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March 4, 2005 Arkansas State University - Jonesboro This First Friday report is about higher education issues now before the 85th General Assembly as the legislature is convened in Little Rock. For the first time in many years, there is a definable package of bills that pertain to higher education, in addition to the usual assortment of bills typically generated by the universities or by legislators who have independent issues regarding higher education. There also are the bills necessary to ensure appropriations and for various capital project proposals, but these should be considered as routine and predictable in every legislative session. What is unusual about the package of higher education bills is that they have followed a trajectory of development over several years, following the organization in 2003 of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher Education. Governor Mike Huckabee’s charge to the committee was to critically examine the state’s higher education system from the view of the business community, and recommend needed changes. The Blue Ribbon Commission conducted a series of public meetings and heard presentations of data organized and presented by the Department of Higher Education. Officers of two-year and four-year colleges and universities also brought testimony to the commission. The final report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher Education was authored by Mr. Scott Ford, Chief Executive Officer at Alltel, Inc., and was endorsed by the other commissioners who represented retail, financial, manufacturing, and technology industries. The report, mentioned in the December 2003 issue of First Friday, is available through the ADHE website, as is the data provided to the commission by the ADHE staff. (The report and the bills cited below are PDF files; click here if you need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.) The Blue Ribbon report is important for several reasons: It represents an intention by the Governor to bring Arkansas higher education issues to the forefront; it depicts insights on higher education as perceived by the business community; it calls for reforms in the higher education system as we know it today; and, it has been the basis for a package of legislation, as will be discussed shortly. One of the Blue Ribbon report recommendations was that the Department of Higher Education should recognize and address inequities that exist in funding patterns for colleges, universities, and non-teaching higher education entities. This observation led to the development of the funding formula that has been addressed at length in previous First Friday reports and is endorsed and supported by Arkansas State University. The funding formula would address the concern for equity expressed by the Blue Ribbon Commission and, if fully realized by appropriations from the legislature, would eliminate significant funding disparities over a four-year period. This funding equity has been espoused by ASU for decades. Appropriate funding was not provided by the state for a significant period of our growth as an institution, especially in the years that our postgraduate programs emerged at the master's and doctoral levels. Even though many of these programs were developed to respond to needs expressed by the state, funding to support the programs was not provided by the state. As the result, our funding lags behind the level indicated by the formula in the amount of $11 million annually. The more significant impact of this inequity is cumulative, as that shortfall of the base budget represents many years of deserved money that was not provided to ASU, and is now the basis for many unmet budget needs within the university. Another aspect of the Blue Ribbon Commission report addressed the need for the legislature to consider and to respond to data relevant to higher education. This material is routinely organized and compiled by the Department of Higher Education, and often is considered by the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board. It is significant that the Blue Ribbon Commission considered that this information is compelling and recommended that the legislature also receive this data and base decisions upon it. The difficult position of the legislature is to be considerate of the circumstances of higher education while not attempting to manage the colleges and universities. This role of oversight and management is assigned by the Arkansas Constitution to the governing boards of the institutions. But, the dissemination of data can be helpful to the legislature to understand trends, challenges, achievements, and shortcomings that are a part of higher education, and that will provide a basis for policies, statutes, and appropriations for the universities. The Blue Ribbon Commission findings have informed the development of a group of legislative bills about higher education, based upon consideration of statistical data, rather than conjecture. These bills have been initiated by Governor Huckabee and now are sponsored by legislative leaders in the Senate and House. The bills are winding their way through committees and the chambers, and eventually may become law. As these bills are outgrowths of the concerns expressed by the citizens committee, and because the bills bear the imprint of interest by the Governor and elected officials, the content of the bills may be instructive to the higher education community to understand how the public feels about our industry. Our understanding of these issues may help the ASU campuses be responsive to those constituents whom we ask to support our efforts. The bills that follow are appended to this report as attachments. Each bill lists the sponsors in the Senate and House, the bill title, and sections within the bill that define the intent of the proposed legislation. At the time of this writing all bills are still in discussion. Your commentary to me or to your legislator is timely at this moment, but be aware that final consideration likely will be completed this month. Higher education needs flexibility to add non-classified staff, usually faculty members, at the four-year universities should enrollments increase dramatically during a biennium. This bill describes a process to permit this change. Children of undocumented immigrants who graduate from Arkansas high schools do not receive the benefits of in-state tuition or state-supported scholarships at public universities in Arkansas. This bill would grant these benefits to all Arkansas high school graduates who have lived in the state three years and are admitted to a university, without regard to citizenship issues. The bill has passed out of the House and now is being considered in the Senate. The concepts of this bill provide interesting contrasts between federal immigration policies and the possible state-level