Strategic Roadmap for the Future of Oregon Postsecondary Education and Training
Oregon’s Strategic Roadmap for Oregon Postsecondary Education and Training, finalized
in August, 2021, sets an ambitious path forward by describing how postsecondary systems, policies, and practices need to change in order to achieve Oregon’s goals for educational attainment and equity. The Roadmap is intended to guide not only HECC initiatives, but also those of Oregon’s postsecondary education and training partners statewide, with implications for public and private colleges and universities, the Legislature and Governor, education and workforce development partners, as well as faculty, students, and staff.
The Roadmap sets the following five categories for strategic action as major areas of focus for the HECC, the Legislature, and other partners, with specific examples described in the document.
- Transform and innovate to serve students and learners best—Support education and training institutions in continuing to transform, expand, and redesign their outreach and delivery models to engage today’s learners.
- Center higher education and workforce training capacity on current and future state needs—Focus postsecondary education and training resources to serve Oregonians where they are and who they are, with a priority on communities and populations that have been historically underserved.
- Ensure that postsecondary learners can afford to meet their basic needs—Improve college affordability for Oregonians and ensure that fewer students struggle with homelessness, housing insecurity, and food insecurity.
- Create and support a continuum of pathways from education and training to career—Ensure that all learners have access to a full range of education and training options beyond high school, including apprenticeships, career certificates, and college degrees.
- Increase public investment to meet Oregon’s postsecondary goals—Through adequate and sustained levels of public investments, minimize tuition increases and build programs and services to equitably serve learners.
To advance the Roadmap in coming months, the HECC and its partners will embark on a process to determine what specific actions will be required to achieve the change it describes, including timelines for initiatives or proposals.
Background
The Strategic Roadmap is guided by Oregon’s ambitious educational attainment goals and Equity Lens, and is informed by the input of over 1,500 stakeholders over the course of two years. In August 2019, the HECC launched the development of a new strategic plan for meeting the State’s postsecondary goals. The Roadmap builds upon the Commission’s vision, goals, and priorities to chart a course for the HECC and its partners. It also reinforces the priorities in the HECC Strategic Framework, which articulates the Commission’s particular areas of responsibility for action.
The Commission thanks all who engaged in our public outreach campaign and public meetings since the process began in August, 2019. Between October 2019 and March 2020, HECC and its consulting partner Coraggio Group conducted large-scale public and stakeholder outreach and published key findings in an Insights Report. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the HECC paused to reassess this work in the context of the pandemic’s profound economic and educational disruptions and the country’s simultaneous reckoning with racial injustice. Renewing the process in 2021, iterations of the Roadmap were discussed at numerous public and stakeholder meetings, and it was formally approved at the August 9, 2021 public meeting of the HECC.