1. To ensure an educated workforce in Virginia through a public-private higher education system whose hallmarks are instructional excellence, affordable access, economic impact, institutional diversity and managerial autonomy, cost-efficient operation, technological and pedagogical innovation, and reform-based investment;

2. To take optimal advantage of the demonstrated correlation between higher education and economic growth by investing in a manner that will generate economic growth, job creation, personal income growth, and revenues generated for state and local government in Virginia;

3. To place Virginia among the most highly educated states and countries by conferring approximately 100,000 cumulative additional undergraduate degrees on Virginians between 2011 and 2025, accompanied by a comparable percentage increase in privately conferred Virginia undergraduate degrees over the same period, and to achieve these targets by expanding enrollment of Virginians at public and private higher education institutions in the Commonwealth, improving undergraduate graduation and retention rates in the Virginia higher education system, and increasing degree completion by Virginians with partial credit toward a college degree, including students with ongoing job and family commitments who need access to nontraditional college-level educational opportunities;

4. To enhance personal opportunity and earning power for individual Virginians by increasing college degree attainment in the Commonwealth, especially in high-demand, high-income fields such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health care, and by providing information about the economic value and impact of individual degree programs by institution;

5. To promote university-based research that produces outside investment in Virginia, fuels economic advances, triggers commercialization of new products and processes, fosters the formation of new businesses, leads businesses to bring their facilities and jobs to Virginia, and in other ways helps place the Commonwealth on the leading edge in the knowledge-driven economy;

6. To support the national effort to enhance the security and economic competitiveness of the United States of America, and to secure a leading economic position for the Commonwealth of Virginia, through increased research and instruction in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and related fields, which require qualified faculty, appropriate research facilities and equipment, public-private and intergovernmental collaboration, and sustained state support;

7. To preserve and enhance the Virginia higher education system’s excellence and cost-efficiency through reform-based investment that promotes innovative instructional models and pathways to degree attainment, including optimal use of physical facilities and instructional resources throughout the year, technology-enhanced instruction, sharing of instructional resources between and among colleges, universities, and other degree-granting entities in the Commonwealth, increased online learning opportunities for nontraditional students, improved rate and pace of degree completion, expanded availability of dual enrollment and advanced placement options and early college commitment programs, expanded community college transfer options leading to bachelor’s degree completion, and enhanced college readiness before matriculation, among other reforms;

8. To realize the potential for enhanced benefits from the Restructured Higher Education Financial and Administrative Operations Act of 2005 (§ 23-38.88 et seq.), through a sustained commitment to the principles of autonomy, accountability, affordable access, and mutual trust and obligation underlying the restructuring initiative;

9. To establish a higher education funding framework and policy that promotes stable, predictable, equitable, and adequate funding, facilitates effective planning at the institutional and state levels, provides incentives for increased enrollment of Virginia students at public and private nonprofit colleges and universities in the Commonwealth, provides need-based financial aid for low-income and middle-income students and families, relieves the upward pressure on tuition associated with loss of state support due to economic downturns or other causes, and provides financial incentives to promote innovation and enhanced economic opportunity in furtherance of the objective of this chapter; and

10. To recognize that the unique mission and contributions of each institution of higher education in the Commonwealth is consistent with the desire to build upon the strengths of the Commonwealth’s excellent system of higher education, to afford these unique missions and contributions appropriate safeguards, and to allow these attributes to inform the development and implementation of funding policies, performance criteria, economic opportunity metrics, and recommendations in the furtherance of this chapter’s objectives.