Blogs
Policy Blog: Hedging Bets and Managing Risk
Legislators are Money Managers Each legislative session, policymakers choose from several promising strategies, with the final investment decision having implications for educational and economic growth. While the sure bet does not exist in postsecondary education, state policymakers can insulate their investments from risk by leveraging nonfinancial tools. The foremost levers are legislative authority in three areas: evaluation and oversight; adoption of technical program changes; and, most importantly, power to discontinue ineffective...
read morePolicy Blog: Workforce Alignment
What Is Workforce Alignment? Up until recently, workforce alignment was seen as a local effort to bridge the gap between postsecondary supply and labor market demand. Today, policymakers are adopting this model on a statewide scale, hoping to recapture system efficiencies and sustain long-term economic growth. What Are States Doing? States have set the groundwork for workforce alignment through: Examining workforce trends and measuring system and institutional capacity Exploring ways to tailor state investments to workforce needs Engaging...
read morePolicy Blog Series: Transferring Focus?
When states consider strategies to increase college attainment, do student transfer issues figure prominently? Are legislatures developing and adapting transfer policies to improve student mobility and degree attainment? A recent scan of 2011 policies suggests that legislatures are using student transfer not just as a narrow mechanism, but as a strategy to address broader state education and workforce goals. 2011 Trends in Transfer Sixteen states enacted 23 policies in 2011 related to articulation agreements, career pathways and student...
read moreCalifornia and Texas: Big States, Big Plans
Task forces at the California Community College System and the University of Texas at Austin issued reports that could overhaul their policies, practices and priorities in an effort to increase graduation rates. The recommendations in both reports could have far-reaching implications for campuses across the country. California Community Colleges’ Student Success Task Force grew out of Senate Bill 1143 (2010), which recognized the important role of the state’s two-year institutions but also noted that only 24% of degree-seeking students...
read moreBCC Webinar on Postsecondary Funding — Register Today!
Join Matthew Smith of the Education Commission of the States for a webinar entitled: Legislative Efforts to Increase College Completion Through Finance Reform. The session will explore: Recent policy enactments related to postsecondary finance Funding trends to watch for in 2012 and beyond How funding models can help achieve state strategic goals Potential next steps for legislators and their staff The webinar will be held on Wednesday, January 25 from 1:00 – 2:00 pm EST. Click on this link to...
read moreStrategies to Decrease Time to Degree
“At some point, additional time for students to complete a college degree has diminishing returns and becomes a negative factor,” Stan Jones, president of Complete College America (CCA), explained during a recent meeting. CCA’s report, Time is the Enemy, noted that giving full-time community college students an extra year to finish a degree and giving full-time four-year students an extra two years to earn a degree only increases graduation rates by 4.9% for both groups. Consequently, state leaders should encourage postsecondary...
read moreStandards: A Critical Need for K-16 Collaboration
States will need to move quickly to get postsecondary institutions on board as they begin to implement the common core standards, argue ECS’ Bruce Vandal and Brad Philips of the Institute for Evidence-Based Change in a recent commentary published by Education Week. But states will need to employ proven models that show how the common core can facilitate greater alignment between postsecondary and K-12 education. The result would be a reduced need for remediation, increased college-success rates and faster degree attainment. (Education Week,...
read moreSurveying the 2011 Legislative Landscape: Early Exposure to Postsecondary Education
How do high school students view postsecondary education? Do they know what college courses entail and are they up to the challenge? These are the questions that legislators consider when building avenues for early exposure to postsecondary education. By providing high school students the opportunity to earn college credit for these experiences, legislatures are improving the odds that high school graduates seek and complete college credentials. What Is Meant by Early College Exposure? Early college exposure is an umbrella term that refers to...
read moreA Transfer Agenda for the 21st Century
Transfer and articulation is such a confounding issue because every state has it in some form or fashion, but rarely do any two states do it the same. Consider the variables: legislatures, postsecondary systems, institutional administrators, faculty senates, parents and, finally, students. Add that to tradition, governance, demographics and geography, and one can easily see why states respond to transfer and articulation in quite different ways. The Boosting College Completion project presents the Transfer Agenda, so that legislators can...
read moreSurveying the 2011 Legislative Landscape: Postsecondary Funding
As this year’s legislative sessions wrap up, we have begun to analyze over 80 new enactments that have implications for college completion. Our first blog covers postsecondary funding, which has become a hot topic as states seek to increase degree attainment in a time of limited resources for higher education. In 2011, many states looked to their funding policies as a lever to drive increased productivity, particularly as it relates to college completion. Student Success-Based Funding Twelve legislatures have enacted policies in 2011 related...
read moreTen States Receive Complete College America Challenge Grants
In February, 2011, Complete College America (CCA) challenged all states – in particular, their governors – to a competition: Submit proposals to win a $1 million grant to increase college completion and close attainments gaps. Thirty-three states applied by the May deadline. The ten winners emerged by the end of August. Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia will receive a cash infusion to increase attainment rates as part of the Completion Innovation Challenge. But CCA...
read more5 Myths About Remedial Education
While college remediation often shows up on lists of what ails America’s higher education system, Bruce Vandal from ECS and Jane V. Wellman from the Delta Cost Project argue that rethinking these services could help increase postsecondary attainment and spur economic development. In their recent op-ed that ran in Inside Higher Ed, the pair lay out five myths that stand in the way of true reform of remedial education in most states. In addition to dispelling the myths, they offer simple steps that most states can take today to reform remedial...
read moreGates Foundation Leader Makes the Case to Spur Economic Growth through Increased College Completion
Hilary Pennington, Director of Education, Postsecondary Success and Special Initiatives for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation set the stage for the 2011 ECS National Forum on Education Policy by describing the challenges that policymakers and practitioners face to meet college completion goals and workforce demands. During the plenary session, Pennington also offered four strategies to increase postsecondary readiness and productivity. Pennington shared the Gates Foundation’s ambitious goal to double the number of low-income adults who...
read moreECS Urges State Leaders to Boost College Completion
The 2011 ECS National Forum on Education Policy – a premier education policy event for 46 years – was held in Denver on July 6-9. Over 380 policymakers and education leaders from around the country attended, including legislators and legislative staff, gubernatorial staff, chief state school officers, higher education officials, business and industry leaders, and practitioners. Nowhere else does such a broad group of education leaders from diverse perspectives gather to discuss the important education issues from Pre-K to...
read moreData Are the Key to Legislation on Completion in Arkansas
Representative Johnnie Roebuck, vice-chair of the Arkansas House Education Committee and co-chair of the Higher Education Subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council, spoke to ECS Post Forum attendees on the influential work of the Arkansas Task Force on Higher Education Retention, Remediation, and Graduation Rates. The task force, created under 2007 Ark. Acts 570 and chaired by Roebuck, was charged with designing and implementing policies to enable Arkansas to meet the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) average percentage of...
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