College Productivity

National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS)
The Center for State Policy on Student Progression (C2SP) provides a central resource for policymakers to understand and shape increasingly complex patterns of student flow into and through postsecondary education in order to maximize educational attainment and appropriate employment for students drawn from all income and demographic backgrounds.

C2SP provides a single national entity to archive and synthesize policy research on student progression and its associated success factors, disseminate best practices with respect to state policy in this arena, and assist individual states in building and enhancing their capacity to a) understand the dynamics of student progression in their own states and; b) develop appropriate local policy approaches to enhancing student success based on known best practices. C2SP conducts regular fifty-state surveys on data resources and policies affecting student success and works directly with states and state consortia to create data tools and archives that enable more comprehensive and effective longitudinal studies of student progress and degree attainment.

C2SP has three main goals, each of which is designed to address a particular condition of the current state policy environment:

• Increase the knowledge base associated with state practices to promote student success.

• Develop tools to help states enhance their policy information infrastructures on student progression.

• Develop and disseminate "good practice" for state policy to promote student progress and success.

These goals directly advance access and success in postsecondary education because states exert substantial leverage over institutional and student behaviors through the ways they fund institutions, govern admissions into and transfer among them, structure accountability reporting, manage financial aid systems, and conduct workforce development. 

C2SP is supported by a five-year grant to NCHEMS by the Lumina Foundation for Education. For more information and resources, please visit C2SP's web site, and the Time to Completion section of this website.

Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity, and Accountability
The Delta Project is an independent non-profit organization committed to the creation of analytical tools to:

• Document trends in college spending;
• Understand where and why college costs are increasing;
• Translate technical accounting information into benchmarks for institutional and policy audiences;
• Identify and promote best practices that generate the greatest return on investment for access and success, and;
• Promote institutional and policy strategies for improved productivity

Focus of the work

• Data and Measures
  • National database synthesizing data on trends in revenues and expenditures
  • Annual publication about major trends in revenues and expenditures
  • Analysis of trends, improvement of measures, and improvement of performance
  • Issue briefs analyzing cost trends and likely causes of cost increases
  • "Best practices" for institutional cost effectiveness, targeted to address major cost drivers
  • Analysis of state policy/regulatory barriers to improved cost measurement
  • Evaluation of return on investment/cost effectiveness of institutional innovations designed to improve student success
  • Frequently Asked Questions about Delta's data
• Communication, institutional support, and policy advocacy
  • Translation of national research database into a web-based application to invite easy institutional and policy access to cost information
  • Development of benchmarks for monitoring costs, marketed to policymakers and institutional leaders including governing boards
  • Promotion of effective policies to encourage cost containment, aimed at public policymakers as well as institutional officials
  • Technical assistance to institutions and policy officials
  • Communication Resource: Practical Strategies for Shifting Cost Conversations

Please see http://www.deltacostproject.org for more information.