Soon after Jamie P. Merisotis took over the Lumina Foundation for Education last year, he began talking about a "big goal." America must increase the proportion of its population with degrees or credentials to 60% by 2025, in order to remain globally competitive and meet the nation's growing demand for college-educated workers, he said. The United States, he warned, is falling behind, and the foundation would make reversing the trend the core of its work. To reach his lofty goal, the former higher-education-policy analyst is shifting the Indianapolis-based foundation's work to focus more squarely on public policy and expand beyond its historical role in grant making. Merisotis sees government action as key to creating widespread change in higher education and an arena where the $1-billion philanthropy can better extend its influence as it nears its 10th anniversary. Under Merisotis's leadership, Lumina has begun working with groups of faculty members, students, business leaders, and others in three states to help them draft common sets of expectations for what students need to know to earn degrees in certain disciplines. The foundation also has awarded money to 11 states to help them develop policies to make their higher-education systems more productive, and it announced grants to minority-serving institutions that identify practices that could serve as "models of success" to help more students from low-income families and underrepresented minority groups. For his part, Merisotis emphasizes that finding a way to ensure that degrees and credentials are of high quality is central to Lumina's goal. He says the focus on a specific measure of college attainment has been powerful in gaining traction for his priorities among lawmakers and others.