credential.

What that, um, tells us is that there's an extreme opportunity for our state to, um, help not just our parenting students, but also their families and then ultimately our communities, um, with, uh, economic mobility, um, if we can design the right supports, um, for, for folks that are interested in returning.

Let's look ahead to the legislative session.

The Council on Postsecondary Education had a robust discussion of higher ed in Owensboro this week.

Lots of encouraging updates from our colleges and universities.

There are upward trends in enrollment, retention, and graduation rates that have jumped more than 10% in the last decade.