State of California

California Innovation Fund—Promising Practices

HESA completed a comprehensive Policy Brief on behalf of the State of California. 

Client

State of California

HESA completed a comprehensive Policy Brief on behalf of the State of California.  As part of the 2014 Budget, the State of California created a $50 Million General Fund for Awards for Innovation in Higher Education, which is designed to support new ideas across all sectors of higher education with a view toward identifying those with the greatest potential to increase the numbers of students served at the most reasonable cost.  Specifically, the program recognizes California community colleges, California State University (CSU) campuses, and University of California (UC) campuses that change existing policies, practices, or systems in order to increase the number of Bachelor’s degrees awarded, speed up time-to-degree completion, and improve credit transfer.  Successful proponents will be required to report on the likely effectiveness of the interventions, since actual evidence of success in California may not be available for months or years.

In the policy brief, HESA outlined what kinds of options exist for institutions to produce better impact reporting and how institutions can work together in order to improve their data analysis. The brief also included a comprehensive examination of different types of interventions, which have been tested in colleges across the United States, and which appear promising to achieve the Fund’s objectives.