SHEEO Position Announcement in Boulder, Colorado

Postdoctoral Fellowship

Overview

SHEEO seeks to fill a postdoctoral fellowship. SHEEO is the national association of state higher education leaders who serve statewide coordinating and governing boards and other state higher education agencies. This position supports SHEEO’s efforts to perform high-quality analysis, policy evaluation and research; advance critical programs and projects; provide assistance to SHEEO members; advance SHEEO’s strategic vision; and contribute to the intellectual and knowledge base of the higher education policy field. SHEEO responds to the changing needs of its members and the state higher education community and regularly pursues new projects that meet our members’ needs and align with the mission of the organization. This position will identify and develop and work in these new areas. Additionally, this position will join all other SHEEO staff in general membership outreach and support.

SHEEO seeks and encourages diverse applicants. The ideal candidate for this position will be enthusiastic about state policy in higher education, have advanced research skills, have knowledge of or experience with SHEEO agencies, be conversant in a wide range of public policy issues in higher education, and understand how data can inform policy and practice. The successful candidate will use this enthusiasm, knowledge, and skills to inform our members and the community about current activities and future trends in public higher education for the purposes of advancing educational attainment, closing equity gaps, and benefiting our states.

The fellowship is fully funded for two years with the possibility of continuation depending upon interest, performance, and funding.

Education and Experience

An earned doctoral degree in a relevant field by the start date.

Required Skills and Attributes

• A passion for advancing educational and economic opportunity, diversity, equity, and social mobility
• Demonstrated ability to:
  • evaluate, interpret, and appropriately utilize relevant research
  • address equity gaps
  • think independently and creatively to develop and advance original ideas and projects which advance SHEEO’s mission
  • conduct research on educational, economic, public policy, social, or demographic trends
  • work independently
  • establish priorities and coordinate multiple projects
  • work cooperatively as part of a team
  • think strategically when solving simple and complex problems
  • produce relevant papers, reports, and presentations.
• Demonstrated ability or potential to successfully obtain outside funding for special projects
• Previous experience conducting education, social science, public policy, or other research
• Interest in higher education and state policy
• Knowledge of higher education data systems and external data resources such as IPEDS, NPSAS, U.S. Census Bureau
• Fluency in Microsoft Office Suite with specific skills in Excel
• Fluency in advanced research software (e.g., Stata, R, SPSS)
• Attention to detail
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

Salary

Salary will be commensurate with successful candidate’s experience and demonstrated skill level. SHEEO provides excellent staff benefits.

Application Process

1. Please apply by email to: dszczesny@sheeo.org and include the following:
2. Letter describing how you meet the requirements of the position, addressed to David Szczesny, SHEEO, 3035 Center Green Drive, Suite 100, Boulder, CO 80301
3. Curriculum vitae
4. Writing sample
5. Names and contact information of three academic or professional references (References will not be contacted until you have given permission for us to do so.)

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled, but full consideration will be given to those received by June 11, 2019.

About SHEEO

SHEEO serves its members as an advocate for state policy leadership, as a liaison between states and the federal government, as a vehicle for learning from and collaborating with peers, and as a source of information and analysis on educational and public policy issues. SHEEO seeks to advance public policies and educational practices to achieve more widespread access and successful participation in higher education, more new discoveries through research, and more applications of knowledge that improve the quality of human lives.

The position will be based in Boulder, Colorado. SHEEO is particularly interested in providing equal employment opportunities and employing a diverse staff. Read more about SHEEO on our website: www.sheeo.org.

Job Description PDF

Higher education is facing a host of challenges, including external questions regarding its value and purpose. These questions cut to the core of the states’ role in higher education. Traditionally, states have the responsibility to ensure that institutions of higher education are operating in the public interest and that the institutions are good stewards of their public resources. Central to this responsibility is the question of institutional and educational quality. Concerns regarding higher education quality and the states’ role in quality assurance and improvement motivated the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) and the National Association of System Heads (NASH) to partner with Lumina Foundation to investigate current state and system practices and to work toward recommendations for future action.

The partners explored current quality assurance and improvement practices, challenges, and limitations related to quality assurance and improvement at the state and system levels, and ideas for how current policies and practices might be improved, using a variety of data sources, including two in-person convenings of relevant stakeholders, a survey of state higher education agencies and system offices, and qualitative interviews.