response to Arkansas students defined as illegal aliens. These students are currently enrolled in the state’s pre-K through 12 public education system. The bill is of interest to ASU because of the report of our enrollment management consultant, described earlier in First Friday reports. The consultant recognized that, by 2014, the Arkansas Hispanic population will present a robust enrollment opportunity for the state universities. ASU is particularly well suited to respond to this opportunity because of our geographic presence in the agricultural district. Children of illegal immigrants are fearful about disclosing their status upon attaining the age of 18½ years (the collegiate cohort) as they would be immediately affected by immigration policies that could lead to deportation. Without statutory authority to attend public universities in Arkansas, these students are more likely to self-select themselves out of higher education in Arkansas, or leave the state to enroll elsewhere and not return. The Blue Ribbon Commission pointed out the difficulties that Arkansas students have in transferring courses from one university to another without losing credits, or without having courses applied toward degree requirements at the gaining institution. This bill describes a transfer process for general education courses as the “state minimum core curriculum.” Arkansas State University campuses currently employ the process described in the bill, and transfer among ASU campuses is transparent for students in our courses. The bill calls for a similar system to be developed by the Department of Higher Education for all public institutions using peer review teams composed of faculty members of the public universities. The Blue Ribbon Commission proposed that ties between higher education and business and industry be developed to achieve economic development needs of the state. The collaborations would be recognized by designations as “centers of excellence, "that would then serve to attract new business and industry to the various regions of the state. Funding mechanisms would presumably be developed to support the centers. A hypothetical example of the center concept is the joining of community colleges in east Arkansas with a university engineering program to produce activity that would be deemed important to support an automotive assembly plant. The project would be sponsored by an economic development agency that would unite the educational participants and broker contacts with the industrial consumer to train employees, identify research and development projects, educate employee dependents if they come from foreign environments, and to address a range of needs through higher education capabilities. As an extension of the economic development interests expressed in the previous bill, this proposal would call upon the Arkansas Department of Higher Education to coordinate a system of higher education that addresses and responds to the changing economic needs of the state and the new economy. This would be accomplished through a review process organized by ADHE, and funded by special appropriations. The Blue Ribbon Commission identified the state’s need to produce more college graduates to populate the workforce. The commission recognized that many high school graduates either do not begin or do not persist through the collegiate experience. Moreover, those who do complete the collegiate curriculum often require more than six years to receive the baccalaureate degree. This bill proposes incentive funding for institutions that improve retention and graduation rates beyond the production of the previous year. Enrollment growth would be recognized only if students complete courses for which they enroll. Institutions that fall below previous productivity achievement would not be eligible to receive money from the incentive pools. This bill would allow identification of a pool of money at each university equal to five percent of tuition and fee income that could be used for need-based scholarships of non-traditional or transfer students, or both. This bill has special significance for ASU students, as so many have demonstrated financial needs. The bill also is pertinent in the consideration of the proposal below. The Blue Ribbon Commission discourages the “scholarship race” among universities, in that some institutions would “buy” students to inflate enrollments and possibly receive additional funding under the formula. ASU has not resorted to this practice, but some institutions have dramatically increased the dollar volume of scholarship awards during the last five years.
This bill would require a gradual moderation of the amounts of money
devoted to scholarships at the universities until, in 2009-10, funding for
academic and performance scholarships would be limited to 15 percent of an
institution’s educational and general tuition and fee income. ASU
complies with the provisions of this bill and, coupled with Senate Bill
299, would be able to continue to address the scholarship needs of many of
our students. So, this collection of bills represents evidence that the state’s political process has considered and addressed several issues pertinent to higher education. We may wonder why this effort is now being made by the legislature, the governor, and the Department of Higher Education. The answer may lie in the text of Governor Huckabee’s Feb. 26 news column, included here as an attachment. There is a realization that more significant numbers of Arkansans are participating in post-secondary education. Those who matriculate from two- or four-year institutions can be expected to earn more money during a lifetime compared to those without higher education. Those graduates will contribute more to support state revenues through taxation. Those revenues can be used to pay for priorities of the state, including higher and public education. But more significant is the idea that our state’s economic development depends upon well-educated citizens, and that these persons will be required to transform the businesses and industries that drive the state’s economy. The Blue Ribbon Commission, composed of the economic leaders of Arkansas, and the elected officials may realize that the well-being of our state and its future will be predicated upon the success of the universities. There is no more powerful engine to produce economic growth than an educated populace. Or, put conversely, the future of Arkansas will be diminished without effective and productive institutions of higher learning. It is important for the constituents of Arkansas State University to realize that we are building the future in our work today, with every student and in every context in which we encourage learning.
Thank you for reading First Friday. I would be pleased to
receive your comments on this material or any other aspect of ASU. I
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