Three community colleges in Maine are offering a new scholarship and assistance program for students who are struggling to complete their associate degrees.

Accelerate ME is designed to help students finish their degree programs within a year and reduce the large number of Mainers who have started college but haven’t graduated.

The pilot program is being offered at York County Community College in Wells, Southern Maine Community College in South Portland and Central Maine Community College in Auburn.

Students are eligible for the grant-funded program if they are 21 or older, have at least 30 credits toward a 60-credit degree program and have been enrolled in classes within the last five years.

“The intent of the program is to help folks who haven’t been able to complete their degrees because they’ve been challenged by time or money,” said Helen Pelletier, spokeswoman for the Maine Community College System.

Maine’s community colleges and universities are trying to increase their graduation rates. Less than one-third of first-time, full-time students who enrolled in Maine community colleges in 2007 graduated within three years, said Pelletier.

Twenty percent of working-age adults in Maine – about 189,000 people – have earned some college credit but lack degrees, according to the Maine Compact for Higher Education.

And 59 percent of all job openings in Maine between now and 2018 will require education beyond high school, according to the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Accelerate ME is funded by a $500,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation and a $250,000 grant from Unum. The program will help students pay for tuition, fees and books, which add up to about $4,500 per year for a full-time student, Pelletier said.

Program coordinators on each campus will provide academic support and help to develop a network of students in the program.

The coordinators are seeking students now to start the program this fall. Each college plans to enroll 35 students in Accelerate ME this fall and 40 students in the fall of 2012.

“I’m in recruitment mode,” said Jane Kimball Foley, the Accelerate ME coordinator at York County Community College.

Foley said she’s working from a list of several hundred students who fit the program’s criteria, but she hopes that other students who qualify will contact her.

“With the demands of work and family, life is complicated, especially in this economy,” Foley said. “This program targets people who haven’t been able to go to school full time, for whatever reason.”

The pilot program is expected to serve 225 students in all. If it is successful and receives additional funding, Accelerate ME will be expanded to the other five community colleges in the system, Pelletier said.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at: kbouchard@pressherald.com