The Powered by Publics Equity Roundtables: A Guide for Universities Report was informed by the experience of four equity roundtables held last year that convened administrators and students from 20 public universities. This how-to-guide provides institutions with an adaptable resource for hosting equity roundtables of their own to engage students and administrators in addressing barriers to equitable student success.

The University Innovation Alliance's playbook for Bridging the Gap from Education to Employment offers a detailed roadmap for creating a seamless college-to-career transition. This new paradigm takes a holistic approach to career preparation—building deeper relationships with employers and providing better resources to students from first generation or low income households, and students of color.

More than 30 organizations working in postsecondary education announced the launch of the Higher Education Equity Network. The national organizations, which have decades of experience in the areas of research, policy, advocacy, and effective practices, will collectively draw from their respective areas of expertise to work on eliminating systemic barriers to help Black, Latin/a/o/x, and Indigenous students reach their full potential while pursuing higher education. 

The Student Success Institute (SSI) for Provosts is a leadership development program tailored to the distinctive needs of established provosts. SSI will help provosts with at least one year of experience in the role to lead and implement the type of transformational change necessary to meet the evolving needs of today’s increasingly diverse student body.

The Transfer Intensive is a one-year initiative consisting of monthly sessions designed to support partnerships between community colleges and AASCU members in advancing the practices and policies associated with improved, more equitable transfer student success. The workshop series will provide practical support aimed at accelerating transfer reform over the course of the year at participating institutions. The program is free for all participants thanks to the generous support of Ascendium.

The Growing What Works Database is online and searchable. It is a resource for practitioners, institutional leaders, funders, and policymakers interested in evidence-based practices that accelerate Latino student success in higher education. The database is made up of over 200 active programs initially recognized through our Examples of Excelencia review process.

Since 2005, Examples of Excelencia has been the only national effort recognizing evidence-based programs improving Latino student success in higher education. This year an external selection committee selected 4 programs among our 20 Finalists that stand out for their evidence-based efforts to advance Latino student success in higher education. These programs are based across four levels: Associate, Baccalaureate, Graduate, and Community-Based Organizations. The four programs are leaders in intentionally serving Latino students in culturally responsive, asset-based ways that positively impacts students and their communities.

Every Learner Everywhere developed a report on how barriers to equity in digital learning differ across racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds.

Transfer policies and articulation agreements aim to provide seamless transitions between and across technical or community colleges and four-year institutions. Clear and accessible transfer pathways can support increased student persistence and completion rates, particularly for highly mobile students who may transfer between multiple institutions before degree completion. While many articulation agreements exist at the institution- or system-level, states are increasingly setting statewide credit transfer requirements, ensuring all students enter their postsecondary career with similar understandings of — and options for — success. 

Beyond Good Intentions provides action steps and tips for states to craft equity-driven policies that will lead to transformational change at colleges and universities as well as support state goals. It builds on findings from Race-Conscious Implementation of a Developmental Education Reform in California Community Colleges, a companion report by the University of Southern California (USC) Race and Equity Center.

No Middle Ground helps colleges assess their practices so they can find ways to improve—to identify inequities, address them, and bring everyone at the college into this essential work. Colleges must be bold to do this work effectively because every action either advances the cause of equity or further entrenches inequities. There is no middle ground.

In this framework, we focus closely on the persistent challenges that many Black Americans experience throughout their education and working lives, starting as young teenagers first exploring job opportunities and continuing as adults seeking careers that can propel them to the middle class. Through research, analysis, interviews with Black learners and workers, and guidance from our advisory council of Black leaders, we have developed recommendations to promote the economic advancement of Black Americans today and in the ever-changing economy of the future.  

This article & database finds that the economic value of business programs is high compared to the financial returns from other programs, though not as high as returns associated with health, engineering, and computer and information sciences programs. Two years after graduation, associate’s degree holders in business have median annual earnings of $30,000 after debt payments. The financial returns from a business degree rise to $43,200 after debt payments for bachelor’s degree holders and $51,600 for master’s degree holders.

Careers in technology can open doors to economic opportunity for Black learners and workers. Our market scan identifies innovative career preparation, technology training, and advancement programs and platforms that offer a unique combination of best practices for building pathways to and advancement within tech jobs, including tailored supports and a commitment to transforming the systems in which we all learn and work.

Degrees When Due (DWD) is a completion and equity initiative led by the Institute for Higher Education Policy to help states and colleges increase degree attainment among the “some college, but no degree” population. Launched in 2018, nearly 200 institutions in 23 states have joined the first three cohorts of DWD to build expertise, capacity, and infrastructure on campuses to get students back on track and across the completion finish line. This case study about BGSU, offers insights into how, even with limited resources amidst a global pandemic, an institution of higher education can integrate a data-informed degree completion effort.

