Campus Commons?

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Public Agenda helps communities and the nation
solve tough problems through:

Research that illuminates people's views & values;

Engagement that gets people talking, learning from each other and working together on solutions; and

Communications that spreads the word and builds momentum for change.

By doing so, we seek to contribute to a democracy in which problem-solving triumphs over gridlock and inertia, and where public policy reflects the deliberations and values of the citizenry.

Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. You can find out more about us in our What We Do and Frequently Asked Questions pages.

ON THE AGENDA

The High Stakes of Stakeholder Engagement: A Plea for Careful Planning from Public Agenda

Alison Kadlec
Feb 1, 2012

This post was written for the 20 community colleges participating in Completion by Design, a five-year Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that aims to significantly increase completion rates for low-income students under 26. As a “National Assistance partner” for Completion by Design, Public Agenda provides direct assistance to the colleges to help them build capacity for solutions-oriented dialogue among faculty, staff and administration. Here, Public Agenda's Alison Kadlec discusses best practices for authentic internal stakeholder engagement. While the post is geared toward Completion by Design planning teams, the principles are useful for any authentic engagement process.

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You Can't Do It Alone: A New Guide to Creating Sustainable Change in Education Reform

Allison Rizzolo
Jan 24, 2012

Far too often, throughout our work in the education field, we've seen even the most earnest and promising ideas from experts and reformers for improving schools and ramping up student learning met with confusion, anxiety or even anger from teachers, parents, students or community members.

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What Faculty, Financial Officers and Others Think About Controlling College Costs

John Immerwahr, Jean Johnson and Paul Gasbarra

04/29/2009

With budgets under pressure and anxiety about whether college is accessible to all qualified students, a report by Public Agenda points to the need for policymakers, public higher education leadership, and faculty to work together to find ways to keep public higher education costs under control.

Focus groups and interviews for our report, Campus Commons? What Faculty, Financial Officers and Others Think About Controlling College Costs, shows differing concerns among the men and women who are running and teaching at public colleges.

Many state financial officers felt colleges could be more cost-effective, and need to boost their student retention and graduation rates. Many college financial officers were interested in new technologies and were willing to revisit the question of both class size and how many classes a professor is required to teach. Many faculty members worried about costs for their students and state funding for their schools, and said many incoming freshmen are not ready for college-level work.

Campus Commons? was prepared by Public Agenda for the Lumina Foundation for Education's Making Opportunity Affordable initiative. Click here to see the report, and for more of our research on this subject, check out: