Advancing the Power and Addressing the Future of Higher Education
At the Foundation for Research and Education Excellence (FREE Foundation), we are dedicated to advancing research and policy in several critical areas within higher education, including the need for major institutional restructuring and for leadership development.
About Us
The FREE Foundation is dedicated to advancing research and policy in several critical areas within higher education. Our work focuses on:
- Institutional restructuring in higher education, such as mergers, consolidations, acquisitions, closures, and corporate conversions.
- Future oriented strategic assessment, to address rapidly emerging challenges and opportunities in the sector.
- Leadership development, including that of emerging and underrepresented individuals.
- Development of academic health, and health professions programs, to help ensure a high- quality healthcare workforce.
At the Foundation we collaborate with a variety of external and internal partners, such as the Center for Higher Education Mergers & Acquisitions (CHEMA), to further these goals and ensure meaningful and lasting contributions to higher education.
What We Do
There is strong long-term data indicating that a higher education degree greatly benefits its recipients, their families, their communities, and the nation. However, higher education is in a difficult junction, where the value of the education is being reassessed, the cost for students and families continues to rise, competition from other educational opportunities and avenues continues to grow, and the future demands of the workplace and society are changing. Institutions of higher education, including colleges and universities, are under significant stress, facing excess capacity, increasing cost, and softening demand.
The Foundation supports research, analysis, and policy recommendations concerning strategies and tactics to address the future needs of higher education and its students. Further, the Foundation serves as the home of the Center for Higher Education Mergers and Acquisitions (CHEMA), a non-political think tank, studying issues and challenges, generating data, and developing analyses and guidance related to mergers, consolidations, acquisitions, closures, corporate conversions, and other major institutional restructurings in higher education, to help inform and achieve better informed policy outcomes, better economic decisions, and better outcomes for post-secondary students.