HCM Managing Director Martha Snyder in Inside Higher Ed

As more and more states move toward performance-based funding models for their community college systems—most recently Oregon and Texas—HCM’s managing director of postsecondary transformation, Martha Snyder, was interviewed for Inside Higher Ed’s article “’More Refined’ Performance-Based Funding for Community Colleges” by Sara Weissman.

From the article:

Martha Snyder, managing director of postsecondary transformation at HCM Strategists, an education consulting firm, said performance-based funding models have become “more refined” in recent years. The earliest models in the 1970s and ’80s generally relied on a “random assortment of performance metrics,” some having to do with academic prestige, while formulas a decade ago started focusing more on college completion rates. Snyder said there’s been a recent shift to more equity-minded metrics.

A “big, big improvement or progression from those earlier funding models was the very real reflection on the reality that we also need to weight or incorporate increased funding for certain student populations who are oftentimes given less access to higher education and oftentimes less successful,” she said.

Snyder noted that not all performance-based funding formulas are created equal. For example, she said it’s valuable to have some portion of funds based on enrolling underserved populations so that colleges have sufficient resources to cover operating costs and work on improving outcomes.

“To achieve that change, to start to provide better supports for students, to help students be more successful, requires capacity on the front end,” she said. “If you just have a purely outcomes-based funding formula, you’re not giving institutions that front end capacity.”