Follow the Money: Strategies for Using Finance to Leverage Change in Higher Education. Complete to Compete Briefing Paper

The U.S. spends twice as much as the average industrialized country on higher education, but continues to slide relative to other nations in the percentage of young adults with an associate degree or higher. Despite recent reductions in state aid to higher education, state taxpayers continue to be the largest single source of unrestricted funds that colleges need to hire faculty and provide core student services. This means that governors and other state policymakers continue to have significant leverage over the priorities and direction of their public higher education systems. Governors are in a key position to use finance as a lever to promote higher education productivity through their budgeting authority, their annual budget addresses, and other finance-related powers. This paper presents three primary strategies governors can employ to restructure college costs and graduate many more students from high quality programs within existing resources.