A Lumina Foundation-financed project meant to make higher education more accessible and affordable today unveiled both a grant program and a report encouraging states to find cost-effective ways for their colleges to graduate more students.
Representatives of the project, called Making Opportunity Affordable, announced in Washington that it would be offering grants of up to $100,000 to up to 10 states to support their development of five-year plans to make their higher-education systems more productive. Up to five of the states will then be awarded grants and technical assistance — worth up to $500,000 annually for five years — to carry out their plans.
Ideas about the kinds of steps colleges might take were suggested today in a new report, paid for by Lumina and prepared by two prominent nonprofit higher-education advisory groups, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. The report, “Good Policy, Good Practice,” argues that the nation must produce many more college graduates if it is to remain economically competitive. The report outlines a long list of policies and practices that can help state higher-education systems serve more students in a cost-effective manner.
Among its key suggestions, the report says states need to do more to ensure that students graduate high school prepared for college-level work, streamline the educational process to encourage students to move through it quicker, and support institutions that focus on providing high-quality, cost-effective undergraduate education.
The report says states can help bring about such changes by linking appropriations to colleges’ productivity, overhauling tuition policies to discourage students from lingering in college, adopting student-aid policies that reward high-school students for taking college-preparatory courses, and publishing reports that hold colleges accountable for their performance.
Changes in higher-education governance should be regarded as a last resort, the report argues. —Peter Schmidt
