Specifications include, but are not limited to: 1. Assess how CSCU compares with its peers (e.g. Carnegie classification) as it relates to national best practices, benchmark areas, metrics, and highlight where CSCU materially deviates from national standards or trends. To the extent the assessment identifies opportunities to improve, identify reasonable and financially feasible actions with potential cost and benefit metrics and proposed timeline to align CSU, CT State and or Charter Oak to applicable metrics and/or proposed targets. 2. Identify best practices and strategies that other peers and other similarly situated organizations are using to manage higher education challenges, that include but are not limited to, declining student enrollments, students not timely finishing degrees, minority students graduation rates lagging behind those of their white peers, building and maintenance upkeep costs versus emerging online degree programs, highlighting those strategies that address financial sustainability in the face of enrollment declines while desiring and driving improved student outcomes. 3. Develop a rubric that could be utilized to evaluate the level of annual state support and requests, as well as a rubric that could be used as a tool to evaluate campus and building footprints requests and/or decisions. 4. Develop realistic enrollment projections for Academic Year 2024 to 2033 based on analysis of enrollment data for the CSCU System, Connecticut demographic trends, and market forces. 5. Develop recommended solutions to scale the CSCU system using developed enrollment projections to projected student demand while considering improved student outcomes and meeting the workforce needs for the state. 6. Develop a short and long-term financial and operational plan that enables CSCU to be sustainable, efficient, and effective.
