Continuing our vital work together in 2025

This season presents opportunities to share gratitude for the Institute for Higher Education Policy’s hard-working team and engaged partners, celebrate our impact, and set sights on the year ahead.  

It’s also a time for reflection. A time to reflect on progress towards our vision of a more equitable and just society through higher education and a time to reflect on the vital need to continue our efforts with persistence and zeal into 2025 and beyond. 

From advocacy wins to new research and field engagement, Team IHEP has moved the ball forward in 2024.  

We scored a victory for evidence-driven policymaking when House and Senate Appropriators directed the Institute of Education Sciences to maintain the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study at its current collection frequency. The directive included in the 2024 funding bill rebuked the Department of Education’s budget request, which proposed shifting the full-scale study, including detailed student surveys and administrative data collection, from every four years to every six years. Ever evolving student experiences in higher education make maintaining the current federal data collection frequency vital—and we will continue fighting for high-quality data and evidence.  

We’ve kept close watch over changes in federal data collections and uses. For example, we led the field in urging Congressional lawmakers to restore allowable uses of financial data from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to evaluate programs, conduct research, and provide student support services. We tapped our PostsecData coalition to spread the word about upcoming changes to how federal agencies collect race and ethnicity data. We also galvanized the field to express support for the Department of Education’s forthcoming Financial Value Transparency framework, which will empower students and families to make more informed educational decisions and support institutional improvement efforts with more data than ever before about program costs and outcomes. We will continue advocating for robust transparency to inform student choices and evidence-based policymaking. 

We published new insights exploring ways to strengthen existing data collection efforts to identify inequitable outcomes. Our Layers of Identity brief explores how data collection has fallen short in comprehensively representing the complexities of American Indian and Alaska Native identities and experiences in higher education. And our in-depth Breaking the Cycle report proposes a framework for understanding the cyclical relationship between higher education and the racial wealth gap. We will continue to bring rigorous research to bear on pressing issues within higher education. 

We elevated evidence-based strategies that support degree completion and student success. Our team debuted the College Completion Comebacks film series featuring stories of students who returned to college after stopping out, and the strategies that supported their journeys to graduation. We also partnered with the Department of Education for the Attaining College Excellence and Equity Advising Summit. The event gathered hundreds of state and system leaders, researchers, and fellow student success champions and practitioners to discuss how holistic advising and wraparound supports can promote college excellence and equitable outcomes. We will continue partnering with students and field experts to identify and uplift promising strategies for improving student success.

Our postsecondary value insights are seeding more field-driven research and shaping federal efforts to recognize institutions that excel in supporting student success. For example, teams of fellow researchers used our Equitable Value Explorer to craft studies exploring how different factors affect institutions’ delivery of equitable student outcomes and glean insights about the economic benefits of earning a college degree. And the Postsecondary Value Commission’s framework will inform how the Education Department assesses students’ post-college outcomes as part of its newly established Postsecondary Student Success Recognition Program. We will continue connecting research and policy in ways that enhance the value students receive for their postsecondary investment.  

None of this work would have been possible without the dedication of our team of IHEP professionals. Our research, operations, advocacy, communications and finances are well planned and executed because of these individuals, and I remain grateful for their steadfast commitment to our mission. This year, I was also thrilled to welcome new team members:  Jessica Elias, government affairs associate, Edgar Lopez and Daniella Paradise, both research analysts, Taylor Myers, assistant director of research and policy, and research interns Madeline Rowe and Vallery Valle. In 2025, we will continue to celebrate, deepen, and grow our team’s skills, passions, and talents. 

As we celebrate these accomplishments and reflect on this gratitude, we know more work remains to: 

• enhance data systems and data use;  

• build strong admissions pipelines into college;  

• identify and scale evidence-based strategies to increase college completion;,  

• make college more affordable through need-based financial aid; and  

• promote strong outcomes for all students. 

So, we will explore new ways to forge connections between the federal policymaking process and on-the-ground practitioners. We’ll welcome new participants to our Value Data Collaborative, supporting them to conduct original research that evaluates student outcomes through the lens of postsecondary value. We will continue to support the College Transparency Act, a bipartisan and broadly popular legislative solution to help students and families, policymakers, institutions and employers make more informed decisions.  

That is just a taste of what we have planned for IHEP in 2025. But of course, every year presents opportunities and challenges—seen and unforeseen. So whatever 2025 brings, IHEP is poised to continue. Continue our commitment to our mission, continue our rigorous research and our close partnerships with field-based leaders and advocates, continue to stand up for policies that set students up to succeed.  

This commitment to continuance crystalized at a recent meeting when a member of IHEP’s Board of Directors shared Maya Angelou’s powerful poem, Continue. In a world filled with challenges, the excerpt below offers a poignant reminder of the difference we can make, both individually and as small collectives.  

As we look back on 2024 and ahead to 2025, I invite you to join me in contemplating how we can all Continue this vital work together—with kindness, humility, and partnership.  

Experience the full poem here. 

My wish for you 

Is that you continue  

Continue  

To be who and how you are 

To astonish a mean world 

With your acts of kindness 

Continue  

To remind the people that 

Each is as good as the other 

And that no one is beneath 

Nor above you 

Continue  

And by doing so 

You and your work 

Will be able to continue 

Eternally