State Policy Reviews
The purpose of the reviews is to better understand these policies and equip policymakers with new data and analyses from which to make more informed decisions.
The reviews look at a number of critical performance areas, including:
- Preparation for higher education
- Participation in postsecondary education
- Completion of certificates and awards
- Affordability for students and families
- Research productivity
Understanding these issues is a critical step towards identifying how to improve higher education performance within a particular state and subsequently realize the level of degree production required to compete in a global economy. The policy reviews improve our understanding of how states can improve degree attainment in the context of fiscal, demographic, and other challenges.
"Faultlines" Shaping Higher Education Policy and Opportunity in California, 2021
The report from Penn GSE’s Joni Finney; lead author Taylor K. Odle, a Penn GSE doctoral student; and a team of researchers, is based on primary and secondary data, including interviews with 16 policymakers, education policy leaders, and researchers inside and outside California. The authors define three major faultlines that result from California’s changing demographic, economic, geographic, political, and social contexts. These faultlines are:
- Persistent disparities by race, socioeconomic status, and geography that combine to sharply limit individual educational and economic opportunity for many within the state.
- Fragmentation, or lack of alignment and synchronicity in policy-related phenomenon and structures that comprise the statewide approach to postsecondary education.
- Volatility, or extreme variations and unpredictability in state and local funding for higher education, has impacts that extend into institutional resource allocation and family budgets.
Executive Summary
"Faultlines" Shaping Higher Education Policy and Opportunity in California: Executive Summary
Full Report
"Faultlines" Shaping Higher Education Policy and Opportunity in California
California Case Study 2014
In 2013-14, Finney along with three of her graduate students developed a project to understand the relationship between public policy and state performance in California. California’s outsized influence on higher education makes it worthy of continued research.
As pioneered by the 1960 Master Plan, California’s public system of higher education was the envy of the nation for over 30 years. Its three-part system—consisting of California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU), and the prestigious University of California (UC)—was designed to ensure college access for all Californians as well as to promote excellence in research.
But California’s public education system has not kept pace with economic changes. Only 38.8% of adults over 25 years of age had an associate’s degree or higher in 2012, placing California 23rd in the nation in degree attainment. Deep cuts in state funding and the lack of a long-term, viable finance policy for higher education, as well as political indifference about higher education policy, have forced California’s public colleges and universities to reduce enrollment, staff, faculty, and student services while increasing tuition and fees.
If current trends continue, the state will experience severe shortfalls in the number of people with the workforce certificates and degrees needed to ensure prosperity and social mobility for the majority of Californians.
Executive Summary
From Master Plan to Mediocrity: Higher Education Performance & Policy in California
Full Report
From Master Plan to Mediocrity: Higher Education Performance & Policy in California
Tennessee Case Study 2017
A new independent report from Joni Finney of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) details how Tennessee has targeted K–12 achievement and college affordability and access in an effort to make significant advances in postsecondary degree and certificate attainment.
“Driven to Perform: Tennessee’s Higher Education Policies and Outcomes” highlights Tennessee as a national exemplar of the coordinated policymaking necessary to move the needle on statewide higher education attainment.
The report, issued by Penn GSE’s Institute for Research on Higher Education (IRHE), marks the state’s successes while noting that there is much more to be done. The case study authors would like to recognize the contributions of Jennifer Benson, Jessica Fry, Breanne Klinger, Joshua Mauro and Richard Scruggs on an earlier version of the case study.
Executive Summary
Driven to Perform: Tennessee’s Higher Education Policies & Outcomes
Full Report
Driven to Perform: Tennessee’s Higher Education Policies
National Report 2014
As the need for a highly knowledgeable citizenry grows, fewer Americans are accessing training and education beyond high school. The failure to attain postsecondary degrees and workforce certificates is particularly pervasive among low-income and minority populations. An undereducated citizenry leaves the country at a competitive disadvantage, diminishes the middle class, and lowers the standard of living for more and more people. Although the federal government plays an important role in higher education, states bear the primary responsibility for developing their own public higher education systems, including policies for funding and governing higher education and for connecting higher education with public schools.
Findings and Recommendations
- Make equity a top priority. The growing gaps in educational opportunity and attainment are one of the most serious issues facing higher education. No state can successfully meet their higher education challenges without creating a level playing field for low-income, minority, and first-generation college students.
- Develop political consensus. States must develop political consensus for clear goals related to educational opportunity and attainment, as well as mechanisms to monitor and implement policies to achieve those goals.
- Work on all areas of performance simultaneously. Disconnected efforts, such as a singular focus on college completion, are far less effective, compared to working on all higher education performance areas at once, including college preparation and affordability.
- Create clear pathways to certificates and degrees. Greater state policy attention is required to ensure that high school students are prepared to academically succeed in postsecondary education, and to provide easy transfer for students from two-year to four-year institutions without losing credits.
- Match educational institutions and providers with regional education needs. Failure to provide the right mix of institutions or programs matched to student needs compromises goals for educational attainment.
- Focus on building incentives into state budget and linking finance policies. States must develop comprehensive higher education finance policies that offer incentives to institutions to increase institutional productivity, invest in student financial aid, and link tuition to the income of the population to be served.
Full Report
Renewing the Promise: State Policies to Improve Higher Education Performance
Other state reports including Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Texas and Washington can be found in Attainment Agenda.
International Case Studies
Ireland
The study of Ireland, directed by Finney with co-instructor Laura Perna, led a cohort of executive doctoral students in the summer of 2012 to examine how well Ireland performed in higher education in terms of preparing students for postsecondary education, their participation and completion in higher education as well as how Ireland performed in research competitiveness.
IRHE published a report on the Ireland project and an article in Change: The Magazine for Higher Learning.
Report
Éire Higher Education: What America Can Learn from Ireland
Kazakhstan
At the request of the Minister of Education in Kazakhstan, Finney was asked to develop an international team to review performance in higher education and make recommendations to the Minister of Education in Kazakhstan about steps that could be taken in the near future that would support reform. The project, “Roadmap for the Development of Reform in Education” resulted in a national report and presentation to the Prime Minister and Minister of Education in Kazakhstan.