America's diverse higher education landscape includes more than 700 four-year nonprofit colleges and universities that focus on baccalaureate education. These private nondoctoral (PND) institutions are located in almost every state and collectively enroll about 1.6 million students and award nearly 150,000 degrees annually, with the majority of these being bachelor's degrees. This report shows that these independent colleges and universities are effective and efficient academic enterprises and, as such, are a valuable resource to the states in which they are located, as well as to the nation. In the first section of this report, the authors document just how effective and efficient these colleges and universities are, drawing on research they conducted for an earlier published report, "The Cost-Effectiveness of Undergraduate Education at Private Nondoctoral Colleges and Universities: Implications for Students and Public Policy" (Zumeta and Huntington-Klein 2015; see ED569209). They then consider whether states could make better use of the capacity of these colleges and universities in their quest to increase bachelor's degree production during an era of constrained taxpayer funding. [This report was prepared as a component of the Council of Independent Colleges' (CIC) "Securing America's Future initiative."]