While some state schools al­ready have admissions require­ments, most — including Dixie State College — have an open enrollment system where any­one is allowed to register for classes. As a result, many students come into school un­prepared, end up needing re­medial classes to catch up, and for the most part end of dropping out before they fin­ish, Urquhart said.

“This is a huge cost to taxpay­ers right now,” Urquhart said, pointing out that nearly two­thirds of Utah’s college students fail to graduate. “I’d like to see if we can put that burden on them a little earlier, where they have to show they’re prepared.”

In addition, many college graduates are finding it difficult to get a job even with their de­grees, indicating a move toward more job skills and technical training may be more appropri­ate for some of the students who now head to a four-year college, Urquhart contends.

“We need to be thinking a lot more about the marketplace than we are right now,” he said, adding that the new rule should apply only to incoming high school graduates. Nontraditional students returning to school would not be included.

It is not a new issue. David Buhler, associate commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education, said there is always a balancing act between wanting students who are prepared and successful in college, while still meeting the ethical expectation of offering educational opportu­nities to everyone.

“There’s a tension there, obvi­ously,” he said. “We don’t want to have a lot of people who aren’t ready and who aren’t able to suc­ceed. The trick is figuring out where to draw the line.”

There have been increased ef­forts in recent years to bridge that gap, Buhler said, pointing out the Regents’ Scholarship, offered to Utah high school students who take more difficult classes, and some individualized programs at state schools where incoming students are offered different class options depending on their abilities. More…

Buhler, a former Utah senator and political science professor at the U, spoke at the Associated Students of the University of Utah’s Civic Engagement Conference  on Friday.

He would not give names, but said the legislators questioning the funding likely hold that position because of “a misunderstanding and not a real appreciation for what this (education) means.”

Students and student leaders from Utah schools including the U, Utah State University and Salt Lake Community College, attended the conference. The attendees gathered in the Hinckley Institute of Politics Caucus Room for opening remarks from Kirk Jowers, director of the Institute.

“There’s very few people who don’t want a better education system,” Jowers said. The U is “becoming more of a private school” and public funding has become a smaller portion of the U’s budget, he said.

The goal of the conference was to teach students how to more effectively communicate with legislators, and essentially act as lobbyists on behalf of higher education, said Don Willie, director of ASUU Government Relations.

“If higher ed gets cut, everybody pays for it,” he said. “So we want to make sure we’re a united front.”

“Our really entire goal is to help students understand that the Legislature is the one who makes this happen,” Willie said, emphasizing that legislators’ votes directly affect tuition dollars. More…

Nearly 80% of Utah’s legislators have post-secondary degrees and (as you’ll read) I feel their support for higher education should come easily. However it seems there is a disconnect between higher education and legislative action. In this opinion, I speculate why this may be the case.

Anyhow, here’s what I wrote in it’s entirety, but please check out the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website to learn more about their Degrees in the Statehouse series:

Those of us who work in public higher education wonder why state legislators don’t make post-secondary education a higher priority when deciding state budgets. With that question in mind, not long ago I invited several legislators to join a television program I hosted on our educational station.

During their interviews, it was clear that while their understanding of how higher education operates varied greatly, overall they understood and supported the logic for a strong higher-education system and how critical it is to the state’s economic growth and essential for personal success. On a personal level, their children attended college, and they loved their own college experiences. I pushed for negative comments but only got a few, about faculty tenure, irrelevant degrees, and inefficiencies.

My conclusion is that higher education has won the academic argument with policy makers. However, we haven’t been able to convert the academic argument into political action. The big question is, Why not? One Utah legislator answered that he simply doesn’t hear from constituents about supporting higher education, because they’re more concerned with roads, unemployment, and taxes.

We are losing for three reasons. First, the public sees higher education as a private, not a public good. Second, our depressed economy has put a premium on jobs and economic security. Third, political ideology reigns supreme, and pragmatic support of the educational “establishment” has been devalued.

The chasm between the academic argument and political action will shrink only if we can mobilize legislators with college degrees to support our enterprise. Political support for higher education should come easily, as most legislators have degrees. Yet higher education is not getting vigorous advocacy from its graduates. Perhaps a college degree has only helped those legislators understand their basic role: representing the interests, values, and beliefs of their constituents.

Higher education must let elected officials know that it’s in their interest to support colleges. We also have to sell the public on the value of what we do by reconnecting with constituents. And, finally, we must have a serious conversation about what has prevented more-vigorous advocacy. Only then can we close the gap between the academic argument and legislative action.

To read this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, click here.

Gov. Gary Herbert demonstrated foresight and leadership with his veto of Senate Bill 229, “Transportation Funding Revisions.” While well-intentioned to help meet the state’s need for highways, this bill would have actually tied the hands of the Legislature and governor and made it more difficult to fund other critical needs.

In effect, this bill said that highways are so important that they are automatically funded without any discussion or debate or consideration of other state needs. Rather than discussing an override, the Legislature should also push the pause button.

A main power of any legislature is the “power of the purse,” the ability to decide how tax dollars are spent among a number of important functions of government.

SB229 would have handcuffed the Legislature by automatically increasing the amount of state sales tax dedicated to highway construction by 30 percent of the growth, or nearly $60 million by 2013.

This $60 million is on top of the $295 million annually directed from sales tax to highways, together with the millions collected from the gasoline tax and automobile registrations, the traditional source of highway funding. Legislative budgets are prepared based on current law. So if this bill became law, it means this $355 million a year would be off the table before the Legislature can even consider funding public safety, corrections, human services, health and, of course, higher education.

