Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Plan offers second try for colleges
Arkansas’ colleges and universities at risk of losing some of their state funding because students aren’t progressing toward graduation will get another shot at keeping the money.
On Friday, the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board adopted a policy that will allow those colleges and universities to develop an improvement plans to address their deficiencies. If the plans are approved, the institutions will then receive either a part or all of their funding tied to
students’ progress.
This year — for the first time ever — an Arkansas university is at risk of losing such state funding.
“For an institution that doesn’t meet the minimum performance score, clearly there are some issues there that have caused that low score,” said Brett Powell, director of the state’s Department of Higher Education. “For an institution in that situation, to take additional funding away probably exacerbates an issue that’s already occurred. So we’re suggesting that that funding … be set aside.”
For years, state funding for higher education institutions was based largely on enrollment. In 2011, policymakers added another type of funding mechanism for the state’s 33 public colleges and universities, a response to then-Gov. Mike Beebe’s call to double the number of degree holders in Arkansas by 2025.
Arkansas is historically at or near the bottom of the nation when it comes to residents with a college degree. Officials have said a better-educated population would be a way to attract industry.
Now, 90 percent of a school’s funding allocation comes from the enrollment portion of the formula, while only 10 percent is a result of measures known as performance-based funding. If an institution performs poorly on those measures and scores below the minimum score of six out of 10 points, it will be at risk of losing some state funding.
Arkansas is among 30 states that have a type of performance-based funding mechanism in place.
The state’s model gauges universities on four measures, including the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded and progression toward graduation. Those measures are weighed against “optional measures,” such as the number of credentials earned by students who need remedial coursework or those earned by minority-group students.
For the four-year institutions, the Higher Education Department takes the average of those measures for the past two years and compares it with the average of the measures over the past three years.
Community colleges are gauged on seven measures, including the number of technical certificates awarded and progression toward a credential. Those are weighed against “compensatory measures,” such as the number of low-income students relative to enrollment and “optional measures,” such as the number of students who transfer out of the community college after completing 12 hours of coursework.
For the two-year institutions, the Higher Education Department takes the average of those measures for the past three years and compares it with the average of the measures over the past five years.
Neighboring Tennessee was the first to enact performance measures in 1979 and is now considered at the forefront on the matter, said Martha Snyder, a senior associate at Washington, D.C.-based HCM Strategists, a higher education consulting firm. Tennessee and other states, including Ohio and Indiana, use the outcome-based measures as the only method to allocate state funds to their higher education institutions.
“I think intuitively it makes a lot of sense in terms of the concept of aligning funding with student completion and attainment,” Snyder said. “The challenge that comes into play is how does it play out on the ground level … and how do you transition what you currently have to a new [funding] model?”
When Arkansas first started the performance funding model, the law left out two parts: how much funding an institution should lose if it scores below the minimum and, if it does lose money, what happens to those funds?
The state Higher Education Coordinating Board earlier this year decided that a school would lose more funding as it drops further below the minimum score. The panel considered the second question Friday.
States have taken different approaches to finding a home for the remaining funds. Minnesota, for example, has given the leftover money to the state’s student aid program, Snyder said. In Pennsylvania, money would build up from one year to the next, and institutions could earn bonus points to earn the windfall of the nondistributed dollars for the next year, she said, adding that the method was called “the powerball effect.”
Under Arkansas’ newly adopted approach, colleges and universities will get a second chance at the money.
Schools that do fall short of the minimum score will piece together an improvement plan, detailing specific ways the college or university can improve on certain measures, along with a budget for the actions it plans to take.
A committee assembled by the Higher Education Department will review the plans. The committee members are subject to change each year, depending on the proposals.
The University of Arkansas at Monticello, which fell short of the minimum score, will test out the new approach.
For the impending proposal from UAM, Powell said he plans to include three representatives from the department: one from institutional finance, one from academic affairs and himself. If campus insight is needed, Powell said the department will include “an appropriate institutional representative.”
If the improvement plan is funded, the school will submit an evaluation at the end of the year to the Higher Education Department. The evaluation will include what improvements have been made in the past year.
If the plan is insufficient — or if the institution falls below the minimum score for a second consecutive year — it would lose the funding.
Then, other institutions can compete for that funding. The colleges and universities will need to submit proposals on ways to increase their own performance measures, and those plans will be funded by rank, according to the new rules.
Jay Jones, UAM’s interim chancellor, said he plans to submit the school’s improvement plan and hopes to earn back all of the $182,949.48.
The 3,854-student school was just shy of the minimum score at 5.16 points.
Of the four mandatory measures, the university did not earn a point for students progressing toward graduation. Of the optional measures, it failed to tally a point in six categories, including in the numbers of credentials earned by remedial and transfer students.
UAM is an open-admissions school that consistently has high rates of students who need remedial classes. In Arkansas, first-time students who score below a 19 in math, English or reading on the ACT college-admissions exam are required to complete noncredit remedial course work.
UAM had 64.2 percent of 522 students needing remedial coursework in fall 2014, according to Higher Education Department data. That was a decrease from the 67.2 percent of 506 students needing remediation the year before.
Since the spring, Jimmie Yeiser, the university’s provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs, has worked with faculty, staff and focus groups to piece together the plan, Jones said. The plan will focus on building a stronger institutional research arm and beefing up student success programs, he said.
The plan includes professional development for faculty and staff on retention and communicating the university’s goals and strategies to the campus community.
Currently, several employees at the university have an institutional research component attached to their job, Jones said. Under the improvement plan, he said, the university will have one employee who is dedicated to the research to develop performance-enhancing strategies. UAM will have another employee carrying out the strategies.
University officials will also work to motivate students, Jones said. The university will develop a policy on student attendance and create programs to help keep students on track to graduate, he said.
UAM also plans to upgrade its first-year experience, which includes student training on what to expect in the college experience and what it takes to be successful. It will start an intensive first four weeks initiative for freshmen, which will get them engaged, Jones said. Research has shown that the first four weeks of college are the most important for an incoming student, he added.
“We feel like we’ll get the results we need going forward,” Jones said. “I’m very optimistic about the success we have with [the plan].”
Friday’s changes are a step in the right direction in ensuring the state and Arkansas students are getting the best bang for their buck, state Rep. Mark Lowery said in an interview.
“There needs to be a carrot and stick approach to some of the funding,” the Maumelle Republican said. “This is the first time I’ve looked at a report like this. If you fall short, you can potentially make that money up. Yeah, it possibly costs money to make those improvements, but, frankly, they should have been making those improvements with money already provided.”
The improvement plan is the carrot, said Lowery, who leads the recently formed legislative task force studying realigning the state’s higher education institutions. The money is the stick, he said.
“I’m just really hoping that the review of the improvement plans is more stringent,” he said. “I would hope it’s not just a rubber stamp.”