A Response to the NCSL Task Force Final Report
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) recently released the NCSL Task Force on Higher Education: Final Report detailing the challenges and potential strategies related to higher education in the United States. NCSL’s executive committee created a bipartisan task force of legislators and staff from 32 states in 2022 to both assess the current state of the postsecondary ecosystem and provide recommendations to improve student outcomes. The report addresses key themes in higher education, including affordability, completion rates, and student debt.
A state-led strategy to enhance the value of degrees
As of July 2022, 42 million Americans had some college credit but no degree, and more than 15 million of those had student debt. Spending on higher education represents a significant investment, yet the economic and social value of a degree varies. Some programs offer little to no financial return on investment and that metric isn’t always clear to postsecondary institutions, let alone to their students. Yet across the nation, many jobs go unfilled because of a shortage of qualified employees, demonstrating an urgent need to align higher education programs with labor market demands.
The findings of the NCSL report make the mission clear: state higher education institutions (HEIs) must work to enhance the value of degrees. The essential tools for doing so lie in data, and, specifically, in data interoperability: enabling disparate data systems to communicate and share anonymized data that will provide educators, administrators, and policymakers the information they need to take targeted actions that will actively improve student outcomes.
Undertaking a data modernization initiative is a daunting prospect. It’s tempting to wait and see what will come from legislators, knowing that leaders have their eyes on this report. But because building the foundation of a successful digital transformation depends on an organization’s readiness as well as capable change management throughout the process, state leaders can begin now to make progress toward their desired trajectory.
Let’s take a look at three key recommendations highlighted in the report.
Establish statewide re-enrollment campaigns
Americans who have college credit but no degree have a significant opportunity to improve their educational outcomes when HEIs facilitate their return to school to complete a degree program.
By promoting outreach efforts, states can help re-engage former students, emphasizing the value of finishing a degree. State campaigns could target students with existing debt and offer financial incentives for returning students, such as debt forgiveness or scholarships. Campus-based campaigns could recognize and support basic needs such as food, housing, and childcare to help mitigate barriers that may prevent adult learners from returning to school to pursue in-demand credentials.
Institutions who look into their data will change lives when they identify students to re-engage. In New Mexico, we found that the average Associate of Arts (AA) awardee had accumulated 90 hours—a full 50% more than required for a standard 60-credit-hour AA. Community college students who have all, or almost all, of the required hours for a credential may need administrative support to get to the finish line. Good data analytics can find these students, then re-enrollment campaign efforts can help them re-enroll and quickly finish.
The population of traditional-aged college students will decline starting with the 2025 school year because of 2008–2010 birth rate declines. State and campus targeted re-enrollment efforts can help counter some of those repercussions. For example, a recent statewide initiative in New Jersey resulted in 8,600 reenrollments and 350 new college graduates.
Promote data sharing between institutions
Surprisingly, a significant barrier to degree completion is credit transfer. State leaders can support data sharing efforts between HEIs by streamlining the credit transfer process, thereby reducing barriers to degree completion and ensuring students don’t have to retake courses unnecessarily.
One way state agencies can support credit transfer is through a common course numbering system. New Mexico brought together faculty from multiple institutions to align on the content of lower-level courses to ensure courses with similar content and learning outcomes would be assigned the same course number, prefix, and title across institutions
While such an approach can simplify transfer and articulation agreements, states can also support credit transfer though modernized, interoperable data systems. Sophisticated data systems can share course-level identifying information among HEIs to facilitate credit transfer between institutions without legislatively demanding course number alignment, ensuring students aren’t penalized by bureaucratic hurdles if they choose to return to a different institution than where they originally earned credits.
Invest in workforce-aligned programs
Once again, big-picture data interoperability pays big dividends. State workforce departments typically identify high-demand fields. Once systems are modernized, tools like Resultant’s Workforce Recommendation Engine help leaders, administrators, and policymakers easily see and act on the myriad factors at play in successful education and workforce outcomes.
State education departments can prioritize programs that align with high-demand fields, ensuring that returning students aren’t earning just any degree, but degrees in areas that enhance job prospects and economic mobility and help build a stronger workforce for the community.
As a faculty member, I often talked with my community college students about the “hot jobs” available in our community, and numerous students shared that they’d never been exposed to information like this during their advisement process. Shifting HEI advising processes to inform students about in-demand occupations, prioritize career-oriented course selections, and show how coursework builds specific skills necessary for career success greatly enhances degree value.
Exposing enrollment advisors to workforce information and aligning HEI course offerings with workforce needs helps students make informed choices, building stronger, more prosperous communities. Education leaders need data so that they can continually monitor program offerings to build the skills required in the job market, ensuring students graduate with career-relevant competencies.
Higher education data interoperability is step one
Enhancing the value of higher education degrees demands data interoperability. It’s the key to successful re-enrollment campaigns targeting those 42 million Americans who have college credits but no degree. It’s the necessary piece to removing barriers to degree completion by streamlining the credit transfer process. And it is the missing link to ensure that education equips students with skills aligning with labor market demands.
Now is the time to act, regardless of where your state is in their data maturity journey. Every action to build a foundation of readiness for change, and improved data interoperability is valuable and necessary.
Whether you don’t know where to start or need the right tools to get to the next level, we can help.
Reach out today for resources to help plan your next steps.