Historically in Utah, the state sales tax is how state government funded not only its portion of the cost of higher education but also everything else to aid the public good. Since the mid 1990s, higher education has also been funded through income tax, though sales tax is still an important source of funding colleges and universities.

In the state budget just passed, it accounts for 69 percent of higher education funding ($462.7 million out of $667.8 million in tax funds). For other state programs it is their only source of funding.

I support funding transportation; we all need and use the highways. But as commissioner of higher education I also have an obligation to point out that our state colleges and universities are also in need of state support.

Since 2008 our colleges and universities have grown by about 20,000 full-time students, while state funding has decreased by over $100 million. Some of this has been made up by students through tuition increases, and some covered by more efficiencies. Legislators should not arbitrarily limit the ability of other state services such as education to make their sales pitch for needed state dollars.

If SB229 were implemented, it would likely hurt our highest growth institutions the most — Utah Valley University, Dixie State College and Salt Lake Community College — as they have absorbed the most students during the past three years of budget cuts. Legislators who support these institutions have a good reason to be grateful the governor acted as he did.

Finally, it is important to note that the State Board of Regents, Governor’s Commission on Educational Excellence, and the business-led group Prosperity 2020 have all rallied around the goal of increasing the level of education to where 66 percent of our adult population has some training or education beyond high school.

If the motivation for SB229 was to aid the state’s economic development efforts, I submit that equally, if not more important, is a well-educated workforce. In that case, an autopilot increase of sales tax to higher education would also be in order.

It is clear that for Utah to prosper, we will need an increased level of educational attainment to be competitive with the rest of the country and, indeed, the rest of the world. This cannot be accomplished if we rely solely on students to fund expansion through their tuition.

It will also take support from the public through their representatives in the Legislature.

“They’ve found ways to be more efficient, they used more adjuncts, they had larger class sizes, a combination of things to try to minimize the impact on the students,” said Buhler. “We’re soon running out of efficiencies we can do and still maintain quality. Some of those costs will have to be passed on to students.”

The University of Utah has already announced plans to raise tuition by 7 to 9 percent. Other schools will set their rates later this month.

Public education received an increase in funding this year, but Utah’s colleges and universities had no such luck.

“Obviously we would have liked to have seen our enrollment growth recognized as well, but we’re happy for public ed, obviously we’re big supporters of public education, but I’m sure we’ll be going after more next year,” Buhler says.

An initial proposed budget cut of 7 percent was eventually whittled down to 2 percent, but Buhler says that’s still an $18 million loss.

To read this story from KCPW, click here.

Perhaps the worst of the worst were two joint resolutions to amend the Utah Constitution. SJR009 would have given the governor and state Senate total control over education, eliminating the State Board of Education. HJR15 would have made state board members appointees of the governor.

The original writers of the state constitution were right to separate education from the Legislature and the executive. The move in this session to put education under the thumb of elected officials was simply an undisguised and unconstitutional usurpation of power. Thankfully, neither was passed, although SJR009 did win approval in the Senate.

The bill to abolish tenure at public colleges and universities died in committee. Its diehard proponents are threatening to resurrect it later, but it deserves no return from the grave. It would seriously compromise the work being done at the state’s two research universities, endangering the jobs and economic vitality they provide.

Another salvo at public education, SB224, which would have made state school board elections partisan, essentially cementing Republican control of the board, passed the Senate but fortunately went no further.

Some unfortunate measures did survive. SB59 requires the State Office of Education to set up a system for grading schools based on students’ test scores, graduation rates and readiness for college or careers. It does nothing, however, to provide help that struggling schools may need to deal with growing enrollments of immigrant and minority children.

A bill that wasted a good deal of legislators’ time will force schools to teach that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. The reasons behind this bit of legislative micromanaging remain unclear except to the far-right fringe.

SB97, requiring that state funding for Utah’s eight colleges and universities be allocated based on each school’s stated mission, was supported by higher-education officials and was passed. We are interested to see how this one plays out.

The decision to fund the expected influx of more than 14,000 new students is a bright spot, overshadowed by the fact that for the past two years, growth went unfunded and that shortfall was never made up. So Utah’s investment per-student will remain the country’s lowest, by far.

To read this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, click here.

An initial proposed budget cut of 7 percent was whittled down to about 2 percent, about $18 million, although that will still force tuition hikes as enrollment continues to climb.

A message bill from Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, that would have allowed guns to be openly carried on college campuses was changed to focus on buffer zones around school grounds.

And an attempt to ban tenure for professors hired at the state’s public colleges after July 1, 2011, died in committee.

Utah State University scored two victories with approval for a veterinary school and an addition to a business building.

The joint veterinary program will accept 30 students a year — 20 in-state and 10 nonresidents — who will take the first two years at USU and then two years of clinical studies at Washington State University.”

“This new program will not only allow us to extend our role in addressing important state needs,” USU President Stan Albrecht said in a statement, “but will also buttress other research endeavors on our campus through collaboration with the Utah Science Technology and Research initiative and other USU programs.”

The Legislature approved $1.7 million to get the program off the ground this year.

Until the last day of the session, it was unclear whether any higher education buildings would be approved. But USU’s plan to add on to its business school had one advantage: $16 million in private pledges. Legislators decided to bond for $14 million to fund the rest of the project.

To read the rest of this article from the Deseret News, click here.