Minnesota’s Educational Attainment Goal Must Be a Racial Equity Goal

By Molly Priesmeyer, MnEEP Director of Narrative Strategy 

More than 425,000 students will head to Minnesota colleges and universities in the coming weeks. As they do, Minnesota has an opportunity to decide what its next Educational Attainment Goal should require.

And the lessons from our first statewide goal, set in statute in 2015, are important for what should be built next.

Overall higher-ed attainment among adults ages 25–44 increased from 57.5% in 2015 to an estimated 63.5% in 2025.

That progress matters. But deep racial disparities persist. In 2025, estimated higher-ed attainment was 69.7% for White Minnesotans, compared with 41.1% for Black Minnesotans, 36.8% for Hispanic or Latino Minnesotans, and 29.4% for American Indian Minnesotans.

Those numbers tell us something a statewide percentage alone cannot.

They tell us that an attainment goal cannot simply measure where we want to go. It has to establish what Minnesota is willing to build, fund, require, and change to get there.

And if racial equity is foundational to both the attainment goal and Minnesota’s success, it must shape more than the outcomes we measure and track. It must shape what the state and institutions are expected to do with what the evidence reveals.

• What standards should the state and public higher-education institutions be expected to meet?
• What public investments, student supports, and institutional capacity are necessary to meet those standards?
• How should evidence drive changes in policy, resources, and institutional practice?
• Who is accountable, and what happens when disparities in access, belonging, and credential completion persist across the state and within institutions?

MnEEP’s latest policy brief, “Six Racial Equity Commitments for Minnesota’s Educational Attainment Goal,” lays out Six Commitments for moving an attainment goal from measurement to action and accountability.

1. Make racial equity a condition of success
2. Establish a statewide equity standard
3. Build disaggregated evidence that guides action
4. Create meaningful public accountability
5. Fund the capacity required for implementation
6. Ensure attainment expands real educational opportunity

Higher education should not simply produce more credentials or respond to workforce demand. It should expand students’ choices, mobility, continued learning, economic opportunity, community participation, and ability to pursue the futures they define for themselves.

That agency matters far beyond individual attainment. It shapes who can build economic security, exercise civic power, strengthen communities, and help determine Minnesota’s future. When racial inequities constrain students’ ability to shape their own futures, they also constrain the possibilities of the state as a whole.

That is why Minnesota’s next attainment goal must make racial equity foundational—not as an aspiration, but as a public responsibility the state is prepared to build, fund, measure, and sustain.