Strategies for a Thriving Illinois Equity

The pandemic disproportionately impacted students from low-income families and families of color, exacerbating the factors that place students at risk of not enrolling, continuing, and completing higher education. It is critical to provide differentiated academic and social and emotional support that students need to ensure they return to their pre-pandemic learning trajectory. While these strategies are essential to address pandemic-related educational impact, they should be implemented as systemic solutions that will address equity gaps for the long-run.

• Leverage resources developed by the Illinois P-20 Council to support social/emotional well-being and learning renewal. These high impact practices were identified to help the education system best direct federal funds provided through relief packages.
• Scale summer bridge programs that support students’ academic and social-emotional transition to college and help them succeed.⁷
• Extend learning opportunities to mitigate learning loss and accelerate time to degree, such as offering targeted summer courses to full-time students who have earned less than 30 credit hours in their prior academic year.⁸
• Provide proactive and comprehensive advising, first-year experience, experiential learning, professional support for students with disabilities, along with wrap-around supports.
• High-impact practices, including service learning, learning communities, research with faculty, writing-intensive courses, and internship and field experiences, with a specific lens on serving underrepresented minority students, contribute to the success of student learning and retention.⁹
• Support for meeting students’ basic needs, including housing, food security, mental health/wellness services, and child care, among others.
• Reformed financial policies, including polices on financial holds, financial literacy, emergency financial assistance.
• Professional development to provide all faculty and staff the skills to support students with disabilities or students coming from under-resourced communities, as well as professional development for trustees to better understand student needs.

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^{7  Summer bridge programs, including, for example UIC's Summer College and LARES program for Latinx students, have been shown to increase retention and graduation rates.
8  To bring such programs to scale would require additional resources, like extending MAP to summer term.
9  The Summer Research Opportunities Program at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign provides a summer program for undergraduate students from groups underrepresented in graduate study to conduct research with faculty and explore careers in research.}

Sharing best practices across the state will help strengthen each institution’s individual work. Equity plans should outline each institution’s specific steps to close equity gaps in access, progression, and timely completion, including solutions in Equity Strategy 1:

• Review and revision of existing policies and practices that exacerbate equity gaps. Review should include funding models, financial aid, admissions, placement tests, remedial programs, or structured pathways.
• Practices of interrogating disaggregated data at multiple levels to understand the points of intervention and whether solutions are working. This should include early indicators and other predictive analytics tools that can help inform interventions to change a student’s graduation trajectory.¹⁰ Such predictive analytics tools should be coupled with other information (e.g., non-cognitive student need surveys) to ensure students receive appropriate services.
• Equity impact analysis for a structured approach to ensuring decisions are made only after analysis of impact on underserved or minoritized groups.
• Campus climate surveys with action based on findings to improve the experience of historically underserved or underrepresented students.
• Professional development designed to achieve equity, including cultural competency training with a trauma-informed lens and a focus on intersectionality.

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^{10  As one example, the University of Illinois-Chicago developed early indicators that predict whether a first-year student is likely to
graduate within six years. These indicators include academic and financial metrics in the first two semesters.}

There are significant gaps in representation of faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees of color in higher education. Several strategies have been shown to be effective.

• Training on faculty hiring practices to avoid issues of microaggression that can occur in job interviews and review of CVs.
• Appointing a faculty diversity recruitment liaison in search committees.
• Cluster hiring programs, a research-based approach that fosters faculty retention and diversity, means institutions bring on faculty of color in a cohort to provide shared experiences and support.
• Pipeline programs can be expanded to identify promising scholars from diverse backgrounds to support their development as graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.¹¹

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^{11  The state’s Diversifying Faculty in Illinois (DFI) program is one example}

As the economy evolves, many adults will need to upskill with additional credentials or will need to complete a college degree. Illinois needs an active effort to re-engage and support adults, particularly adults of color as they continue their postsecondary path.

• Re-engage adults who dropped out or stopped out due to barriers such as advising errors, life circumstances, transfer release, pandemic related challenges, financial holds, etc.¹²
• Provide wrap around student services for adults, including the resources and counseling necessary—when and how students need them—to navigate the higher education ecosystem.
• Pursue financial strategies to mitigate barriers to enrollment such as debt forgiveness, adult-oriented scholarship programs, etc. (Also see strategies in the Sustainability section).
• Adopt teaching and learning methodologies and practices most appropriate for adult students and professional development opportunities to deliver quality learning.

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^{12  Consider programs such as the Tennessee Reconnect and Minnesota Reconnect models.}

Under a direct admissions program, students are automatically notified of admission to all participating four- and two-year institutions for which they meet the admissions criteria. This means students would not have to search for which college they want to attend but would be able to choose from institutions that they have already been accepted to. Illinois has already adopted the Common App single application for all public universities and should explore a complementary direct admissions policy to simplify the college search and admissions process.¹³

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^{13  Research on a direct admissions program coupled with a common application found an 88% increase in applications, a 6.2% increase in the college-going rate, and a 3% decrease in students enrolling in out-of-state schools.}

Access to high-quality early college opportunities, gives students the opportunity to earn college credit while in high school and strengthen their path to degree completion with structured student support. However, as the data above shows, students of color and students from rural communities have inequitable access to early college programs.

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^{14  Examine appropriate mechanisms for scaling these efforts (e.g., the Midwestern Higher Education Compact’s Graduate Quest program, etc.).}

Reforms are underway as a result of the SJR 41 Task Force, PA 101-0654, the adoption of placement recommendations by the Illinois community college system, and other related legislation. Such efforts should include evidence-based models that allow for expeditious placement into credit-bearing coursework.

Near-peer mentoring, transitional coaching, and other support models, like the ISACorps, have been shown to minimize summer melt, and improve matriculation, retention, and completion outcomes.¹⁵

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^{15  Programs such as NEIU's Projecto Pa'Lante or One Million Degrees for community college students are examples.}