WICHE Publications, Papers, and Reports

WICHE's Policy Analysis and Research unit has released a new Policy Insight covering our most recent survey of published tuition and fees prices in all public institutions in the West in 2011-12. The report summarizes those findings and also addresses related state finance policies including state budget levels and higher education appropriations and state financial aid programs.

CORRECTIONS APPLIED: MARCH 21, 2012

2012 ~ PDF ~ 240 KB~ DOWNLOAD

WICHE and its 15 member states work to improve access to higher education and ensure student success. Our student exchange programs, regional initiatives, and research and policy work allow us to assist constituents throughout the West and beyond. In fiscal 2013 WICHE's four units - Programs and Services, Policy Analysis and Research, Mental Health Program, and WCET - will strive to assist the West's institutions and students, focusing on five areas: finance; access and success; workforce and society; technology and innovation; and accountability. In the 2013 Workplan, we describe existing activities, as well as initiatives that are new directions or on the horizon, by unit. Along with a brief narrative of each project, we include its focus area/s; priority in terms of WICHE's mission; funding source and amount; staffing level; timeline; organizational partners; and state institutional partners.

2012 ~ 29pp. ~ PDF ~ 515 kb~ DOWNLOAD

Even while funding to our colleges and universities has declined, a college degree has retained its value. As a nation, and as individuals, we can’t afford to be poorly educated today. As President Obama said in his state of the union address, “In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education.” The opportunity, then, for the West is one that generations of Americans are familiar with: to do more with less. Dealing with scarcity – whether of institutions or programs or dollars – has been at the heart of WICHE’s mission since the beginning.

2010 ~ 20pp. ~ PDF ~ 563 KB~ DOWNLOAD

This report highlights three interrelated workforce issues of importance to physicians and medical schools that prepare individuals for a career in medicine: the shortage of physicians and the planned expansion of medical school enrollment, medical student indebtedness, and primary care physician service with emphasis on care delivery in rural areas. The West’s demographics present unique challenges in educating our future healthcare professionals, and this analysis suggests strategies for how Western states can link their resources to respond, particularly in higher education.

2008 ~ 16pp. ~ PDF ~ 289 KB~ DOWNLOAD

Pharmacy, with more than 230,000 practitioners today, is the third-largest health profession in the United States. Research on the national pharmacist workforce points to a continuing shortage of pharmacists, related to growth in medication use, the aging of the baby boomer generation, and the emergence of more clinical activities within pharmacies. Surveys that track shortage levels showed that there was a slow downward trend in the severity of shortages up until fall 2005, followed by higher shortage levels during the past year. Changes in shortage levels appear to parallel growth in prescription medication usage. WICHE’s Professional Student Exchange Program (PSEP) allows students from states that do not have a public school of pharmacy to pay reduced tuition to a cooperating institution in the West. Sending states determine the number of new students to be supported each year. In 2006-07, 40 students from Alaska, Hawaii, and Nevada attended 16 cooperating pharmacy schools.

2008 ~ 4pp. ~ PDF ~ 180 KB~ DOWNLOAD

In fiscal 2009 WICHE and its four units - Public Policy and Research, Programs and Services, WCET, and Mental Health - will work to build a better education engine via our efforts in our five areas: finance, access and success, workforce and social issues, technology and innovoation, and accountability.

2008 ~ 19pp. ~ PDF ~ 256 KB~ DOWNLOAD

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  See also, Higher Education : A Powerful Trust - WICHE Workplan 2008.

An overview of expansion plans for schools of medicine in the West, highlighted by states, medical schools, first-year student enrollments, expansion activities, and contact information.

2008 ~ 11pp. ~ PDF ~ 73 KB~ DOWNLOAD

With significant, industrywide advancements in health information technology (IT), institutions of higher education in the West will be called upon to provide a new generation of health IT graduates. New academic programs must be developed, existing programs will need to be retooled, and student recruitment strategies will be required to meet the health IT workforce demands of the future.

2007 ~ 6pp. ~ PDF ~ 902 KB~ DOWNLOAD

Policy Brief

From the WICHE Center for Rural Mental Health Research, this study examines whether depressed rural primary care patients are more likely than urban patients to be hospitalized; it investigates whether differences in hospitalization rates can be explained by differences in the utilization of specialty outpatient care; and it looks at whether rural patients face more “insurance barriers” to outpatient care. This study should be of interest to policy makers and administrators seeking to develop better delivery systems for rural mental health services. It should also be of interest to insurers, self-insured employers and other payers seeking the most effective use of health care expenditures.

2007 ~ 2pp. ~ PDF ~ 100 KB~ DOWNLOAD

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  Executive summary

  1p ~ PDF ~ 9 KB ~ DOWNLOAD

This report, funded through a grant from the Ford Foundation, seeks to better inform legislators and other key policymakers about the confluence of forces bearing down on higher education and the resulting impacts to state goals and priorities. Using an array of data, the report highlights the ways in which a state’s stock of human capital is depleted and replenished through education, migration, and the aging of the workforce (i.e., retirements). This edition includes profiles for all 50 states and international comparative data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showing how well the United States and its individual states fare in comparison to other countries on measures of educational attainment. These data provide a benchmark for action, given the interrelatedness and heightened competition of an increasingly global economy. In addition, they are sobering evidence that more attention must be paid to how states can better harness the resources of their higher education systems to assure that they remain competitive in the decades to come.

2007 ~ 124pp. ~ Pub #2A364 ~ PDF ~ 1 MB~ DOWNLOAD