First and foremost, the Commission's recommendations call for a proposed funding method that provides a framework for addressing all major issues - affordability, quality, accountability, and economic development -- Institutional Performance Agreements.

The Institutional Performance Agreement:

• Provides colleges and universities with a steady and predictable funding stream.

• Provides the opportunity to engage in and rely on long-range, strategic planning that will permit institutions to better control costs.

• Provides an important vehicle for institutional accountability by measuring and incentivizing performance.

• Permits issues related to funding, managerial autonomy and performance expectations to be addressed institution-by-institution, respecting the unique mission and circumstances of each institution.

Other key recommendations related to funding, cost containment and affordability:

• Tuition and fee policies aimed at increasing affordability for all Virginians with a combination of:

  • Continued tuition and fee restraint over time.

  • Making additional resources available for financial aid.

  • Increasing the direct assistance provided to students who attend Virginia's independent institutions.

• A series of predictable policies that should guide the Commonwealth's higher education funding decisions.

• Directions to Boards of Visitors with regard to their central role in containing costs and effectively directing resources to institutional priorities.

• An urgent call to make the most of the potential inherent in distance learning to meet new demands without expensive program duplication and institutional expansion.

• A call to SCHEV and the General Assembly to continue the examination of funding options and issues begun by this Commission, including a study based on Joe Farrell's proposal that we provide institutional funding on a uniform per-student basis, and a thorough review of the community college system and its mission, accomplishments, efficiency, potential, and needs.

The centerpiece is a Quality Assurance proposal that:

• Identifies core competencies all undergraduates should develop.

• Calls for creation of working groups to define core competencies, oversee development and adoption of institutional assessment tools and craft minimum system-wide performance standards.

• Encourages institutions to set their own higher performance standards.

• Requires reporting the evidence of student achievement and value added.

• Invites institutions to also spell out the skills and knowledge required by degree programs and to measure and report student learning outcomes against those stated expectations.

Other key recommendations:

• Proposes policies and incentives that encourage, support and reward excellence in undergraduate teaching.

• Charges Boards of Visitors with strengthening curriculum requirements and ensuring academic rigor by an evaluation of, and response to remedy, grade inflation.

• Call for removal of any remaining vestiges of discrimination by enhancing educational opportunities.

The recommendations for strengthening accountability:

• Stress the independent policymaking and fiduciary role of Boards of Visitors.

• Outline the responsibilities of Boards of Visitors and offer multiple proposals for the selection, training, and operation of effective governing Boards.

• Recommend implementation of various measures related to academic, administrative and fiscal performance and systematic reporting of performance through a proposed Report on Institutional Effectiveness. This proposal:

  • Lists several system-wide measures for use in evaluating performance in each of fours areas (student outcomes, accountability, fiscal performance, and efficiency) and indicates whether the standard applied to each should be system-wide or institution specific

  • Directs that institution-specific measures of institutional effectiveness be developed for use in addition to the system-wide measures proposed

  • Charges SCHEV with collecting the results on system-wide and institution specific measures and providing the Governor and General Assembly with an annual Report of Institutional Effectiveness that would also be made widely available to the public.

  • Indicates that a subset of these system-wide measures, along with other institution specific measures, could be negotiated in the IPA process for use in the funding context.

• Recommends greater managerial autonomy for institutions through gubernatorial authority to implement decentralization and deregulation measures (unless otherwise governed by an IPA).

• Recommends continued advisory and coordinating role for the State Council of Higher Education, including service as a clearing-house for information about institutional best practice and as a manager of streamlined information collection and performance reporting.

The recommendations: