Montana Higher Education a National Success

A recent article by author Jon Marcus and  featured on U.S. News by MSNBC has a lot of good things to say about Montana's higher education system. A note of particular praise is a recent study on the percentage of Montanan's holding an Associates degrees or higher. Between 2007 and 2010, the percentage of Montanans with an associates degree or higher grew from 37.5% to 40%. That may not sound like much, but Montana actually outpaced every other state in this measure leading many to wonder what Montana was doing right.

Montana Associate Commissioner for Planning and Analysis Tyler Trevor says that some of the highlights of Montana's system are it's focus on two year institutions (the College of Technology for example), the goal of making credits more transferable between Montana institutions, as well as the ability for students throughout the state to take distance learning coarses.

Tyler Trevor discusses Montana higher education:

Looking ahead, Trevor says the university system is working on creating more efficiencies by integrating the application system so that an application for one Montana institution will work for all. Another major goal is the reduction of individual student debt through better education regarding student loans.