Growing Inland Achievement is partnering with 20 colleges and universities across Riverside and San Bernardino counties through Higher Endeavor, a regional initiative designed to strengthen institutional practices that improve student success.

As the Inland Empire works to advance progress toward the shared 70% postsecondary attainment goal, institutional transformation is essential. Students cannot succeed at scale without systems that are clear, coordinated, and built around their needs. Higher Endeavor focuses on helping institutions build those systems.

20 Institutions Engaged in Institutional Transformation

Through Higher Endeavor, participating campuses are engaging in strategic planning, data capacity building, and targeted improvement efforts with nationally recognized partners.

The work focuses on key drivers of postsecondary success, including:

• Strengthening academic advising systems
• Clarifying and streamlining transfer pathways
• Improving data systems and institutional research capacity
• Enhancing student support services

Campuses are participating in workshops, webinars, and customized technical assistance designed to help them test new strategies and scale practices that lead to more equitable student outcomes. Rather than isolated reforms, Higher Endeavor supports coordinated, evidence-based change that can be sustained over time.

This work reflects GIA’s strategy of CAIR: Convene, Advocate, Invest, and Research. GIA convenes institutional leaders, invests resources to support transformation, and provides research and data tools that help campuses make informed decisions .

Reaching a Key Milestone in Postsecondary Data Partnership

A major milestone this month is the continued participation of 20 Inland Empire institutions in the Postsecondary Data Partnership, or PDP, a national effort that helps colleges better understand student progress and outcomes.

Participating campuses are working toward submitting five full years of student data. This deeper data set will allow institutions to examine long-term trends in enrollment, persistence, transfer, and completion. With stronger data, campuses can identify where students are falling off track and where targeted interventions can make the greatest difference.

GIA has provided funding, training, and technical support to help institutions complete their submissions and prepare to use PDP data to inform future student success strategies. This investment strengthens shared measurement across the region and supports the accountability goals outlined in GIA’s Strategic Plan .

Advancing Clearer Transfer Pathways

Higher Endeavor also supports a regional effort to strengthen transfer pathways between community colleges and four-year institutions.

Seventeen colleges and universities launched this work at the Transfer Pathways Summit in October 2025, where campus teams began testing strategies to make transfer clearer and more accessible for students.

Since then, institutions have engaged in structured action cycles focused on improvements such as:

• Earlier identification of transfer-ready students
• Stronger advising and course planning
• Better coordination between two-year and four-year institutions

Participating campuses recently shared early results from their first round of testing and are now implementing a second cycle of improvements. Institutions will reconvene this summer to share outcomes and identify practices that can be scaled across the Inland Empire.

Through Higher Endeavor, GIA is helping institutions move from isolated initiatives to coordinated, data-informed transformation. As campuses test, refine, and scale what works, the region moves closer to ensuring that more Inland Empire students complete high-quality postsecondary pathways that lead to family-sustaining careers.