What is Making Opportunity Affordable?

Making Opportunity Affordable: Reinvesting in College Access and Success is the second phase of a multi-year initiative supported by Lumina Foundation for Education. The mission of the initiative is to promote and support a productivity agenda for American higher education. The agenda has four core objectives:

• Increasing the percentage of college-educated adults;
• Containing costs and strategically investing resources
• Strengthening institutional and system capacity to serve larger and more diverse student populations; and
• Improving student learning.

Why is the Foundation shepherding this initiative?

The nation’s ability to remain internationally competitive, meet workforce needs, and provide educational opportunity for all of its citizens is being threatened by the convergence of three trends:

Stagnant Educational Attainment and Unequal Opportunity. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. has slipped from first to tenth among industrialized nations in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a postsecondary degree, and is tied for last among industrialized nations in the percentage of entering students completing degree programs.

At the same time, disparities in educational attainment persist across racial and ethnic groups, even as the nation’s population becomes more diverse.  The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 42 percent of whites age 25-64 have an associate’s degree or higher, compared with 26 percent of African Americans and 18 percent of Hispanics.

Financial Stress.  The system for financing American higher education is nearing a breaking point.  Colleges and universities have historically depended on annual increases in revenue at rates that outstrip inflation or increases in family income.  When public funds do not grow enough to meet institutional expectations for growth, institutions turn to student tuition to make up the difference, resulting in more financial stress for students and for families.  Research shows that spending pressures are made even worse because of institutional competition for prestige, which is pushing up spending fastest among the most selective institutions.  As a result, a system of “haves” and “have nots” is emerging—both in terms of institutions and the students they serve.

Warning Signs on Leaning. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) revealed that between 1992 and 2003, average document and prose literacy levels for college graduates declined, while quantitative literacy remained constant at a low-performing level. Similarly, a 2005 report by the American Institutes for Research found that 20 percent of college graduates lack the analytical skills to calculate an office supply order.

These trends, if not reversed, will have serious consequences for the nation’s economic vitality and its citizens’ quality of life. Research from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems estimates that over the next 20 years, the U.S. must produce more than 10 million degrees above anticipated levels to compete with best-performing nations, satisfy domestic workforce demand, or close attainment gaps for racial/ethnic minorities and low-income students. As a result, the Foundation and its partners are committed to developing new knowledge, tools, and strategies to improve results for students in relation to resources.

What strategies will the initiative pursue in support of its mission?

The initiative’s work will be focused around three primary strategies:

• Building demand and leadership for a productivity agenda, through release of new research and analyses and engagement of key stakeholder groups;
• Equipping the field with new knowledge and tools to address those challenges, through case studies of promising programs and practices, new data tools and metrics, and discussion and analysis of provocative ideas for delivering and financing postsecondary education;
• Improving institutional practice and public policy, through multi-year grants to up to selected states and their higher education systems to develop and execute action plans for boosting student participation and attainment, improving the quality of learning outcomes, and containing cost per degree.

Who are the target audiences for the initiative?

The work of the initiative will focus on the following stakeholder groups: state and federal policymakers; campus and university system leaders; business, community, and opinion leaders; and students and families.

Who are the participating organizations?

The Foundation has named four organizations as initial partners for this phase of the initiative: Jobs for the Future , the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, and the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs. Additionally, more than 60 regional and national groups signed on as partners for the initial phase of the initiative—these and other organizations will be asked to play a role as the second phase of the initiative takes shape.