The Office of Higher Education has developed a list of research priorities. The research priorities identify ten areas where Michigan needs better evidence to advance postsecondary attainment and student success. Each priority is introduced by a short statement of what is at stake and broken into sub-topics that define its scope. Beneath each sub-topic sits a set of open research questions; these are questions we cannot yet answer with enough specificity to Michigan's students, institutions, and regions to guide decisions with confidence. The full question set organized by priority is available on request.
The agenda guides the Office of Higher Education's own work and signals to researchers, institutional research offices, and partner organizations where new evidence would matter most. It also carries a procedural role: anyone applying through the Michigan Education Research Institute (MERI) for access to student-level postsecondary data will need to situate their proposed research within one or more of these priorities. Researchers who will submit a MERI application are encouraged to carefully review the research priorities, and we welcome hearing from anyone already working in these areas for more information.
Michigan has made historic investments in financial aid, but tuition coverage alone is not enough if students cannot afford to eat, pay rent, or get to class. What is the impact of Michigan's aid programs on Michiganders and what design modifications are needed to improve enrollment, persistence, and completion to achieve Michigan’s attainment goal?
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Too many Michiganders who could benefit from a postsecondary credential never enroll in college, and too many who stop out never return. Identifying the outreach strategies, re-enrollment designs, and community-based approaches that most effectively reach the populations for whom institutional distrust or structural barriers (i.e. non-financial barriers) remain obstacles that financial aid alone cannot overcome is essential to Michigan’s attainment strategies.
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Michigan's colleges meet students where they are by implementing evidence-based approaches such as developmental education, guided pathways, alternative credentialing, and credit for prior learning. Understanding which pathway reforms most effectively improve persistence and on-time completion, whether they work equally well for all student types, and whether the proliferation of alternative credential formats is expanding opportunity or creating confusion is essential as colleges test new solutions to old and difficult problems.
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How faculty teach, how advisors engage, and how institutions build belonging matters as much as what students study. Understanding which instructional approaches, advising structures, mentorship designs, and AI deployments most effectively improve learning and completion for Michigan’s diverse student population is central to Michigan’s institutional transformation.
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Students cannot focus on their studies when they are unsure where their next meal will come from, whether they have a safe place to sleep, or how they will pay for childcare. Understanding which combinations of proactive basic needs identification, navigator models, mental health infrastructure, and public benefits integration most effectively keep students enrolled and moving toward completion is essential to translating Michigan’s financial aid investments into credential completions.
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Michigan's postsecondary institutions are constitutionally autonomous and locally governed, yet achieving statewide goals requires coordination. Understanding what coordination mechanisms produce institutional behavioral change, whether Michigan's transfer infrastructure is working as intended, and how MiLEAP can build system-like coherence without the regulatory authority most states use to achieve it is a central governance challenge.
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Colleges play a critical role in preparing their students for the workforce in ways beyond providing entry credentials. Understanding which program designs and institutional structures most effectively extend high-quality internship, apprenticeship, and experiential learning access to first-generation, low-income, and rural students, and how AI is reshaping the occupations those experiences prepare students for, is essential to ensuring that career pathway investments produce the workforce outcomes Michigan’s economy requires.
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Michigan is producing more postsecondary credentials, but it is not yet clear whether those credentials are in the right fields and regions, recognized by employers, and producing economic gains for graduates and for the state. This is happening at a moment when public confidence in the value of a postsecondary credential is declining.
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Michigan's postsecondary institutions are navigating a convergence of pressures: demographic contraction, AI disruption of occupations and instructional practice, federal policy volatility, and growing skepticism about the value of traditional degree structures. Understanding which institutional adaptations produce gains, and what governance conditions enable autonomous institutions to adapt quickly enough to remain relevant, is essential to ensuring that Michigan's higher education system evolves in ways that serve students.
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Reaching Sixty by 30 requires more than producing more credentials; it requires knowing whether Michigan is on track, which pathways are driving gains, and whether the credentials being counted toward the goal produce economic mobility for students and returns for the state. Measuring credential value is theoretically complex and resource intensive, and Michigan, like many states, is still building the framework to do it well.
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