Incentivizing High-Priority Degrees: The Role of State Funding is the second brief in HCM’s policy series examining pressing issues in state funding formulas and their impact on value, adequacy, and equity.  This series provides frameworks, research, and case studies examining how the role of state funding can advance state priorities and equitable student outcomes while reflecting states’ unique contexts.  

Emergency Aid, Enduring Impact: Strengthening Families, Community and the Economy through Support for Student Parents is a three-part policy brief series developed by HCM Strategists in collaboration with national experts to support Scholarship America’s National Emergency Scholarship Fund for Student Parents. The series provides a roadmap for institutions and policymakers to better support student parents—ensuring they stay enrolled, complete their education, and strengthen their families, communities, and our nation’s workforce.

New Publication: Investing in Value: Return on Investment and Workforce Success in State Postsecondary Funding. This is the first brief in HCM’s new policy series examining pressing issues in state funding formulas including value, adequacy, and equity.  This series will provide frameworks, research, and case studies examining how state funding formulas can advance state priorities and equitable student outcomes while reflecting states’ unique contexts.  

Our State Policy & Research Director, Stephanie Murphy, provides a 2024 update of her 2023 typology and policy landscape analysis of state investments in short-term credential pathways. Her latest analysis shows that over the past year, eight states have established 10 new initiatives. Overall state investments now total $5.6 billion.

Our latest postsecondary finance brief, Beyond Sticker Prices: How States Can Make Postsecondary Education More Affordable, analyzes financial aid programs and affordability-related data in nine states. This analysis, which looked across regions, populations and various financial aid models, illustrates the significant variation in affordability across states, institutions and income brackets.

Strategic data use case study by HCM + The Higher Ed Equity Network

A policy playbook to demand excellence for Black learners.

The first of its kind typology and policy landscape analysis of short-term credentials programs by Stephanie M. Murphy, Ph.D.