MDRC and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) are working with stakeholders in each of three participating states to build a shared understanding of how the state uses evidence to make higher education policy, funding, and other decisions at the state and system levels. For each state, the team will document the landscape of state-level decision-making in higher education, what role evidence plays in that process, and the opportunities and barriers to using evidence to inform those decisions.

The project seeks to answer the following primary research questions:

• What are the states’ key priorities for higher education, and why and how were these priorities adopted by stakeholders within the states?
• What role has research evidence, including rigorous research, played in the development, adoption, and implementation of state- and system-level higher education policies, programs, and practices?
• What factors have facilitated or impeded stakeholders’ use of research evidence in state- and system-level higher education decision-making?
• What themes or lessons emerge from the three states’ experiences with the use of evidence?

MDRC will provide internal feedback to stakeholders in each participating state, will convene the three states to share lessons, and will publish a public brief synthesizing lessons learned across the states. The team also intends to pursue a second phase of the project in which we will provide technical assistance to these or other states to apply the lessons learned and to create a comprehensive approach for advancing the use of evidence in developing, adopting, and implementing higher education policies, programs, and practices at scale.