This report concerns actions taken by the administration of Collin College to terminate the services of Professors Lora Burnett, Suzanne Jones, and Michael Phillips. The investigating committee found that the administration's actions involved "egregious violations" of all three faculty members' academic freedom to speak as citizens and…

This memo estimates the cost of two possible program designs for a statewide college scholarship program for the State of Illinois. These assumptions and associated cost estimates, once approved or revised, will form the basis for the next stage of this project, which is assessing the economic impact of tuition-free college in Illinois. [This…

Community colleges across the country are plagued with tight budgets--caused in part by state disinvestment and chronic federal underfunding. For rural community colleges, these challenges are even more acute, as their needs are greater and the costs of providing services higher. The COVID-19 pandemic has only deepened the prosperity gap between…

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) Statewide Survey delivers objective, advocacy-free information on the perceptions, opinions, and public policy preferences of California residents. PPIC invites input, comments, and suggestions from policy and public opinion experts and from its own advisory committee, but survey methods, questions,…

A level of consistency between community college leaders and community leaders is necessary to demonstrate behaviors, actions, and beliefs that shape, represent, and support expected community values. Likewise, communities, which are collectives of suborganizations, play an important role in aiding individual development, especially related to…

This report expands on previous analyses to describe the skills needed to fill infrastructure occupations nationally. More than 14.5 million workers--or 11 percent of the entire U.S. workforce--are employed in infrastructure-related activities, many of which operate different physical assets and extend far beyond construction projects. In turn, a…

Driven by economic and educational imperatives, public policymakers, higher education leaders, and philanthropic and advocacy groups are mobilizing aggressive national and state campaigns to bolster college completion. Campaigns to improve student success are particularly concerned about the performance of the nation's community colleges. In…

Driven by economic and educational imperatives, public policymakers, higher education leaders, and philanthropic and advocacy groups are mobilizing aggressive national and state campaigns to bolster college completion. Campaigns to improve student success are particularly concerned about the performance of the nation's community colleges. In…

In 2010, the College Board's Advocacy & Policy Center, with financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, initiated a project to identify ways of improving the efficiency of the transfer pathway, a century-old mechanism that provides community college students with an opportunity to earn the baccalaureate degree at four-year…

"National CrossTalk" is a publication of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. The National Center promotes public policies that enhance opportunities for quality education and training beyond high school. The primary purpose of "National CrossTalk" is to stimulate informed discussion and debate of higher…

In order to understand whether loans actually expand opportunities among community college students, it is important to understand who is borrowing and who is not. A binary logistic regression was used to determine which financially needy students are likely to borrow from federal loan programs. The current study found that the following types of…

This guide is based on a study funded by Lumina Foundation for Education and conducted by Hezel Associates and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE). Designed to aid policymakers and others, this report takes a state-by-state look at practices related to transfer and articulation between two- and four-year public…

This paper explores the impact of recent economic volatility on higher education and discusses the lessons learned and the strategies for the future. The author believes that America's higher education is in danger, but has an extraordinary opportunity. Several reports point to the country's lagging behind other advanced countries in educational…

In nearly two decades as a community-college leader, Martha J. Kanter has earned acclaim for a strong record helping disabled and low-income students graduate from college and for her bold efforts to overhaul curricula to help more students master basic skills. After working for more than 30 years at nearly every level of the California community…

Performance funding in higher education ties state funding directly to institutional performance on specific indicators, such as rates of retention, graduation, and job placement. One of the great puzzles about performance funding is that it has been both popular and unstable. Between 1979 and 2007, 26 states enacted it, but 14 of those states…