This tool is an interactive resource that captures students’ post-college earnings for more than 4,000 colleges and universities nationwide. The Explorer provides results for institutions according to earnings thresholds developed by the commission and offers the ability to view outcomes for different student populations.

The Postsecondary Value Commission has tapped newly available data and insights to propose a new approach for measuring the value of education after high school and to recommend actions that college and university leaders, state and federal policymakers, and students and families can take to improve those returns and make them more equitable.

Complete College America, a Higher Ed Equity Network member organization, launches a new report that outlines a decade of data on the effectiveness of coreq as well as new insights on how to implement and scale.

Postsecondary education has the potential to transform lives by providing economic and non-economic benefits to students, their families, communities, the workforce, and ultimately the entire world—but only if the policies that shape that system are themselves equitable. To support more inclusive and deliberate policymaking processes at every level of government and within institutions of higher education, IHEP convened an Advisory Committee for Equitable Policymaking Processes and, on the one-year anniversary of Executive Order 13985, released “Opening The Promise:” The Five Principles of Equitable Policymaking.  This report sets forth an actionable framework informed by insights from more than two dozen experts across the field of higher education. The framework’s five interrelated principles are designed to inform every aspect of the policymaking process, from the creation of new policy and amending of existing policy, to determining priorities and setting the course of action for a policymaking body.

This paper distills some of the key research findings in these four focus areas: campus culture, academic advising and student support, financial aid, and institutional policy. This paper then provides concrete strategies that institutions and their intermediary partners can use to further their work toward institutional transformation in support of equitable outcomes for historically excluded students.

This report provides an update on California’s progress and persistent challenges related to admissions to the UC and CSU. While there is good news in this report, especially related to growing preparation for the university and growing student diversity in admissions, there are still many concerns preventing California from realizing a goal of equitable access to college for all Californians regardless of their income, race/ethnicity, or Zip Code.

Latinos for Education celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month by hosting the first annual State of Latino Education Convening from October 5th - 7th. This year’s theme was Reclaiming the Promise of Educational Equity.  

Across the three days, nearly 900 attendees engaged with established and emerging Latino leaders around the policies, practices and advocacy efforts to remove barriers for Latino students and families both nationally and locally. We celebrated education champions and Latino educators for their continued contributions to supporting our communities.  

We thank the featured speakers, panelists, award recipients, attendees, and event sponsors for your involvement this year. We invite you to relive the event and stay connected with our work. 

On September 10, 2021, IHEP hosted the Supporting Our Shared Success briefing to highlight the need for a #CollegeCompletionFund (CCF). The CCF is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promote completion in a thoughtful, evidence-based, equity-centered, student-focused, innovative, and comprehensive way, and – alongside investments in college affordability and in critical institutions – to address longstanding inequities in college access and success.

While the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act plays a role in workforce development, state policymakers actively seek ways beyond WIOA requirements to connect education with workforce development. This resource provides an overview of education’s role within state workforce development systems, processes for identifying high-demand occupations and workforce development appropriations.

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) analyzed data from five higher education institutions to examine accessibility for all students. This brief describes a sample data inquiry that can help institutions identify inequities. The brief also provides guiding questions to assist campuses in facilitating discussions about policies and programs to improve equity and promote social mobility.

Countless students would agree: transfer does not work. Despite sustained efforts to “fix” transfer over the past several decades, the current system continues to produce dismal, inequitable outcomes and unnecessary roadblocks that thwart students’ educational goals.

To challenge the status quo, the Tackling Transfer Policy Advisory Board released a set of strong and clear recommendations for systems change, with an emphasis on state, system and federal policies, that dismantle inequitable transfer policies and build a new approach designed to center students and the recognition of their learning as they transfer across institutions and move through their varied lived, work and learning experiences beyond high school.

Selective Bias: Asian Americans, Test Scores, and Holistic Admissions evaluates the common arguments made by affirmative action critics and Students for Fair Admissions, which is suing Harvard University and has lawsuits pending against the University of North Carolina and the University of Texas at Austin over their admissions practices. The report finds no strong evidence of discrimination against Asian American applicants in admissions to highly selective colleges.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the highest unemployment that the U.S. has seen since the Great Depression, with particularly heavy job losses for Black, Hispanic, and Native American1 workers. In this set of studies commissioned by Lumina Foundation, the Community College Research Center (CCRC) explores some actions that states and community colleges can take to address the needs of racially minoritized adult learners who are pursuing postsecondary education and training as a path to re-employment, better jobs, and higher incomes.

The action agenda is a key deliverable for the Postsecondary Value Commission that outlines policies and practices that institutional leaders, federal policymakers, and state policymakers should implement to address systemic barriers that prevent Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and AAPI students, students from low-income backgrounds, and women from reaping equitable returns from postsecondary education and achieving economic and social mobility. The action agenda also provides key questions that students and families should expect institutions to answer related to postsecondary value. 

The Postsecondary Value Commission has examined how postsecondary education fosters equitable access to critical post-college outcomes, including sufficient earnings, high-quality jobs, and economic mobility and security. Expanding on recent research about how to measure earnings returns, the Postsecondary Value Framework aims to ensure that colleges and universities are serving as engines of mobility, especially for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and underrepresented Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students, students from low-income backgrounds, and women. The following pages detail the Postsecondary Value Commission’s work to capture and operationalize this sentiment. As postsecondary education strives to meet the urgency of this incredible moment, we see great potential for this work to create a more equitable and just future. 

Based on research from the Postsecondary Value Commission, this interactive data tool puts the power of the Value Framework at your fingertips, equipping you with data on the economic value that institutions deliver to their students.

This set of policy briefs and fact sheets is intended to inform the work of advocates and policymakers, particularly at the federal level, as they craft policies on rebuilding the workforce, supporting community colleges, improving graduation and transfer rates, addressing student debt, and more.

VentureWell is on a mission to cultivate a diverse pipeline of inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges and create lasting impact. We have a long history of—and deep commitment to—supporting faculty and innovators at US-based colleges and universities through funding, training, and building a vital I&E community where collaboration is encouraged and ideas and best practices are shared. We invite you to explore the resources, tools, and opportunities we have assembled to help you advance equity at your institution and in your program.

Building on NASPA’s role as a leading advocate for public policy in support of students and the student affairs profession, and reflecting the Association’s continuing effort to develop members’ professional competencies to engage effectively in public policy conversations, NASPA’s Public Policy Division presents the following agenda to guide member and staff public policy advocacy, professional development, and engagement for 2021 through 2024. Framed according to the 2019-2024 NASPA Strategic Plan, the NASPA Public Policy Agenda is designed to provide flexibility in responding to enduring and emerging policy issues.

Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce’s new report finds that there is still far from equitable representation in the engineering profession. Engineering pays well, but Black and Latinx engineers earn less than the average. Additionally, women’s representation has only increased by 1% in the last ten years.

NASPA's Public Policy Division was established to support the association' strategic goals and objectives to provide leadership in higher education through policy development and advocacy for students on important national issues. Major responsibilities include formulating a policy agenda for the association, developing responses to policy proposals, and helping to provide members with information concerning relevant legal, legislative, and other public policy topics.

The RGV FOCUS collective impact initiative was launched in 2012 in collaboration with Educate Texas to improve college readiness, access and success in the Rio Grande Valley counties of Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy. The vision of RGV FOCUS is to help all learners to achieve a degree or credential that leads to a meaningful career in one of the many industries of opportunity in the Rio Grande Valley, such as education, health services, or advanced manufacturing.

Stay up-to-date about the latest insights in developmental education reform with the research and resources from our Network. Search by topic to find materials to help you put reforms into action.

Preparing students for the world beyond high school is critical to the economic future of our nation. In the state of Texas, historically underserved students comprise the majority of our total student population. To close opportunity gaps and equalize access to high-quality education, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) created the Texas College and Career Readiness School Models (CCRSM) Network. This network, led by the TEA, brings together proven models under a single umbrella of support. Each model offers a unique pathway to postsecondary education while ensuring all students have the opportunity to achieve their highest potential. 

Complete College America (CCA) is committed to being a bold voice in the higher education space elevating critical conversations that both actively and passively impact college completion. We find ourselves at a time when the need for these conversations has reached a heightened level of importance. As a convener of thought leaders, CCA's On the Air podcast provides access to the most innovative and effective higher education leaders and advocates through candid conversations.

ATD advises colleges on building guided pathways that ensure all students can find — and stay on — a clear path to college completion and a career of value. More than 300 colleges nationwide use pathways as the organizing framework for their student success work. Pathways provide an intentionally structured design to support student progression from the time a student expresses an interest in college through the completion of a valuable credential and participation in the labor market, either directly or after completing additional credentials and/or training. Achieving the Dream leverages research and best practice in the field, combined with expertise in coaching, to advise colleges on building and implementing guided pathways for student success.

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) presents its 2020 Public Policy Agenda, which underscores the most compelling policy issues affecting regional comprehensive universities and promotes policies that help our institutions fulfill their unique role in educating America’s workforce and strengthening communities. Each issue has implications at the state, federal or both levels of policy and law. Accordingly, we provide our state and federal policymakers with specific actions to take going forward.

The Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative is a research and capacity-building center that aims to study and improve how faculty lead and manage online courses to support student success. Specifically, the Center is investigating how faculty can adapt their teaching and use technology features to help students apply and strengthen a set of mindsets and strategies—such as their sense of belonging and self-efficacy, as well as help-seeking and self-evaluation—broadly known as self-directed learning skills.

 Explore the ideas, tools, and resources provided by the Dana Center and our fellow joyful conspirators to help make the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) vision a reality.

All of the Dana Center Math Pathways course materials are available to faculty and curricular leaders at K-12 and postsecondary institutions for free download. Request access to explore and download materials from the courses.

Nationally, Latino student enrollment and degree completion continues to increase. However, to reach the Latino degree attainment goal of 6.2 million degrees by 2030 requires a tactical plan for Latino college completion. This plan should include: closing equity gaps in degree completion, and accelerating, not just increasing, Latinos’ degree attainment.

CAPR researches, evaluates, and disseminates information on reforms to developmental education that are taking hold at open-access colleges around the U.S..

Supporting students holistically involves designing student-centered operations that address the academic and personal needs of all students to ensure they can thrive. The HSS team offers a one-year coaching engagement where we partner with you to design, plan, implement, and assess an equity-focused, student-centered support model. Participating colleges benefit from dedicated coaching and an ongoing partnership with ATD’s subject matter experts, who bring nearly two decades of experience and knowledge from the field and a strong commitment to building equity-centered institutional capacity. These expert coaches help colleges understand their student population, assess the impact of their current design, and redesign a holistic and equitable student experience.

Truly serving your students means no one gets lost in the shuffle — or the numbers. ATD takes a deep dive into how your people, processes, and systems use data and technology to build and refine strategies for student success. This assessment includes:

- Review of data used to support student success
- Inventory of technology infrastructure that supports collection and dissemination of student success data
- Discussions with faculty, staff, and administrators to understand current processes, systems, and use of data throughout the institution
- Identification of unmet data needs
- Benchmarking against high-impact practices in the higher education field
- Identification of opportunities for professional development
- Report and discussion of key findings and recommendations

Colleges must dismantle structures and attitudes that fuel inequities. ATD's customized support gives you the insights, skills, and transformational strategies needed to drive equitable student outcomes.

The new VSA Analytics is a robust, interactive, and user-friendly platform for colleges and universities to compare and analyze key performance metrics across institutions. VSA Analytics allows users to build custom analytical and graphical reports with a custom platform in just minutes and eliminates the need to spend days searching, downloading, integrating and analyzing data. Subscribers can add as many campus users as they would like and download the entire custom dataset. 

Philanthropy Advocates, a collaboration with Educate Texas, is a diverse funders’ collaborative of over 50 private, corporate, and community foundations and United Ways. Formerly called the Texas Education Grantmakers Advocacy Consortium (TEGAC), the initiative was created in 2012 to unify grantmakers around a multi-year effort to build support for and improvement in public and higher education in Texas in response to the historic cuts made to public education by the Texas legislature during the 2011 session. In 2019, Philanthropy Advocates joined forces with Educate Texas, a trusted change agent in education, to better advocate together on behalf of our state’s 7 million students.

The Mathematics Pathways to Completion (MPC) is a major effort to support six states to move from a broad vision for mathematics pathways to institutional implementation of the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) model over three years. The goal is to establish effective mathematics pathways at scale that will dramatically increase student success, modernize entry-level mathematics programs across 2– and 4–year public institutions of higher education, and improve alignment with K­–12 mathematics.

APLU and its member universities are ensuring transfer student success.  Public research universities are innovating to strengthen pathways for students to easily and efficiently transfer between institutions. For many students, far too many credits are lost during the transfer process, slowing their progress toward a degree.

The Dana Center and Complete College America (CCA) jointly launched Building Math Pathways to Programs of Study in 2014 as the first initiative in the country to support multiple states to implement mathematics pathways. Six states from the CCA Alliance of States were selected through a competitive application process to receive technical assistance from the Dana Center and CCA over two years.  Each state convened mathematics faculty leaders from 2- and 4-year institutions to work with policy representatives through a state-level math task force to establish a vision for math pathways in that state. After publishing recommendations, the task force leaders oversaw activities to support implementation.

The Student Achievement Measure (SAM) is a comprehensive measure of student progress and completion that reports outcomes for full-time, part-time and transfer students. Created in 2013 by a coalition of six higher education associations, SAM is a voluntary alternative to the federal graduation rate, which is limited to capturing full-time students who graduate from the first institution in which they enroll. Data for SAM come from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization that compiles and analyzes student-level enrollment and completion data from over 3,600 US colleges and universities. Currently, nearly 600 institutions participate in SAM, including over 275 AASCU institutions.  For more information, please visit www.studentachievementmeasure.org.