“We applaud Congressional leaders and Administration
officials for working together to reach a bipartisan deal on a federal stimulus
package. As higher education works to address the financial fallout stemming
from the COVID-19 pandemic, we welcome partnership and resources from the
federal government. This stimulus package provides urgently needed financial
assistance and administrative flexibility during this difficult time.
The financial shortfalls facing higher education, however,
will far exceed the funding levels in this package. More work needs to be done
to ensure colleges and universities can meet the urgent needs of their
students, maintain their workforce, help the economy recover, and sustain their
commitment to providing high-quality, affordable educational opportunities. We
look forward to partnering with the federal government to meet the evolving
challenges posed to institutions and their students by COVID-19 and use the capacity
of colleges and universities to help in the national response and recovery.”
The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO)
promotes an environment that values higher education and its role in ensuring
the equitable education of all Americans, regardless of race/ethnicity, gender,
or socioeconomic factors. Together with its members, SHEEO aims to achieve this
vision by equipping state higher education executive officers and their staffs
with the tools to effectively advance the value of higher education, promoting
public policies and academic practices that enable all Americans to achieve
success in the 21st century, and serving as an advocate for state higher
education leadership. In line with this mission, SHEEO is hosting a convening on
the public funding of higher education in November 2020.
Recent trends in state support for higher education indicate that
states have failed to recover funding for higher education since the Great
Recession. After more than $2,000 in per-student funding reductions during the
Great Recession, per-student educational appropriations in 2018 were $7,853,
roughly $1,000 below their pre-recession level.[1]
Ten years out from the start of the Great Recession, per-student higher
education appropriations in the U.S. have only halfway recovered, and state
funding for general operations failed to keep up with inflation for the first
time since 2012. However, state student financial aid has increased steadily
and is now at an all-time high. While the increase in student financial aid is
to be celebrated, the weak recovery of and relatively low levels of state
higher education appropriations is concerning. General operating appropriations
are a critical resource relied upon by public institutions to fund the
education and direct services students receive. This general institutional
funding is directly tied to what students learn, and experience, and, as recent
research has shown,[2]
impacts the likelihood of their successful completion.
SHEEO is issuing this Call for Papers for research on the impacts
of public funding on student and institutional outcomes. Analyses of the
specific effects of general operating appropriations or state financial aid are
encouraged.
With generous support from the Joyce Foundation, SHEEO will cover
travel costs for researchers and analysts studying or evaluating the public
funding of higher education to present their work at our convening in Boulder,
Colorado, in November 2020. The convening will bring together a diverse array
of participants, including state agency staff, policymakers, intermediary staff,
and higher education researchers, to facilitate conversation amongst
stakeholders who can advance the findings from the papers presented into
action.
Submissions
Those interested in attending should submit a single-spaced Word
or PDF document, not to exceed 1,000 words. The proposal should include
information on the purpose of the study, research questions addressed, research
methodology employed, preliminary findings (if available), and the potential
significance for policy and practice. Please use 12-point font and 1-inch
margins. Additionally, the proposal should include a works cited page and a 1-page
CV for each author, neither of which count against the 1,000-word limit.
Authors are encouraged to submit proposals for unfinished manuscripts, though
authors with shareable working papers may also upload a copy.
Please submit your proposal by uploading all relevant documents to
the proposal website by 11:59
p.m. MT on May 4, 2020.
Timeline
Date
Task
May 4, 2020
Proposals due to SHEEO
May 25, 2020
Notification of
acceptance
October 21, 2020
Final paper due to
SHEEO
November 2, 2020
Final presentation due
to SHEEO
November 4-6, 2020
Convening in Boulder,
CO
SHEEO encourages quantitative and qualitative proposals, and both
empirical and applied work, for this convening. For those wanting to make use
of quantitative data on state support of higher education, SHEEO will assist
researchers in accessing and utilizing our State Higher Education Finance
(SHEF) data. You can learn more about those data on the SHEF webpage. If you
have questions about the SHEF data or need access to additional data elements
that are not available online, please contact Sophia Laderman at sladerman@sheeo.org.
