The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) seeks to improve student outcomes by promoting a variety of student success efforts. These efforts include direct programs with well-defined target populations and program participants, offering specific student support services following a program model, and indirect programs aimed at…

In recent decades, education leaders and researchers have increasingly sought to disaggregate key higher education outcome data--graduation rates, attainment, employment, and income--by race and ethnicity in order to uncover and narrow equity gaps. The same is true, recently, for affordability, especially as it relates to the differential impact…

To better understand the challenges and opportunities facing community colleges that want to expand apprenticeship opportunities to their students, New America conducted a year-long study. We created an advisory committee to guide this work and spoke to apprenticeship, workforce development, and community college leaders about the community…

While there has been disinvestment into higher education, there is also a significant disparity in state investment for certain types of public institutions, specifically for less-resourced institutions such as HBCUs (Williams, 2020). There is not much literature that examines the relationship of formula funding or state appropriations on…

Prior studies have documented the pattern of decreased state funding for higher education in periods of economic contraction (i.e., the balance wheel phenomenon). This qualitative case study examines how policymakers in California and Texas made decisions about funding higher education at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when policymakers faced…

A portion of state-allocated funding for Texas community colleges has been reserved for the completion of outcome metrics, also known as performance-based funding. Texas community college leaders are faced with the challenges of adapting to increasing pressures from performance-based funding, while also ensuing institutional missions and goals are…

The purpose of this historical study was to investigate how individuals articulated the call for the South Texas/Border Initiative, a legislative mandate that funneled unprecedented amounts of funding to underserved universities along the Texas-Mexico border region between 1987 and 2003. Utilizing archival sources, we conducted an analysis of the…

This is the technical appendix for the report "From Insights to Impact: Fostering Innovation through Texas" which examines the current national landscape of higher education research and development to help gauge Texas' current position and identify opportunities to drive further innovations into the future. This appendix includes the…

We examine the impact of the Texas Research Incentive Program (TRIP), a state policy that offers matching funds to incentivize private-sector donations to certain public universities. We use a national dataset and employ a generalized difference-in-differences approach with matching procedures to estimate the treatment effect of TRIP on revenues…

In order to assist higher education institutions and their students during the pandemic, the federal government established the Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) Fund, which directed over $75 billion to institutions of higher education--including nearly $25 billion to community colleges--over a three-year period. The U.S. Department of…

This dissertation includes three essays on the economics of higher education. In the first chapter, I study the effects of college transfer. Over one-third of college students in the United States transfer between institutions, yet little is known about how transferring affect students' educational and labor market outcomes. Using administrative…

Since the 1990's, the federal government has allocated funds to Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) to through the Title V, Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions program. However, this program has become increasingly competitive such that less than half (40 percent) of all eligible HSIs received Title V funds in 2020. The competitive nature of…

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research…

Higher education institutions play an essential role in Texas' global economic competitiveness. They provide the talent and innovation that gives the state its competitive edge. The COVID-19 vaccine, ethernet, plasma screens, and e-readers are just a few of the thousands of ideas that were born out of U.S. universities. These innovations have…

Policymakers in Texas want to understand the funding levels necessary for community colleges to meet their promise of providing an affordable and accessible pathway to a postsecondary certificate or degree. This study was conducted to help these policymakers better understand the extent to which Texas community colleges had adequate funding to…