Opportunity Grant Program

Overview
State Opportunity Grants are a major element of the Making Opportunity Affordable initiative. Grants will be made to organizations in select states to develop and implement policy agendas that promote increased productivity within U.S. higher education, particularly at public two- and four-year colleges and universities. Eleven states have received $150,000 to participate in the Learning Year that will precede the awarding of four-year Opportunity Grants of up to $2 million.

Expectations
States receiving grants will use the money to pursue change in three areas:

1. Recasting finance systems to reward institutions to graduate students rather than simply enroll them. Most states fund public higher education based largely on student enrollments, placing little (if any) emphasis on keeping students in school and helping them advance toward degrees. States must consider new ways of allocating their postsecondary education spending to graduate more students within available resources.
2. Increasing the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of academic programs and administrative operations. Colleges have contained costs and improved results by streamlining back-office functions, redesigning courses and academic programs and reducing time to degree through use of accelerated-learning options and improved transfer from two- to four-year institutions. The challenge has been to broaden these efforts and ensure they are sustained through changes in leadership and despite budgetary challenges.
3. Aligning resources and creating new models to serve more students. States have a range of postsecondary education providers – public and private, two-year and four-year, nonprofit and for-profit, traditional and alternative. But many states do not effectively use their full range of providers. Instead, they handle a significant portion of enrollment through higher-cost institutions. States must develop strategies for more cost effectively using existing two- and four-year institutions. States must encourage the formation of new types of institutions and degree programs when appropriate. States also should remove regulatory barriers to increasing the numbers of non-traditional and private postsecondary institutions.

States’ agendas will vary based upon differing workforce demands, leadership dynamics and policy environments, but participating states will be expected to focus on these three areas. States must ground their agendas in ambitious-but-realistic goals and concrete measures that link spending with increasing degree attainment.

Process
The grant program has four phases:

1. National Academy (June 2008). Based on letters of interest and follow-up interviews, the initiative invited 11 states* to send seven-member teams to an intensive, two-day academy at the Hunt Institute in Chapel Hill, N.C. The academy:
   1. introduced participating states to the Opportunity Grant Program and outlined the learning process;
   2. provided a forum to talk over the elements of a productivity agenda; and,
   3. encouraged discussion within and among state teams that helped clarify potential changes in policy and practice.

   The state teams left with a framework for integrating their state reforms with the Making Opportunity Affordable agenda and with an outline for moving forward with their learning-year grant proposals.

2. Learning-Year Grant Preparation (June 2008-October 2008). Following the National Academy, states were invited to submit proposals for one-year learning grants of $150,000. The proposals, submitted to Jobs for the Future on Sept. 5, outlined how states intended to draft productivity agenda. In late September, JFF convened a panel of experts to review learning-grant proposals.
3. Learning Year (October 2008-September 2009). During the Learning Year, participating states will:
   1. build a team comprising stakeholders such as policymakers, higher-education leaders and business and community leaders;
   2. refine their proposals to focus on promising ideas that could serve as proof points for productivity;
   3. conduct policy reviews to identify opportunities and obstacles; and,
   4. develop action plans that include goals and metrics, priorities for changing policies and practices and strategies for building coalitions for change and building the case for immediate change.

   The initiative has assigned an adviser to each state for the Learning Year. Advisers will help states plan work, provide guidance on policy audits, identify experts who can help assess policy options and facilitate discussion.

   JFF and team advisers will track and assess states’ progress. Near the end of the Learning Year (September 2009), experts will convene to consider questions such as:

   • Has the state assembled a leadership team capable of leveraging policy change and sustaining a focus on higher-education productivity?
   • Has the state devised clear and compelling goals and measures? How much evidence of buy-in exists?
   • Has the state completed a policy audit, and if so, how well did the review assess policy and regulatory opportunities and barriers related to the initiative’s core strategies?
   • Has the state identified priorities for changing policy? Which cost measures will be used to justify the priorities as means of graduating many more students within expected resources?
   • Has the state developed a plan for engaging and educating stakeholders to build support for its proposed efforts?

   The experts will offer recommendations to the initiative regarding each state’s commitment and readiness to implement its action plan.

4. Implementation (November 2009-October 2013). Up to five states will be selected by the initiative to receive Opportunity Grants and technical assistance worth up to $500,000 per year for four years, with annual renewal contingent upon meeting negotiated progress benchmarks. States that do not receive grants will be invited to continue their involvement with the initiative, such as by participating in cross-state learning opportunities.

For further information, please contact:

Nancy Hoffman, Vice President
Jobs for the Future
88 Broad Street
Boston, MA 02110
617.728.4446
nhoffman@jff.org

The Investing In Student Success Program

Information about the cost-effectiveness of higher education is critical when resources are limited and demand for more people with high-quality postsecondary training is growing. Investing in Student Success, an element of the Making Opportunity Affordable initiative funded by Lumina Foundation for Education and Wal-Mart Foundation, will explore whether first-year programs designed to retain students are a cost-effective investment for colleges and universities.

This project ties program-level cost data to student outcomes and explores the extent to which the additional revenue colleges and universities generate by increasing student retention offsets the additional cost of such programs. Investing in Student Success is working with programs designed to ensure first-year student success because freshman to sophomore continuation, coupled with data about the number of remedial courses students take, the time it takes students to complete remedial work and begin credit-bearing courses, and the number of credits accumulated during the first year of college, are indicators of whether students will complete degrees.

The project’s goal is to develop, test and standardize tools that document the relationship between program costs and student results. Armed with this information, institutions will be better able to make more-informed, data-driven decisions about how to invest marginal dollars in ways that help students succeed. Colleges and universities could calculate revenues associated with retaining students and, potentially, measure costs associated with students dropping out.

In late 2007, Jobs for the Future, working with the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability, recruited 13 colleges and universities with student success programs considered effective at serving freshman students, especially low-income, first-generation, at-risk students, for a one-year pilot program. The pilot colleges include public and private institutions with two- and four-year campuses. Programs selected for cost analyses run the gamut of first-year program models: learning communities, university college programs, summer bridge/gateway programs, first-year seminars and supplemental instruction.

Each pilot institution provided descriptive, evaluative and cost data for analysis. Preliminary data analyses appear to challenge the perception these types of student success programs are generally too cost-prohibitive to implement on a wide scale. A complete analysis of the pilot institutions’ evaluative and financial data is in process. Updated information will be posted on the initiative’s Web site at www.makingopportunityaffordable.org later this fall.

For more information about this project, please contact:

Jennifer Poulos
Senior Program Manager
Making Opportunity Affordable
617-728-4446
jpoulos@jff.org