State universities’ results trailing, panelists warned
Posted on Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Arkansas gets less “bang for [its ] buck” when it comes to graduation rates and other results from its spending on higher education compared with other states, an expert told a legislative task force and subcommittee Tuesday.
Dennis Jones, president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems in Colorado, told the group that to address shortcomings in the state’s higher education system, state policymakers must identify priorities for higher education, devote resources to those areas and create accountability systems to measure performance.
The Task Force on Higher Education Remediation, Retention and Graduation Rates held its second day of a joint meeting with the Higher Education Subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council in Little Rock on Tuesday.
The task force is planning to provide recommendations by May or June 2008 in time for Gov. Mike Beebe to consider as he puts together a budget proposal for the 2009 legislative session. Beebe has said publicly that he wants to change the way state dollars are distributed to colleges by considering the colleges’ performances.
Arkansas allocates an average amount into its higher-education system compared with other states, but gets less out of the system compared with other states that fund their systems at similar levels, Jones said.
Arkansas ranks 45 th in a comparison of state systems of higher education and their performance, such as graduation rates, relative to the state funding and tuition per full-time equivalent student, according to a report co-authored by Jones. His organization is a nonprofit research and development center founded to improve strategy-making in institutions and agencies of higher education.
The state ranks 49 th in the nation for the percentage of adults older than 25 who have at least a bachelor’s degree. Just 19 percent of Arkansans hold least a bachelor’s degree. Beebe has said that the state’s economic prosperity is tied to college graduation.
Jones said that a collection of good higher-education institutions doesn’t necessarily address all of a state’s problems.
“So the question for the state is, ‘What are the priorities that institutional self-interest doesn’t cover ? What are the priorities that need to be filled ?’” Jones said.
“The real issue is for the money you’re getting, you ought to have higher expectations for outcomes,” Jones said. “The money you need to do this is already in the budget. It’s not that there has to be new money to get better outcomes.” Rep. Bill Abernathy, a Democrat from Mena, asked Jones to suggest some ways Arkansas could approach its goal of increasing the percentage of residents who have college degrees without increasing state funding.
Jones said an alignment be- tween K-12 and higher education is important to ensure that students are prepared to succeed in college.
Another approach is considering how to reduce college students’ course loads. Maryland, for instance, has set a limit on the number of credits required for degrees unless accreditation standards require more, Jones said.
Abernathy said during a break that he likes the idea of setting specific priorities for higher education.
“We need to look at areas that we have a particular need for and buy those services or give performance funding to getting those services accomplished through higher education,” Abernathy said.
But the performance-based funding will require much consideration, he said.
“We must not starve higher education in order to do something — the whim of the moment, so to speak,” Abernathy said.
One of those priorities may be finding ways to help adults beyond the traditional age of college students to pursue or complete college degrees, he said.
Joe Marks, director of education data services for the Southern Regional Education Board, spoke to the Task Force and Subcommittee later Tuesday. He said that while Arkansas has seen an increase in its percentage of college graduates over the years, the trend could come to a halt if it does not change achievement rates among Hispanics who accounted for the majority of the state’s population growth during the past 10 years.
Fewer Hispanics are in college compared with other racial and ethnic groups, and they graduate at a lower rate than whites and Asians, Marks said.
Sen. David Bisbee, a Republican from Rogers, said the federal government will have to help the state with addressing college achievement rates among Hispanics, many of whom he said are undocumented.
“The affordability of higher ed really becomes a problem because getting scholarships or any kind of public aid becomes very difficult,” Bisbee said, referring to undocumented Hispanics. “That’s a problem that the states can’t hardly deal with.” The Southern Regional Education Board, based in Atlanta, is a nonprofit organization that helps government and education leaders in its 16 member-states work together to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region.
B. Alan Sugg, president of the University of Arkansas System, said during a break in the meeting that he does not fear a possible change in the state’s method for funding colleges and universities. He said higher education institutions will be “very involved partners” in meeting the goals set by the state.
Sugg said he agrees with the need to increase the percentage of Arkansans with baccalaureate degrees, but said there is also a need for more jobs in the state so that college graduates can find employment in Arkansas.
Ed Franklin, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges, said that Monday and Tuesday’s meetings gave the group the information it needed to evaluate how the state is doing in higher education and to set goals for the future.
“We started a dialogue and started down a path... that will help change behaviors and outcomes in Arkansas,” Franklin said. “We’re going to need to figure out... how many of those [issues that need to be changed ] we can attack right now and how many of those do we attack over time.
“ It should be an ongoing dialogue and a setting and resetting of goals to move us forward as a state.”
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