Toolkit

Purpose

This toolkit has been prepared for higher education leaders as well as individuals within the higher education community responsible for the development and implementation of student-related access and diversity policies, which include:

1. Enrollment-related policies (such as in admission, financial aid and recruitment);
2. Student affairs policies, programs and strategies; and
3. Academic policies, programs and strategies.

Background

The Access & Diversity Toolkit is the product of significant research, including extensive outreach within the higher education community conducted on behalf of the College Board’s Access & Diversity Collaborative [the Collaborative]. Most notably, conversations occurring during the dozens of national seminars sponsored by the Collaborative between 2003 and 2009 have shaped the design and substance of this toolkit. Virtually without exception, institutional leaders and policymakers have asked for resources that can promote common understandings of the key issues in order to advance the development of coherent, evidence-based, and consequential access and diversity policies. Consequently, this toolkit has been developed to help facilitate constructive campus-based dialogues that will, in turn, lead to access and diversity policies and programs that are both educationally sound and legally sustainable.

How to Use This Toolkit

This toolkit is intended to be a user-friendly resource that will help facilitate meaningful campus dialogues and policy discussions among multiple groups of stakeholders. This toolkit provides some of the most relevant information in an easy-to-use format with extensive lists of additional resources — research, policy and legal — that may guide those conversations. Each tool in the toolkit is easy to duplicate, should users choose to share them with their colleagues.

The tools in this toolkit are (for the most part) organized to address the following areas with respect to each of the issues framed by the tools:

1. The Issue: A brief discussion of the issue(s) of relevance that directly face higher education institutions as they contemplate future action
2. The Policy Context: A brief description of the relevant legal and education policy landscapes that bear on the issue(s).
3. Key Action Steps: Recommended steps for effectively evaluating key information and establishing institutional policy directions.
4. Selected Resources: A nonexhaustive list of leading references that will advance institutional awareness and understanding regarding the relevant issue(s).

The number of tools in this toolkit may grow over time, based on the expressed needs of College Board members and constituents. In addition, as events warrant, the tools included in the toolkit will be updated.