66010.962.
The Office of Higher Education Performance and Accountability exists for the purpose of advising the Governor, the Legislature, and other appropriate governmental officials and institutions of postsecondary education. The office has the following functions and responsibilities in its capacity as the statewide postsecondary education coordination and planning agency and adviser to the Legislature and the Governor:(a) It shall, through its use of information and its analytic capacity, inform the identification and periodic revision of state goals and priorities for higher education in a manner that is consistent with the goals outlined in Section 66010.91 and takes into consideration the metrics outlined in Sections 89295 and 92675. It shall, biennially, interpret and evaluate both statewide and institutional performance in relation to these goals and priorities.
(b) It shall review and make recommendations, as necessary, regarding cross-segmental and interagency initiatives and programs in areas that may include, but are not necessarily limited to, efficiencies in instructional delivery, financial aid, transfer, and workforce coordination.
(c) It shall advise the Legislature and the Governor regarding the need for, and the location of, new institutions and campuses of public higher education.
(d) It shall review proposals by the public segments for new programs, the priorities that guide the public segments, and the degree of coordination between those segments and nearby public, independent, and private postsecondary educational institutions, and shall make recommendations regarding those proposals to the Legislature and the Governor.
(e) (1) It shall act as a clearinghouse for postsecondary education information and as a primary source of information for the Legislature, the Governor, and other agencies. It shall develop and maintain a comprehensive database that does all of the following:
(A) Ensures comparability of data from diverse sources.
(B) Supports longitudinal studies of individual students as they progress through the state’s postsecondary educational institutions through the use of a unique student identifier.
(C) Maintains compatibility with California School Information Services and the student information systems developed and maintained by the public segments of higher education, as appropriate.
(D) Provides Internet access to data, as appropriate, to the segments of higher education.
(E) Provides each of the educational segments access to the data made available to the office for purposes of the database, in order to support, most efficiently and effectively, statewide, segmental, and individual campus educational research information needs.
(2) The office, in implementing paragraph (1), shall comply with the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (20 U.S.C. Sec. 1232g) as it relates to the disclosure of personally identifiable information concerning students.
(3) The office shall not make available any personally identifiable information received from a postsecondary educational institution concerning students for any regulatory purpose unless the institution has authorized the office to provide that information on behalf of the institution.
(4) The office shall, following consultation with, and receipt of a recommendation from, the advisory board, provide 30-day notification to the chairpersons of the appropriate policy and budget committees of the Legislature, to the Director of Finance, and to the Governor before making any significant changes to the student information contained in the database.
(f) It shall review all proposals for changes in eligibility pools for admission to public institutions and segments of postsecondary education, and shall make recommendations regarding those proposals to the Legislature, the Governor, and institutions of postsecondary education. In carrying out this subdivision, the office periodically shall conduct a study of the percentages of California public high school graduates estimated to be eligible for admission to the University of California and the California State University.
(g) It shall submit reports to the Legislature in compliance with Section 9795 of the Government Code.
(h) It shall manage data systems and maintain programmatic, policy, and fiscal expertise to receive and aggregate information reported by the institutions of higher education in this state.