"Varying Degrees 2021: New America's Fifth Annual Survey on Higher Educati­­on" interviewed 2,620 Americans ages 18 and older to better understand their perceptions of education after high school, including oversamples of Black, Latinx, Asian Americans, current undergraduate students, and student loan borrowers. It provides important…

Between the 2008-09 and 2016-17 school years, over 300 degree-granting higher education institutions in the United States have closed their doors. An overwhelming majority of these recently closed institutions are for-profit colleges, which often serve a population of disproportionately low-income students receiving Pell Grants and federal loans.…

"Varying Degrees" is New America's annual effort to gauge opinions about education after high school. In the four years since the publication of this survey, there has been an economic boom. This year, that boom came to an abrupt and tragic end. Unlike previous recessions, this one has been caused by a global pandemic, and it is unclear…

In spring 2020, New America and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) partnered on a year-long research project to understand the effect of the confluence of the pandemic, economic crisis, and racial reckoning on America's colleges and universities. We interviewed over 100 college leaders from across higher education…

Americans' opinions about higher education are complex. Understanding this complexity is important for learning how to talk about the value of educational pathways after high school and crafting thoughtful policy solutions to meet the needs of today's students. This is the reason we engage Americans every year, asking questions other surveys do…

After years of contesting that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was broken and that it forced them to identify too many schools, or the wrong schools, for improvement, over forty states have been granted waivers from the U.S. Department of Education. These waivers give them the flexibility to design new accountability and improvement schemes rather…

Around 30 percent of families across New York State now speak a language other than English at home, resulting in 240,000 English language learners (ELLs) in the state's primary and secondary schools who speak nearly 200 different languages. This report looks at New York State's redesign of policies and practices to better support the education of…