"California State University is setting a goal of raising its graduation rate by eight percentage points and cutting its racial achievement gap in half by 2016, university officials announced on Friday," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "The plan marks the first time the nation's largest public-university system has set a comprehensive goal to raise its overall graduation rate, officials said, and lays out an ambitious long-term agenda for the 450,000-student system even as it turns away tens of thousands of students to help weather California's budget crisis. Cal State has long sought to reduce the number of students who drop out of its universities, and it has made significant progress over the past decade. Under the plan, the system will attempt to raise its six-year graduation rate from 46 percent to 54 percent by the spring of 2016."