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May 6, 2022

UW Recognized in Princeton Review’s Best Value College Rankings

The Princeton Review released The Best Value Colleges rankings this month and the University of Washington Seattle continues to be recognized as one of the best colleges in the U.S. The Best Value College rankings considered schools with demonstrated excellence in areas such as academics, financial aid, career prospects, and student experience. In compiling The…


July 23, 2019

2019 Higher Education Trends

As the higher education landscape continues to change and evolve in the United States, below are some select national and state trends driving higher education policy and innovation in recent years. The Office of Planning & Budgeting (OPB) continues to monitor these, and other, trends. This list was curated using multiple sources, including recent news…


January 31, 2019

OPB Brief on Published Price vs. Net Price – 2019 update

The 2019 update of the Published Price vs. Net Price brief is now available on our briefs page, and reflects the newest available data.  The brief includes sector-wide data on trends in published price and net price for public and private four-year colleges and institutions, a description of how declining state investment in higher education has spurred…


June 24, 2016

Update: Supreme Court Decision on Fisher v. University of Texas

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld University of Texas at Austin’s race-conscious admissions policy in its second consideration of a Fisher v. University of Texas appeal. As a reminder, the case stemmed from a lawsuit by Abigail Fisher, a white applicant to UT Austin who claimed she was unfairly rejected due to the university’s…


March 22, 2016

New OPB Brief on Income Share Agreements (ISAs)

Over the past few months, income share agreements (ISAs) have received significant attention from political candidates, higher education advocates, and news sources. A new OPB brief takes a closer look at ISAs by: Exploring differences between and the history of privately funded ISAs and publicly funded ISAs (such as Pay It Forward). Comparing ISAs to federal…


January 26, 2016

Obama administration announces plan to expand Pell Grant program

The Obama administration has introduced a plan to bring back year-round Pell Grants and to create a $300 bonus for Pell recipients taking at least 15 credits a semester. Both elements of the plan are designed to incentivize students to graduate faster and accrue less debt in school. The plan would cost $2 billion over…


December 21, 2015

Perkins Loan Program Temporarily Revived

Last week, Congress passed a bipartisan bill to extend the Federal Perkins Loan Program, which had expired in September. The bill authorizes new undergraduate applicants to join the program through September 2017, but only if they have exhausted all other federal borrowing options first.  New graduate students will not be able to join the program,…


November 13, 2015

UC Plans to Expand Resident Undergraduate Enrollment

A recent story in the LA Times, “UC seeks to boost Californians’ enrollment by 10,000 by 2018,” outlined the University of California’s plan to expand resident undergraduate enrollment at their nine undergraduate campuses. Like many U.S. public universities that have faced significant state divestment during the recession, the UC system has enrolled more nonresident students…


November 5, 2015

Average National Undergraduate Loan Debt Continues To Rise

Undergraduates who graduated with student loan debt from four-year colleges in 2014 owed an average of $28,950, according to a recently released report by The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS).[1][2] 69 percent of graduates have loan debt, the same figure as last year and slightly higher than it was in 2004 (65 percent). The average amount of…


October 31, 2014

Final Gainful Employment Rule Removes Default Rate Metric

The Education Department’s (ED) final “gainful employment rule,” which was released yesterday, will hold vocational programs accountable to just one of the two outcome metrics that were proposed in the March draft rule.  Cohort default rates (CDRs) were eliminated from the legislation, meaning that debt-to-earnings ratios will be the only criteria upon which individual career education…



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