Participants and respondents provided important insights into how states and systems might better engage in the question of quality and work to assure and improve quality in higher education. In that regard, we recommend the following:

• Arrive at widely agreed upon understandings of quality.
• Develop a greater understanding among all relevant actors of the state’s interest and role in educational quality.
• Identify best practices in quality assurance.
• Make program review and state authorization meaningful quality assurance processes.
• Treat equity as a quality consideration.
• Actively engage faculty and institutional leaders.
• Invest in data, tools, and people.
• Open lines of communication and real partnership between members of the triad.

SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — During its regularly scheduled meeting today, the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission (Commission) named Dr. Sarah Armstrong Tucker, Chancellor of the West Virginia Community and Technical College System (CTCS), as interim chancellor of the Commission.  This will be a dual role, and Tucker will continue as the chancellor of the CTCS.  She succeeds Carolyn Long who has served in the role since July 2018. Read more here.

Since 2010, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has periodically administered the Strong Foundations survey, which documents the content, structure, and effective use of state postsecondary student unit record systems (PSURSs). This report highlights the results of the fourth administration of the survey, conducted in 2018.

The most recent report highlights states’ abilities to calculate performance metrics, an examination of which educational sectors are covered by these systems, and an analysis of benchmark privacy and security practices.

Read the full Strong Foundations 2018 report here.

Testimony Provided to the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions

I have been asked to address the issue of accountability in higher education. Among its many obligations, government has one central role in society: The provision of the public good.

Higher education benefits society generally, and college graduates directly, in a multitude of ways. In those regards, the U.S. higher education system is performing exceptionally well.

However, that is not the complete story. Our higher education system also serves to regenerate existing wealth, status, and privilege. I am convinced that without appropriate government support and oversight, higher education will not, on its own, fully accomplish its mission of advancing the public good.

Primary factors driving the low average postsecondary education completion rate are the race- and income-based inequalities built into our system and the stratification and unequal distribution of resources apparent within and between our postsecondary institutions. These income- and race-based inequalities mean entire segments of our society are being kept out of higher education based on factors independent of desire and talent.

This case study provides an analysis of how well states have recovered from the Great Recession. We consider the depth of cuts in state funding, recovery of total educational revenues and the sources of that recovery, and changes in state financial aid.

Higher education finance data for Illinois continues to be an outlier in the 2018 SHEF report. This case study provides context behind the significant increases in Illinois’ state support and explains how the SHEF data handle Illinois’ lack of a budget in 2016 and 2017.

Higher education spending has struggled to recover to pre-recession levels. This case study explores some of the revenue and expenditure drivers that have led to this slow recovery.

The State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report examines the trends, context, and consequences of state higher education funding decisions in FY 2018.

CONTACT:
Annahita Jimmerson
ajimmerson@sheeo.org
(303)541-1602

BOULDER, Colorado — Despite the American economic outlook having improved considerably, state funding for higher education has only halfway recovered in the ten years since the Great Recession, a new report released today by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) finds. The 2018 State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report — an annual, nonpartisan analysis of educational appropriations, tuition revenue, and enrollment trends in all 50 states — also explores how students and families came to shoulder more responsibility for supporting public higher education as states attempted to rebound from the 2008 financial crisis.

This year’s SHEF report marks the culmination of a ten-year data set since the Great Recession and offers a comprehensive look at how states navigated complex funding environments and undertook efforts, where possible, to restore public investments in higher education as they recovered from a significant economic downturn.

“State leaders had to make tough decisions about how to finance their public systems of higher education as their economies weathered the Great Recession,” said Robert E. Anderson, president of SHEEO. “Many states used higher education as a balance wheel so they could preserve funding in other areas. But tighter purse strings also compelled state leaders to adopt new, innovative ways of thinking about higher education funding. This year’s SHEF report calls for us to consider the decisions states made on the path to recovery with an understanding that there is still significant work to be done to develop equitable higher education finance policies that produce the talent states need to compete in the 21^st century economy.”

In addition to providing a decade-long snapshot of states’ levels of investment in public higher education in the wake of the Great Recession, this year’s SHEF report also details year-over-year changes in measures such as state and local support for higher education, educational appropriations, net tuition revenue, total educational revenue and full-time equivalent enrollment (FTE). Report highlights include:

• Higher education funding is stabilizing: Nationally, state and local per-student support for higher education increased at roughly the rate of inflation from 2017 to 2018. This minimal growth follows a five-year period of annual funding increases greater than 2 percent, indicating that state appropriation recovery from the Great Recession has stabilized, albeit at a much lower level.