If you have any questions regarding the content of your proposal
or the timeline for the convening, please reach out to Dr. David Tandberg at dtandberg@sheeo.org. Any questions regarding the
submission process or the submission website should be directed to Caitlin
Dennis at cdennis@sheeo.org.
[1] This is part of a longer trend –
appropriations per student are $2000 below 2001, before the dot-com bubble. See
www.sheeo.org/shef
[2] Bound, J., Braga, B., Khanna, G., &
Turner, S. (2019). Public universities: The supply side of building a skilled
workforce. NBER Working Paper 25945; Deming, D. J. and C. R. Walters (2018).
The Impact of State Budget Cuts on U.S. Postsecondary Attainment. Working paper.
https://eml.berkeley.edu//~crwalters/papers/deming_walters.pdf
SHEEO is monitoring the evolving situation pertaining to COVID-19 (coronavirus) and will share guidance and updates from federal agencies and national health authorities as we receive them. The following guidance has been issued to the higher education community thus far:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released interim guidance for administrators of colleges and universities in planning and preparing for COVID-19, along with recommended response measures for those with the virus in their community.
The CDC has also released guidance for institutions of higher education (IHEs) related to foreign travel. The CDC has asked IHEs to consider postponing or canceling upcoming student foreign exchange programs and recommends IHEs consider asking current program participants to return to their home country, as well as asking students participating in study abroad programs to return to the United States. The CDC recommends that IHEs consult with state and local health authorities on the best approach for when and how study abroad students might return.
The U.S. Department of Education has issued guidance related to compliance with Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA) for those that are impacted by COVID-19. The Department’s guidance offers flexibility under its existing authority to help IHEs continue to serve students.
Other resources include:
The U.S. Department of Education has a website with information related to COVID-19.
The American College Health Association has issued a document on what campuses need to know about COVID-19, as well as guidelines for campus health staff and administrators preparing for COVID-19.
As the U.S. Department of Education has offered flexibility to IHEs, we encourage our members to consider whether they may need to offer similar flexibility related to their own statutory and regulatory requirements so that their IHEs can remain compliant and continue to serve students.
Lastly, if there are federal policy challenges your state or institutions are encountering about COVID-19 (such as authorization and distance education), please contact Tom Harnisch, vice president for government relations, at tharnisch@sheeo.org. Congress is currently exploring legislative responses to meet immediate and longer-term needs.
If you have any other questions or concerns related to COVID-19 and higher education, please feel free to contact Rob Anderson, president, at randerson@sheeo.org.
A recent report from the American
Council of Education, Tools in a Toolbox: Leading Change in Community Colleges,
notes that “data provide an entry point, even an excuse, to bring individuals
together to cognitively engage in a learning process to identify new
institutional practices for improvement” (Lester, 2020 p. iii)[1]
Of course, this is easier said than done. Each step in the process of transforming
data into meaningful, actionable information has potential roadblocks. For
example, campus administrators may question the validity of the data, or the
way data are analyzed. Faculty may have additional concerns that the data are
being used for critical evaluations of their teaching methods and abilities. For
transformative data use to be successful, college staff must believe that
leadership values the data, understand and accept the validity of the data, and
be able to and want to act on the data.
The Postsecondary Data Partnership[2] (PDP) is a response to a call to action for the higher education community to improve the use of data to increase student success and helps address many of the concerns listed above that hinder data use on college campuses. The PDP, managed by the National Student Clearinghouse (Clearinghouse), is a nationwide effort to help individual institutions and state systems gain a fuller picture of student progress and outcomes, meet various reporting requirements, and identify where to focus their resources. The partnership is dedicated to the idea that easier access to better data helps higher education professionals develop actionable insights and make informed decisions to support student success. The PDP helps institutions and states be transformative in their data use in four key areas: (1) It empowers the use of data at the campus and state-level; (2) It helps create a uniform language and understanding of higher education data; (3) It includes data on all students; and (4) It gives senior leaders the information needed to more accurately tackle significant state-level issues, such as educational attainment and equity gaps. These four areas are explained in more detailed below.
