Higher education finance is generally considered “inside baseball”—not just to students, families, and taxpayers, but often to college faculty and staff as well. Increased transparency on institutional expenses, revenues, prices, and educational outcomes can lead to greater affordability, quality, and public accountability. And more granular data can drive more meaningful and actionable conversations about practices that facilitate educational quality and student success while also holding down costs for student and family consumers.
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Public policies should facilitate making relevant data about revenues, spending, and student outcomes—especially at the program-level—more accessible to stakeholders.

We support public policies that can serve as the catalyst for the widespread adoption of more strategic institutional finance practices such as smarter pricing and smarter spending.

More strategic funding policies can serve as a catalyst for institutional transformation and create urgency for changes in institutional practice that lead to improved educational quality and student success while lowering out-of-pocket costs for students and families.

Public policies should ensure adequate and predictable funding for public colleges and universities that is aligned with a broader access, affordability, and success agenda championed by political leadership.

Students, families, and taxpayers foot the bill for the skyrocketing price of college, but they rarely have a seat at the decision-making table. Consumers should be a powerful voice in decisions made by policymakers and institutional leaders that directly affect their bank accounts. They deserve better information about their investment in higher education so they can hold policymakers and institutional leaders more accountable.

Public policies should ensure that students, families, and taxpayers have ways to engage meaningfully with policymakers and institutional leaders on issues related to college affordability, including tuition and fee-setting processes.

Governing boards of public colleges and universities are in a unique position to make decisions that have direct and significant impacts on students and families. Regard less of whether board members are appointed or elected, we envision a framework for empowered and accountable governing boards at public colleges and universities to help increase affordability, educational quality, and student success. The pillars of this framework include strong institutional oversight, democratization of information, transparency, and responsiveness to consumers and the public.

Public policies should ensure that governing boards of public colleges and universities have the resources they need to make more informed decisions about college affordability. In addition, public policies should establish meaningful mechanisms to ensure that governing boards are serving the interests of students, families, and taxpayers.

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Many states have adopted policies that mandate or create an environment for colleges and universities to develop more seamless pathways between institutions and ensure that students complete their desired credentials on time and with little to no debt, including short-term and stackable credentials and online learning options.

Public policies should make it easier for students to pursue and complete an affordable, quality education across our diverse set of public colleges and universities.

Our public colleges and universities are incubators of innovation. In many states, public institutions have developed innovative ways to increase affordability, educational quality, and student such as through smarter integration of technology, online learning, and greater use of open educational resources.

Public policies should spur innovation in institutional operations and increase institutional effectiveness, efficiency, and quality while reducing the cost of providing an education.