Blurring Boarders: Aligning Jurisdictional Boundariesto Postsecondary Education Markets

DR. BRIAN A. SPONSLERASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR RESEARCH

SHEEO NATIONAL POLICY CONFERENCE, SAN FRANCISCO CA11 AUGUST, 2011

Blurring Boarders: A Proposition• Progressing toward national degree attainment goals requires re-aligning jurisdictional boundaries and corresponding governance structures to match specific postsecondary education markets.

• Unpack this proposition into three components:

1) Where re-alignment is most needed and relevance of areas to national attainment goals

2) Why existing jurisdictional boundaries and policy environments are problematic in these spaces and difficult to change

3) How to think about refocusing policy and governance to better match educational markets in these spaces

Where: Multistate Metro Regions

• Multistate metropolitan regions are made up of core cities and surrounding suburban and exurban areas with counties in two or more states.

• Places where people move across porous non-political boundaries for economic, social, and increasingly educational activities.

• Represent natural postsecondary education markets that we’ve been less than intentional in treating as such with public policy and governance arrangements.

• Highly relevant to national degree attainment goals:• Demographically• Economically• Educationally

Where: 44 Multistate Metro Regions

Small Logan, UT-IDCumberland, MD-WVSioux City, IA-NE-SD

Midsize Portland, OR-WA Memphis, TN-MS-AR Providence, RI-MA

Large New York, NY-NJ-PA Washington, D.C., DC-VA-MD-WVChicago, IL-WI-IN

Why: Realignment Challenge• Multistate metro regions are underserved by public postsecondary education due to existing state-based jurisdiction over policy and governance arrangements.

• The misalignment between jurisdictional control and postsecondary markets puts the public sector at a disadvantage compared to their private and for-profit counterparts in multistate metro areas.

• Three problematic areas:

1. Resident-based tuition policy 2. Student state-based financial aid3. Credit transfers/student movements

Why: Realignment Challenge• Inter-jurisdictional cooperation is hard; we know this from our experiences in other policy areas.

• Presents a challenge due to differences in:

• Structure of public systems (Bureaucratic culture)• Revenue sources and funding (Financial culture)• Decision-making process (Political culture)• Policy tastes and attitudes (Policy culture)

• States may therefore need assistance in addressing the challenge of increasing degree attainment in multistate metropolitan areas on a scale necessary to reach attainment targets.

How: Realigning With EZ-GO

•Educational Zone Governance Organizations (EZ-GO) One way to support alignment of postsecondary policy and governance in multistate metro areas.

•EZ-GO Commission could be housed in Department of Education and report to authorizing education-related committees in Congress.

•Consists of appointed governors, local metro leaders, business interests, institutional/system leaders, and experts in inter-jurisdictional cooperation and labor economics.

EZ-GO Commission Tasks

Three specific tasks at the outset:

1. Ratify boundaries of multistate Educational Zone Governance Organization (EZ-GO) areas.

2. Advise federal policymakers on actions to incentivize state/local leaders and institutional participation.

3. Propose redesign or adjustment of existing federal policy-mix to support degree attainment in EZ-GO areas.

EZ-GO Commission Boundaries

• EZ-GO Commission is NOT designed to:

• Take over management of state postsecondary systems or individual institutions.

• Be a top-down dictator of policy to states or institutions.

• Propose one-size-fits-all recommendations for all multistate metropolitan spaces.

Acknowledgements

Related paperEasy Come, EZ-GO: Removing Jurisdictional Barriers to College CompletionAvailable at: www.ihep.org

Co-authorsDR. GREGORY S. KIENZLDIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND EVALUATION

ALEXIS J. WESAWRESEARCH ANALYST

FundersGATES FOUNDATIONCENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS