HB5248sam002 97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Sen. Kimberly A. Lightford

Filed: 5/1/2012

09700HB5248sam002 LRB097 15522 NHT 69041 a

AMENDMENT TO HOUSE BILL 5248

AMENDMENT NO. ______. Amend House Bill 5248 by replacing everything after the enacting clause with the following:

"Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the Illinois College Choice Reports Act.

Section 5. Findings and declarations. The General Assembly finds and declares the following:

(1) completion of post-secondary education is increasingly important for individuals and this State overall;

(2) accessibility of information is essential for informed student choice of appropriate post-secondary education;

(3) clear, consistent information allowing access to comparable information across higher education institutions will lead to improved student choice; and

(4) data collected by State higher education agencies should be available to the public in an accessible form.

Section 10. Illinois College Choice Reports.

(a) The Illinois Community College Board, the Board of Higher Education, an organization representing the public policy interests of this State's private, non-profit colleges and universities, and the Illinois Higher Education Consortium shall form a committee to inform the development of the Illinois College Choice Reports. The purpose of these reports is to inform students' college choices by providing current information in a consistent and comparable format, including without limitation costs, student demographics, student progress and attainment, application and admission data, areas of study, and certificate or degree completion. Development of the reporting mechanisms must be completed on or before January 1, 2014. After development, the Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board shall collect data annually and make it publicly available.

(b) The Illinois College Choice Reports shall be (i) clearly linked to performance funding metrics and the goals of the Illinois Public Agenda for College and Career Success and (ii) simple to read and clearly indicative of minority and low-income student access, student progress, and progress towards increasing college completion.

(c) The Illinois College Choice Reports may include, but need not be limited to, the following, in accordance with the applicable data available for collection by the Illinois Community College Board and the Board of Higher Education at the time the reports are prepared for publication:

(1) Costs, such as tuition and net price data, required fees, room and board on campus, and student loan default rates.

(2) Students, such as total number, gender, race and ethnicity, full or part-time status, and degree seeking or non-degree seeking.

(3) Student success and progress, such as percentage of students who have graduated or are still enrolled in a higher education institution within 150% of the expected time to get a degree, degree completion measures, measures of retention and persistence, passage rates for licensure and certification, job placement rates, and student learning measures.

(4) Admissions or acceptance, such as whether a higher education institution has open admission or has admission criteria; for those that are not open, a statement of the standards; and, for those having programs requiring acceptance, a statement of the criteria.

(5) Applicant information, such as new freshmen applicants, percentage of freshman applicants admitted, and percentage of admitted freshmen that enrolled.

(6) Classroom experiences, such as areas of study or areas of concentration with the largest number of students.

(7) Educational outcomes, such as associate's or bachelor's degrees and certificates awarded per year, measures of intent, and employment.

(d) The committee formed under subsection (a) of this Section shall take into account existing data initiatives and sources, including without limitation the longitudinal data system, in order to minimize unnecessary additional data collection or reporting and to utilize existing common data definitions. It shall be the responsibility of the governing body of the longitudinal data system to identify which data are immediately available and make recommendations for which measures may reasonably be included in the Illinois College Choice Reports and for future collection of the most useful data that are not currently available.

(e) The Illinois Community College Board shall develop the Illinois College Choice Reports with input from the Board's MIS/ILDS Research and Longitudinal Data Advisory Committee, appointed by the Board pursuant to Section 2-7 of the Public Community College Act. The Board of Higher Education shall seek input from stakeholder groups in developing the Illinois College Choice Reports.

(f) The Illinois Community College Board and the Board of Higher Education shall regularly inform the chairperson of the Illinois P-20 Council's Joint Education Leadership Committee on the status of the implementation of the Illinois College Choice Reports. At the request of the Illinois Community College Board and the Board of Higher Education, the chairperson of the Illinois P-20 Council's Joint Education Leadership Committee shall convene meetings of the committee formed under subsection (a) of this Section as needed.

(g) In making the Illinois College Choice Reports publicly available on their Internet websites, the Illinois Community College Board and the Board of Higher Education shall include links to connect to other resources, such as the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, that provide information used to inform student college choice.

(h) On or before January 1, 2015 and on or before January 1 of each year thereafter, the Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board shall prepare Illinois College Choice Reports for each higher education institution approved to operate and grant degrees in this State. On or before January 1 of each year, the reports must be made available on the Board of Higher Education's and the Illinois Community College Board's Internet websites and clearly linked to and from each higher education institution's Internet website. The Illinois Student Assistant Commission's Internet website shall link to the annually updated reports.

Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon becoming law.".