The Heldrich Center provides project management and research support to the New Jersey Office of the Governor’s task forces on artificial intelligence (AI) and wealth disparities.

For the AI task force, the Heldrich Center is facilitating a telephone survey of New Jerseyans. The survey will oversample in underserved communities of color to understand their challenges with broadband access and public digital services in New Jersey, especially as those challenges intersect with AI.

To support the wealth disparities task force, the Heldrich Center is facilitating a study to examine the causes and remedies for the longstanding wealth disparities that affect Black and Hispanic households in New Jersey. To supplement this work, the Heldrich Center will use New Jersey Statewide Data System data to analyze the granular student experiences of 2014 and 2015 high school graduates. Focusing primarily on the Black and Hispanic populations of students, this analysis will provide information on how those students’ K–12 backgrounds compare, including free and reduced-price lunch status, special education classification, participation in dual enrollment, performance on standardized tests, and graduation rates. Following high school graduation, the analysis will provide information on the proportion of students by race/ethnicity, enrollment in higher education within the state following high school graduation, the proportion that seamlessly enrolled (enrolling in college the fall after high school graduation), the proportion receiving state aid, retention, and completion rates. Finally, the analysis will provide information on post-graduation quarterly earnings within the state immediately following high school for those who do not match to higher education records, and immediately following degree completion for those who do match.