Almost a year after assuming leadership, the administration of Barack Obama has taken on enormous tasks in confronting the recession that has gripped the U.S. economy. Americans have watched tentatively as the president has extended federal powers into handling corporate bailouts, overseeing the rehabilitation of banks and General Motors, laying the groundwork for reshaping national energy and climate change policy, and leading the charge for national health care reform. Experts say the administration's ambitious approach to federal intervention and national policy reforms has proven no less determined in what it has prescribed for American higher education. Last February, Obama announced to a joint session of Congress that "by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world." Introducing a national community college initiative this past July, Obama invoked the lofty legacy of federal involvement in U.S. higher education. Scholars, academic administrators and higher education policy officials have largely interpreted the administration's pronouncements, more than $100 billion in education stimulus funding, and the community college-focused American Graduation Initiative as markers of a significant shift in federal higher education policy and the making of a credible push for an expanded federal role in American higher education.