HECB Executive Director Don Bennett answers questions on TVW

On TVW’s The Impact program this week, students discuss how college budget cuts and tuition increases are affecting them. HECB Executive Director Don Bennett also discusses the House and Senate budget proposals, the connection between financial aid and higher education policy, and the HECB’s role as some state leaders call for both increased tuition flexibility and greater institutional accountability.

UW President-designee faces Washington media

Michael K. Young held his first news conference today following Monday’s announcement that he has been selected President Designate of the University of Washington. Young touched upon a range of topics, including the budget challenges facing the university and higher education generally, commercialization of academic research, and the role of sports at the university.

UW Regents offer president’s job to University of Utah President Michael Young

The University of Washington Board of Regents today selected University of Utah President Michael K. Young to be the next president of the University of Washington, effective July 1.

Michael K. Young

Board President Herb Simon was authorized to negotiate an employment agreement with Young, which will be subject to board approval, according to a statement released by the UW.

Young, 61, has been president of the University of Utah since 2004.  Prior to his appointment at Utah, he was dean and Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at The George Washington University Law School from 1998 until 2004.

He is a 1973 graduate of Brigham Young University and a 1976 graduate of Harvard Law School.

Under Young’s leadership, the University of Utah’s annual budget grew from $1.6 billion to $2.6 billion, and it began or completed nearly 2 million square feet of capital construction. Over the past five years, the university has led the nation in the number of spinoff companies created as a result of academic research.

According to the UW, Young is recognized not only for his academic work on Japanese law and international trade, but also for his international human rights advocacy work.  He served as a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1998 to 2005, and chaired the commission twice.

During President George H.W. Bush’s administration, Young served as ambassador for trade and environmental affairs, deputy undersecretary for economic and agricultural affairs, and deputy legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State.

In another major administrative announcement earlier this month, the UW said Debra Friedman has been chosen to serve as the next chancellor of the University of Washington Tacoma, also effective July 1. Her appointment is subject to approval by the Board of Regents.

Friedman has been dean of the College of Public Programs and professor of public affairs at Arizona State University since 2005. Before going to Arizona State, Friedman held various administrative posts at the UW from 1994 to 2005, including assistant dean and associate dean of undergraduate education, associate provost for academic planning, and director of special projects in development and alumni relations.

Promise Scholarship students tell their stories

The Spokesman Review published an article Thursday on the state-funded Passport for Foster Youth Promise program,  an HECB-administered pilot program that encourages foster youth to prepare for and succeed in college.

The article shares the stories of three former foster youth who are now students at Spokane Falls Community College and recipients of Passport scholarships.  The highly articulate students tell of their efforts to prove wrong the stereotype that foster youth are people who never succeed.

The Passport for Foster Youth Promise program was created by the Legislature as a six-year pilot program in 2007. It provides foster youth with information and assistance in preparing for college, as well as a significant scholarship for postsecondary education.

Since 2007, over 1,100 foster youth have become eligible for the program.

News media show interest in HECB’s Regional Needs report

An article by Associated Press higher education reporter Donna Blankenship discussing the HECB’s new Regional Needs Analysis Report was picked up today by several news outlets in the state.

The article discusses the goal of the state’s Strategic Master Plan for Higher Education to produce more college graduates, especially in high-demand fields, and how the recession has hindered those efforts.

HECB Executive Director Don Bennett said the Regional Needs Analysis Report is an important first step in the effort by the HECB to update the Strategic Master Plan later this year.   

News media providing coverage of the report today included The Olympian, The (Everett) Herald, The Seattle Times, and KPLU radio.

Newspaper looks at budget options facing Legislature

In an article Saturday, the Seattle Times compared higher education budget proposals now under consideration by the Legislature, and the impact they could have on state funding, tuition rates, and student financial aid.

As the Legislature works to develop a final state budget for the 2011-13 biennium, one of the issues raising concern, according to the newspaper, is an increase in the percentage of nonresident students at public colleges and universities. Although resident students still comprise a significant majority, nonresident students pay much higher tuition, which helps the institutions offset significant reductions in higher education funding as a result of the recession.

An earlier Seattle Times article—which generated more than 700 comments from readers on the newspaper’s website—reported that the UW expects about 3,850 resident students to enroll in this year’s freshman class, or about 70 percent of the class.  Last year, resident students constituted 73 percent of the class.    

News Release: Continued focus on high-demand degree production needed to meet regional employment needs by 2018 and beyond, new HECB report emphasizes

OLYMPIA– A regional analysis of workforce needs recently completed by the Higher Education Coordinating Board (HECB) urges the state and its higher education institutions – public and private – to continue to ramp up degree production in high-demand, high-wage fields in all regions of the state.

