Insights & Outlooks
My Student Story as an Independent Student
Editor’s Note: In this video narrative, Carthage College student Daquawn Bruce discusses his experience as a financially independent student and community college transfer. This story is Daquawn Bruce’s video submission to Higher Learning Advocates’ Voices of Today’s Students, a national campaign to educate policymakers about the demogr...
Equity: Everything and the Kitchen Sink
Equity seems to be the “it” term of the day when it comes to student success and college completion. You’d be hard pressed to find an institutional strategic plan or statewide task force report focused on increasing postsecondary attainment that doesn’t reference a commitment to equity, or its oft used counterparts, diversity and inclusion....
Incentivizing Equity: A Q&A with University of Northern Colorado Professor Amy Li
Insights & Outlooks: Your work centers on the topic of state higher education accountability policies and their impact on educational equity. In a few sentences, what are the key findings of your research? Dr. Amy Li: My work on accountability has focused on state performance funding policies. Key findings about performance funding are that the...
Affordable Higher Education is Essential to Preserving the Black Middle Class
Higher education has long been touted as a gateway to the middle class. This is especially critical for black Americans, as blacks still face economic adversity in not only achieving middle-income status, but also maintaining this status for future generations. In 2017, about 40 percent of black households qualify as middle class, with household in...
When Brand Names Don’t Fit
Over the past few decades, many education advocates and reformers have advanced a philosophy that what low income, students of color need most is to attend a brand name institution, filled with wealthy students whose families have attended college for generations. For years, people have focused on undermatching – a philosophy that says that very&...
Beating the Odds in Tennessee: A Q&A with Kenyatta Lovett, Executive Director of Complete Tennessee
Insights & Outlooks: Can you share more about your personal story and why equity in higher education matters to you? Kenyatta Lovett: My higher education story begins with the college journeys of my father and mother. Both were the first in their family to go to college. My father sat out a year after high…
Stephanie Shaw: Using Business Acumen to Drive Change in Education
It was never a question of if Stephanie Shaw would attend college. She always knew she would. A first-generation college student, she had to rely heavily on her extended family members, friends, and teachers who had attended college to lead her in the right direction. “I have been very, very fortunate to have educators in…
Seeing the Forest Beyond the Trees: Connections in Negotiated Rulemaking
The US Department of Education’s (ED) proposals for new regulations presented to the negotiating team in the current negotiated rulemaking (aka “neg reg”) are being thoroughly analyzed by a number of constituents. These thought leaders are dissecting the issue, the history of the issue, reasons for change from status quo and, at times, the ri...