Convened by UNITE-LA
Launched in 2008, the Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Collaborative is a consortium of 12 colleges and universities in the region, which have committed to advancing the L.A. Compact’s goals. The IHE Collaborative includes 2-year and 4-year public, private, and not-for-profit institutions, including a Steering Committee to drive decision-making and planning.
The IHE Collaborative believes postsecondary attainment drives labor market success and shared regional economic prosperity. Yet, students in our region still experience numerous challenges to completing a postsecondary credential, warranting greater coordination across K-12 systems, higher education campuses, and regional employers. In particular, the collaborative is focused on supporting successful transitions between high school, college, and the workforce.
The IHE Collaborative has launched many workgroups and initiatives focused on shifting policies and practices, thereby improving coordination across K-16 systems that lead to postsecondary student success.
Student Success Workgroup:
Convened by UNITE-LA
The Student Success Workgroup, launched in 2016, aims to increase postsecondary awareness, access, persistence, and completion for historically underrepresented students. Workgroup members include student success centered roles at Cal State LA, Cal State Northridge, Cal State Dominguez Hills, and Cal Poly Pomona; LACCD; UCLA; USC; University of La Verne; LMU; LAUSD; and LACOE.
The group convenes quarterly to address shared challenges facing students across segments and campuses, launching initiatives to grasp the scope of complex issues or generate on-campus change. Accomplishments include modifying the A-G requirements, supporting the implementation of the Los Angeles College Promise Program, broadening reverse transfer program adoption, setting in motion a large scale research study to understand and improve the Associate Degree for Transfer, and launching the LA Region K-16 Collaborative. The Student Success Workgroup regularly updates priorities to remain proactive and reactive to student challenges. Recent priorities include equity and anti-racism work, an approach to addressing holistic basic needs, ways to mitigate the post-covid transition and subsequent learning loss, an approach to regional enrollment management, and ways to increase college math success.
L.A. College Promise Initiative:
Convened by LACCD
First announced In 2016 by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, L.A. College Promise is a landmark initiative aiming to improve postsecondary education and degree and/or workforce certificate rates among first-time and returning full-time community college students. Beginning in 2017, Los Angeles Unified School District graduates started receiving one year of free community college tuition at any of Los Angeles Community College District’s campuses . In 2018, inspired by the L.A. College Promise, the state legislature passed AB 19 to administer promise programs across the state, broadening student eligibility. The L.A. Compact initially convened groups to design and implement the initiative, and currently sits on the advisory council. As of 2023, over 30,000 students have participated in L.A. College Promise.
Postsecondary Transfer Initiatives
Convened by UNITE-LA
Despite nearly 64% of college students in Los Angeles County being enrolled in a local community college and the majority reporting their intent to transfer after two years, only 13% of students matriculate to a 4-year campus within 3 years. This ongoing trend has led L.A. Compact partners to engage in supporting students through transfer pathways since 2016. Through a combination of research and on-campus intervention design and implementation, more than a dozen L.A. area community colleges and four Cal State campuses have engaged in cross-sector strategies to address this challenge. Such strategies include:
Reverse Transfer (CSUN Connections):
Earning a CA Governor’s Innovation in Higher Education Award in 2016 followed by a Lumina Foundation Talent Hub designation in 2017, Cal State Northridge (CSUN) and three LACCD colleges in the San Fernando Valley - L.A. Mission College, L.A. Pierce College, and L.A. Valley College - worked with UNITE-LA to design an implement a program that enables adults with “some college, no degree” to complete a college credential by either claiming a community college degree with credits already earned or by efficiently and effectively returning to the community college and/or CSU systems to finish degrees that are almost complete.
Over the last 7 years, this program has identified hundreds of students who completed or are close to completing degrees through a combination of credits and has conferred over one hundred degrees through re-enrollment in an academic program or successful petitioning to earn a degree.
ADT Research and Community of Practice:
In 2017, the L.A. Compact’s Student Success Workgroup designed a research study to investigate the effectiveness of the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT), the state’s premier transfer program.
Research found positive trends, such that ADT earners were likely to complete a degree and transfer to a CSU in a similar fashion than traditional transfer degree earners. However, ADT earners still completed their cumulative pathways in an average of 7 years and in fewer disciplines than other students.
Numerous reports detailing regional, campus, and student-level transfer trends, challenges, and successes were produced and have been used to drive campus level understanding of student pathways and as reference points for inter- and intra-campus planning.
Student-Centered Transfer Redesign:
Stemming from in depth transfer research, the L.A. Compact launched the Los Angeles Transfer Pathways Community of Practice to engage local campuses in a student-centered transfer redesign process.
Initially online in 2020, the community boasted 50+ representatives from 4 CSUs and 13 community colleges. This group delved into the research reports and used the data to develop actionable plans for campus-based reforms, including addressing articulation gaps and student retention.
In following years, L.A. Compact member institutions used the data to holistically look at their transfer practices and UNITE-LA staff engaged in multi-week student-centered design sessions took cross-campus and cross-institutional partners to new levels of understanding about each other’s processes and student experiences.
Over time, this has yielded new, stronger articulation agreements between CSUs and local community colleges, transfer student involvement in programs such as EOP, and the development of on-campus centers that prioritize pre-matriculated transfer students.