"If America is to reach President Obama's goal of having the world's highest proportion of college graduates by 2020, a $2.5-billion grant program he has proposed should focus on vastly expanding degree-attainment rates in the nation's largest states, says a report by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "The nonprofit group's report offers recommendations on how to structure the grant program, which Congressional leaders are expected to debate in the next few weeks. President Obama proposed the program, the College Access and Completion Incentive Fund, in February as a way for the federal government to help states increase the degree-completion rates of low-income students. If the president's college-attainment goal is "in any way real," support from the program will have to go disproportionately to the nation's largest states, said Dennis P. Jones, the center's president and a co-author of the report, "Utilizing College Access & Completion Innovation Funds to Improve Postsecondary Attainment in California." Closing degree-attainment gaps in California, Florida, and Texas alone would account for nearly half of the 1.1 million additional degrees the country needs each year to reach that benchmark, says the report."