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What Is the Vision Project?

The Vision

The Context

Massachusetts is engaged in a fierce competition with other states and nations for talent, investment and jobs. The state’s primary assets in this competition are the overall educational level of our people and our workforce and the inventiveness and competence of the creative individuals and organizational leaders who drive our innovation-dependent, knowledge-based economy. Nurturing these assets through education, research and creative activity is the most important contribution of the state’s colleges and universities to the overall well-being of Massachusetts. The Vision Project is the vehicle through which public higher education has come together to stay focused on this work and hold ourselves accountable for results.

The Key Outcomes

To focus our activities and track our progress, we have identified seven key outcomes in which Massachusetts needs to be a leader among state systems of higher education:

1. COLLEGE PARTICIPATION
   Raising the percentage of high school graduates going to college—and the readiness of these students for college-level work.
2. COLLEGE COMPLETION
   Increasing the percentage of students who complete degree and certificate programs.
3. STUDENT LEARNING
   Achieving higher levels of student learning through better assessment and more extensive use of assessment results.
4. WORKFORCE ALIGNMENT
   Aligning occupationally oriented degree and certificate programs with the needs of statewide, regional and local employers.
5. PREPARING CITIZENS
   Providing students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions to be active, informed citizens.
6. ELIMINATION OF DISPARITIES
   Closing achievement gaps among students from different ethnic, racial, gender and income groups in all areas of educational progress.
7. RESEARCH
   Conducting research that drives economic development

The Annual Report

To hold ourselves accountable for achieving national leadership on these key outcomes, we will issue an annual report to the people of the state, comparing our work to that of our peer institutions in other states on an array of metrics.