First,
the PDP empowers institutions with better data and access to analytics through
online Tableau dashboards[3] (see
Figure 1) and an easy-to-access downloadable analysis file. The Clearinghouse
currently has nearly a dozen Key Performance Indicator dashboards that include
visualizations for enrollment, gateway course completion, credit accumulation
rate, outcomes, retention/persistence, transfer, and time to credential data.
These dashboards can be easily filtered by metrics such as enrollment
intensity, academic preparedness, race/ethnicity, gender, first-generation
status, Pell grant status, and other important variables. A Tableau
administrator for each institution has the ability to add dashboard users so
that this important data can be shared across the entire campus and different
functional offices. These dashboards are available online and do not require an
institution to purchase Tableau software. The Clearinghouse is also developing
the ability to benchmark within the dashboards. In addition to the dashboards,
institutions also receive data through an Analysis-Ready File, an excel file
report where each student’s data are included on a single row, allowing users
to create descriptive statistics, pivot tables easily, or utilize the data for
more extensive analysis. For example, institutions can use PDP data for
predictive analytics or create their own cohorts for tracking students based on
local institutional initiatives.
Figure 1: Example Executive Summary PDP Tableau Dashboard
Image Source: National Student Clearinghouse, PDP Executive Summary Dashboard Tutorial Video
Second,
PDP data definitions are based on the Institute for Higher Education
Policy’s (IHEP) Postsecondary Metrics Framework[4]. IHEP
staff reviewed a decade’s worth of data elements and their definitions
collected by national, state, and voluntary data collections in an attempt to
bring consensus to the field regarding common data elements. The Postsecondary
Metrics Framework is part of a larger effort for a more inclusive national data
infrastructure that enables researchers and policymakers to understand equity and
student success better. This work also helps support the validity of data
elements and their importance in helping to understand barriers and improve
student success.
Third,
the PDP includes data on all students at your institution. Unlike other data
collections that only include first-time, full-time students or students
entering in the fall, the PDP collects information on every student at your
institution, regardless of when they started in the year, their enrollment
intensity (full or part-time), or if they are a first-time student in higher
education or a transfer. This allows institutions to get a full picture of
student progress and success, rather than only a partial view.
Finally,
like many institution-wide initiatives, it takes senior leadership advocating
for the project to be successful. With early-momentum metrics measuring
first-year progression through gateway course completion and credit
accumulation, the PDP allows senior executives to more accurately understand
the impact of the first year of college and is invaluable to both institutions
and state systems as they look to increase educational rates and close equity
gaps. State leaders should find this information incredibly useful as they seek
to better understand and find ways to improve the success of their students.
Tools in a Toolbox: Leading Change in Community Colleges provides four key takeaways for leading change at community colleges that is also applicable to four-year institutions and other higher education sectors. First, leaders should have an explicit change theory and plan that is clear and provides goals. Implementing the PDP to support data-informed decision making can be one aspect of this plan. Second, leadership should be developed to assist in engaging the entire community. This leadership team can also serve as advocates to the PDP work, promoting its use around campus. Third, data and information should be communicated with the community, an aspect where the PDP excels because it allows anyone (with access) to view data. Finally, the vision for change should be communicated in everyday decisions. The PDP can be this vehicle for data-informed decision making that impacts all areas of campus culture and student support.
Webinar Overview: This webinar will profile ongoing statewide efforts to advance educational equity in higher education throughout Minnesota. The state legislature and the Office of Higher Education have outlined broad attainment goals across all demographic groups in Minnesota. In June 2019, Minnesota State launched Equity 2030 with the goal to close all educational equity gaps at all 37 colleges and universities. Prioritizing partnerships across stakeholder groups and leading with an equity-minded strategy, the system has focused attention on academic equity strategies, target setting, and data-informed decision making to support this work. As capacity is an essential component in advancing equity strategy, this webinar will focus on the strategic efforts of the Office of Higher Education and Minnesota State to undertake this work.
