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…

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…

Capital appropriations are an important but often forgotten component of the public contribution to funding higher education. In fiscal year 2021, nearly $13 billion was appropriated for capital projects at public institutions, representing 11.6% of the total state contribution to higher education. When compared to general operating support and…

Performance funding policies for higher education allocate appropriations to public institutions based on student outcomes such as degree completions. This study investigates whether a special science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) incentive in 13 state performance funding policies leads to greater undergraduate degree…

Today higher education in the United States faces the challenges of increased demand and escalating cost in the face of stagnant graduation rates. Of particular interest to the public are tax payer supported postsecondary institutions. The traditional method of funding public colleges and universities based on enrollment has shifted in 32 states…

State fiscal support for higher education has met sluggish growth recently, a trend that has community college leaders working to meet student needs despite a shrinking resource pool. According to an annual report released in January by Grapevine, state financial aid for higher education increased just 1.6 percent between the 2017 and 2018 fiscal…

The State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report is produced annually by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) to broaden understanding of the context and consequences of public policy decisions in each state that contribute to public higher education funding levels and funding distributions across states and…

College students, staff, and faculty all across the country are demanding greater racial and socioeconomic justice in higher education, where longstanding inequities create barriers for students who are Black, Latino, or from low-income backgrounds to earn a postsecondary degree. In response, policymakers and higher education leaders have made…

Can an academic institution be truly free if it relies on government funding? Federal dollars mean federal mandates, and those mandates grow increasingly draconian. More and more, they stifle debate on open questions, demand denial of verifiable scientific truths, eliminate due process for students accused of misdeeds by other students, or insist…

This is the third paper on the topic of outcomes-based funding written by Dennis Jones for Complete College America. The first paper, "Performance Funding: From Idea to Action" (ED535356), proposed a set of design and implementation principles to help states develop and implement their own outcomes-based funding models. The second paper,…

On February 24, 2017, all of the authors of the state-of-the-state manuscripts published in the "Journal of Education Finance" met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on recent legislative actions in 38 states. A majority of those papers were revised to reflect a final report on legislative actions…

This hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions examines the role of states in higher education. Following opening statements by Honorable Tom Harkin (Chairman, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) and Honorable Lamar Alexander (U.S. Senator from the State of Tennessee), the following senators provide…

Presenters at the State of the States Roundtable session at the 2014 National Education Finance Conference in Louisville were invited to submit their papers for publication. These papers address the following topics: (1) State issues affecting P-12 and/or higher education funding; (2) Funding priorities/trends for P-12 and/or higher education; (3)…

In February 2015 a large group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in P-20 finance issues gathered in St. Louis, Missouri, for the National Education Finance Academy's annual conference, on February 25-27, 2015 to discuss, among multiple topics, the state of P-20 finance in all 50 states. There were 35 states represented in the…

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is turning the tide and calling colleges and universities to account. The ACTA is making significant progress in the campaign to make higher education accountable, affordable, and effective. ACTA's goal is for America to be again able to say our nation's higher education is the envy of the world.…