Public Attitudes on Higher Education

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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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Public Attitudes on Higher Education

A Trend Analysis, 1993 to 2003

John Immerwahr

12/31/2003

This analysis finds that parents of high school students are increasingly worried about access to college. African Americans and Hispanics are especially concerned about access. Among African Americans, there is a substantial increase in the number who say college education is a necessity. At the broadest level, however, attitudes about higher education have changed little, with the vast majority of Americans believing that a college education is more important than in the past and that we should not allow the price of higher education to keep qualified students out. Prepared for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

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Tags: College, Costs, Poverty, Race, Tuition

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