The need for degree holders in specific high-wage fields is increasing, despite the recession, and will grow even more in the future — not just in the major population centers, but in virtually every one of the eight regions represented in the study, said John Lederer, HECB associate director of academic affairs, the report’s author.

The Regional Needs Analysis Report notes that higher education capacity (especially at the graduate level) is highly concentrated in King County and, to a lesser extent, Spokane and Pullman.  Demographic trends, policy, and economic factors will continue to spur the need for additional capacity to produce high-demand degrees outside these population centers, the report notes.

The strongest statewide demand for degree holders continues to be in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the so-called STEM fields); in the health sciences (nursing, allied health, medicine, biosciences); in specific teaching fields (science and mathematics); and in the areas of business management and accounting, said Lederer. All of these fields require postsecondary education and many require a bachelor’s or graduate degree.

Past reports have indicated Washington is not producing enough high-demand degree holders – especially in the STEM fields – to meet its current and future needs. For every 100 baccalaureate degree holders Washington produces, it imports 76.  For every 100 graduate degree holders it produces, it imports 125.  This over-reliance on importing talent is not a sustainable long-term strategy to maintain the state’s competitiveness in the global, knowledge-driven economy.

The regional report reinforces conclusions in Washington’s 2008 Strategic Master Plan for Higher Education, which calls for the state to increase baccalaureate and advanced degree production significantly by 2018 (and in the years beyond) to replace retiring baby boomers and meet the growing need for workers in high-demand occupations. 

The new HECB report identifies high employer demand occupations based on a forecast of new and replacement job openings between 2010 and 2020 for each of the eight regions. A wide range of additional demographic data is provided about each district.

This information is used by Washington’s higher education institutions to help measure the need for proposed new and expanded degree program offerings. The report emphasizes that higher education institutions are in a good position to identify regional employment supply gaps in consultation with local employers and agencies.

The complete report is online at www.hecb.wa.gov/publications.

Some of the report’s key findings:

·         Student demand for access to higher education will continue to increase in the next 10 years, driven by federal and state policy, goals and incentives.  Many ‘new’ students will come to higher education directly from high school, and more adults in the workforce are expected to enroll – including those who may have stopped out for a while.

·          In Washington, a leading ‘new economy state,’ it is estimated 67 percent of all jobs by 2018 will require some postsecondary education. (Nationwide, 63 percent of jobs will require postsecondary education by 2018).  About 20 percent of the Washington jobs will require some college but no degree.  About 47 percent will require an associate degree or higher.

·         College participation rates vary widely across the state.  Higher college participation rates are found in counties where institutions (especially institutions with resident students) are located.

·         The forecast predicts wider dispersion of jobs requiring postsecondary education beyond King County.  Currently, 46 percent of all jobs in Washington requiring postsecondary education are in King County, but the forecast is for only 41 percent of job openings to occur there.

·         The number of job openings for those who receive graduate degrees significantly exceeds Washington’s 2009 graduate degree production level, taking into account the many graduate degree recipients who continue to additional education, remain in their same job, leave the labor force, or leave Washington after receiving their degree to take jobs elsewhere.

·         Snohomish County has the lowest enrollment capacity with four-year enrollments totaling only a fraction of two-year enrollments in the county.  It also has the lowest capacity of any region based on its population, even if nearby institutions in King County are factored in. 

Project aims to boost College Bound sign ups in South King County area

A group has launched a new campaign to see that eligible 7th and 8th grade students from Seattle and South King County don’t miss the opportunity to receive college financial assistance through the College Bound Scholarship program, which is administered by the HECB.  In a story today, KPLU reporter Charla Bear described the Road Map Project to encourage College Bound sign ups in the area.   

Fewer spots in public baccalaureates for increasing numbers of transfer students

Washington has one of the nation’s largest, per-capita, community and technical college systems, a system experiencing unprecedented growth in student enrollment during the current recession. More than 70 percent of Washington postsecondary students begin at one of the state’s 34 two-year colleges, and of these about a third plan to transfer to a four-year college or university. 

How successful is the state in meeting the transfer aspirations of these incoming students?  The good news is that the overall number of students transferring is increasing – up 13 percent in the five-year period between 2005-06 and 2009-10. The challenge is finding enough seats for them in the state’s over-burdened public, baccalaureate sector.

Faced with increasing numbers of students who want to transfer, the state’s public baccalaureate institutions have not been able to muster enough slots to accommodate them. While the number of students transferring to private baccalaureate institutions increased 36.9 percent from 2006 to 2010, the number transferring to public institutions increased only 1.3 percent (from 10,426 to 10,563).  Running Start transfers increased 15.7 percent during this period (from 2,049 to 2,408).

Budget cuts over the last three years have resulted in significant over-enrollment in the public, baccalaureate sector. This has reduced flexibility in offering transfer slots. In addition, students who enroll as freshmen in Washington’s public four-year institutions have among the highest persistence rates in the nation, which further limits transfer access.