• A new norm for the student share of higher education funding has arrived: For the first time since the Great Recession, net tuition revenue remained flat in 2018, indicating that the growing reliance on net tuition as a revenue source — the student share — might be leveling. While tuition revenue measures more than just rate increases, flat tuition revenue may be a sign of the impacts of increasing pressure and attention on college affordability. However, the student share has increased significantly since before the Great Recession.

“This substantial shift of responsibility represents a significant change for American higher education,” said Anderson. “As the nation’s economy continues to stabilize, it’s clear that a heavy reliance on tuition revenue has become the new norm for how state higher education systems are funded.”

• There’s good news when it comes to financial aid: Unlike the rest of state higher education funding, states have increased their public financial aid consistently over time. In 2018, state financial aid saw the largest increase since the Great Recession. Financial aid now represents nearly 10 percent of all appropriations, and encouragingly, evidence shows that states largely protect this source of support during economic downturns.

• The decline in full-time enrollment shows signs of slowing down: Due largely to a recovering economy, fewer students continued to enroll in higher education than did so during the peak Recession years. However, there was little year-over-year change in this measure from 2017 to 2018, which — like trends in state and local appropriations and net tuition revenue — suggests stabilization in national enrollment levels.

“While these findings are crucial to understanding the broad strokes of national finance trends in higher education, it’s important to note that national trends mask considerable variation across the states,” said Sophia Laderman, senior policy analyst at SHEEO and an author of the 2018 SHEF report. “Although state funding for higher education has only halfway recovered nationally on a per-student level, some states have fully restored appropriations to prior levels, while others have increased tuition to fully offset the reduction in state funding, and a number have not recovered at all.”

“Each year, the SHEF report is a valuable resource to the entire higher education community,” said Glen D. Johnson, chancellor of the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education and chair of SHEEO’s Executive Committee. “This year’s report is no exception, as it provides important context about the financial landscape of our states and postsecondary institutions over the last 20 years. It is our hope that the SHEF report can assist state policy leaders as they make what we know to be difficult funding decisions.”

The 2018 SHEF report also features a series of case studies that explore higher education finance topics including state cost and budget drivers that influence the funding of higher education, and an ongoing look at state funding challenges in Illinois. Those interested in data for an individual state are encouraged to access the electronic version of the report, which includes numerous supplementary state-by-state data tables and interactive data visualizations, at SHEEO.org/shef.

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About the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO)

The State Higher Education Executive Officers is the national association of the chief executives of statewide governing, policy, and coordinating boards of postsecondary education. Founded in 1954, SHEEO serves its members as an advocate for state policy leadership, a liaison between states and the federal government, a vehicle for learning from and collaborating with peers, a manager of multistate teams to initiate new programs, and as a source of information and analysis on educational and public policy issues. SHEEO seeks to advance public policies and educational practices to achieve more widespread access to and completion of higher education, more discoveries through research, and more applications of knowledge that improve the quality of human lives and enhance the public good.

Through an increasing array of credentials – degrees, licenses, badges and apprenticeships – job seekers, students, and workers have more options than ever to help them get ahead, but a vast and complex credential marketplace to navigate. Many higher education leaders struggle to access and evaluate the data needed to ensure that institutional credentials are meeting state educational and economic goals. Join us to learn about how Credential Engine uses technology to bring transparency and credential literacy to the marketplace to provide reliable information needed to make better credentialing decisions and reveal credentialing and labor trends.

Through the webinar you will learn:

• The value of transparent credential data to your state efforts
• How you can make your credentials more transparent
• How Credential Engine can improve institutional ability to demonstrate value and ROI to students and employers
• How the Credential Registry and Finder help you stay abreast of credential trends
• What Credential Engine can do to help ensure your programs and graduates are prepared for the future of work

Host

SHEEO

Denise Pearson, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Equity Initiatives

Presenters

Indiana Commission for Higher Education

Ken Sauer, Senior Associate Commissioner and Chief Academic Officer

Jillian Scholten, Director of Academic Affairs and Talent Credentialing

Kansas Board of Regents

Blake Flanders, President & CEO

Cynthia Farrier, Director of Data Research and Planning

Matt Keith, Director of Communications

Credential Engine

Scarlett Jeckel, Administration Coordinator