The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released a document this week outlining its “Postsecondary Success Advocacy Priorities.” The report describes the foundation’s four new higher education focus areas: data and information, finance and financial aid, college readiness, and innovation and scale.
Inside Higher Ed described the Foundation’s state policy plan:
On the state level, it will work with state governments on their higher education accountability systems, including performance-based funding formulas.
The foundation has identified 10 states that it will emphasize in this work, most of them with large populations: California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
It remains to be seen whether this focus on North Carolina will yield positive results. As I’ve written before, the UNC system’s enrollment model is broken–nearly beyond repair. So a focus on performance funding is certainly welcome. But defining performance standards, choosing metrics, and setting priorities for North Carolina are big challenges–on which North Carolina and the Gates Foundation do not necessarily see eye to eye.