Transfer to private institutions is worth special note. The University of Phoenix is now one of the top two transfer destinations – on par with the University of Washington’s Seattle campus. At least part of this development is due to the University of Phoenix’s transfer-friendly policies.

It is important to note the state’s public baccalaureate institutions still enroll the majority of transfer students. About 13,000 of the 19,000 students who transferred ‘vertically’ in Washington in 2010, did so to public institutions. Still, over the last five years, the rate of transfer to the independent, non-profit colleges and universities has grown much faster than transfer to the public colleges and universities, according to the new Transfer Report 2011 produced by the Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The report suggests that the state’s public colleges and universities might re-capture some of that transfer growth momentum by adding bachelor’s programs on community and technical college campuses and by offering degree completion programs for working adults at times and places convenient for them.

One way of improving the traditional two- to four-year transfer rate is to locate baccalaureate programs on CTC campuses. Several of the Independent Colleges of Washington (ICW) have done just that. For example, Heritage University has programs at Columbia Basin, Big Bend, and South Seattle Community Colleges. St. Martin’s University has programs at Centralia and Olympic Colleges and offers courses at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

In addition, offering programs for returning adults and working adults can help spur greater transfer success. Whitworth University has a degree-completion program for returning adults in downtown Spokane.  And Seattle Pacific University offers an evening electrical engineering degree and a degree at the Boeing plant in Everett.

The report posed a number of key questions regarding transfer in Washington State. Following is a synopsis of some of the report’s findings.

Do students transfer without loss of credit?

Evidence from a 2009 study suggests that the specialized transfer degrees for Science and Engineering (AS-T) and Major Related Programs (MRPs) for specific majors like Business were effective. Students who took advantage of these pathways completed their majors with fewer excess credits – saving students time and money.

How successful are students after they transfer?

• There has been an 8 percent increase in the number of students who graduate within three years after transferring to a public baccalaureate
• There was a 6.3 percent increase (13,973 degrees) in total 2009-10 transfer-designated degrees in Associate of Arts, Associate in Science-Transfer, and Direct Transfer Associate.
• The number of students completing designated transfer degrees in major fields (Major-Related Programs increased 41 percent between 2009 and 2010.

Is student transfer awareness increasing?

• 5 percent increase in the number of students indicating an interest in transferring to a four-year institution.
• 59 percent increase (almost 38,000 to over 60,300 students) over the past 5 years in the completion of college-level courses by students who are still in high school and enroll in dual credit type programs, including Running Start, College in the High School, Alternative High School and Tech Prep.

The report provides information on a range of initiatives designed to improve transfer success: 

• Development of new transfer associate degree pathways in major fields (Biology).
• Development of documents addressing Transfer Student Rights and Responsibilities.
• Designation of a system-wide Transfer Liaison to help students address transfer concerns.
• Beginning work to develop a Transfer Network to improve communication among the various groups working on transfer in the state.
• The use of technology in the community and technical colleges to implement a system-wide Degree Audit System.
• Development of a collaborative process between SBCTC and HECB staffs to review new Bachelor’s of Applied Science (B.A.S.) degrees.
• Continued monitoring of the 1994 proportionality agreement between the public community colleges and the baccalaureate institutions.

To read the full report, including the executive summary, go to this link.

Paper reports increase in nonresident students to help UW offset budget cuts

A Sunday article by Seattle Times by higher education writer Katherine Long discusses the growing number of nonresident students who are attending the University of Washington and how they are helping the university offset cuts in state General Fund support for higher education.

As a result of the trend, some high-performing high school students in Washington are being denied admission to the UW, while out-of-state students with lower grades have been admitted, the newspaper reports. 

Nonresident tuition is significantly higher than resident tuition for students attending Washington’s public colleges and universities.  For a comparison, see page 19 of the HECB’s Key Facts about Higher Education in Washington. 

“Nonresident students in effect subsidize the education of Washington residents, providing a much-needed boost in revenue at a time the UW could see its funding cut by $200 million over the next biennium,” the Times reported.

Pros and cons of online university proposal explored in newspaper columns

The Seattle Times editorial page today offered contrasting views of a proposal in the Legislature to expand higher education opportunities by creating a partnership between the state and the online Western Governor’s University (WGU).

Writing in favor of the proposal is Robert W. Mendenhall, president of Western Governor’s University.  Opposing the measure in a separate column is Johann Neem, an Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University.

SHB 1822, which would establish the state partnership with WGU, passed the House in late February and is currently in the Senate Rules Committee.  A companion measure, SB 5136, was not passed by the Senate.  For more on the WGU legislation, see this earlier post in the HECB Legislative Report.