Office of Governmental Relations

This afternoon the House Higher Education Committee met for both a public hearing and a work session.

Public Hearing – HB 2158

The Committee heard the first bill of the special session – House Bill 2158. The bill adds Project Lead-the-Way examinations to the examinations that may be taken in high school to demonstrate college-level skills and for the purpose of meeting certain lower division general education or postsecondary professional technical education requirements.

Project Lead The Way (PLTW) is a non-profit organization that offers Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) education curricular programs used in middle and high schools across the U.S. The PLTW programs engage students in activities, projects, and problembased learning which provides hands-on classroom experiences and allows students to create, discover, collaborate and solve problems and apply what they learn in math and science.

Work Session

The Committee focused an hour long work session on two critical issues for higher education: (1) student outcomes and (2) state and federal work study programs.

Student Outcomes

Earlier in December the Washington Education Research & Data Center (ERDC), a part of the Office of Financial Management, launched a dashboard that focuses on student outcomes for Washington’s public baccalaureate institutions.

This afternoon the Committee received an overview of the dashboard from the authors including staff of the ERDC and Council of Presidents.

The Committee engaged with the authors of the dashboard in a conversation about the vision legislators have for the dashboard. Legislators commented to the need to be able to view data for education from a systematic point of view, the need for data that shows the connection between student choice and institutional markets, where are students employed after graduation, and financial-related data for students, state funding, and institutional expenses.

State and Federal Work Study Programs

For the second part of the work session the Committee focused on better understanding both state and fedeal work study programs.  The Higher Education Coordinating Board provided in-depth overview of the two programs and their impact on students.

This week the Washington Office of Financial Management (OFM) released a dashboard for Washington’s public baccalaureate institutions.

The dashboard is the result of passage of legislation (HB 1795)  in the 2011 regular session to provide the opportunity for Washingtonians to see outcome data for the public four-year institutions.

The dashboard shows aggregated data for the four-year sector and provides several metrics that focus on enrollment, retention, graduation, and degrees. Ultimately the dashboard will include data for each of the public baccalaureates in the new Complete to Compete accountability framework championed by Governor Gregoire.

The dashboard was developed by the OFM Forecasting and Research Division in conjunction with the six public baccalureate institutions, Council of Presidents, Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Department of Enterprise Services.

The next version of the dashboard will be available Spring 2012.

In July the National Governors Association (NGA) met to dialogue on a variety of issues facing states, including the role of higher education in global competitiveness.

A key part of the conversation with regard to higher education focused on a report introduced by Governor Gregoire, as part of her NGA Chair’s initiative Complete to Compete,  that focuses on restructuring state higher education accountability systems. The report, From Information to Action: Revamping Higher Education Accountability Systems, makes the case that states should include efficiency and effectiveness metrics in their accountability systems to help answer for key policy questions.

• What extent are public higher education institutions meeting the state’s need for an educated workforce and supporting progress toward longer term economic goals?
• How many students at public institutions are graduating relative to total enrollment?
• What is the return on states’ and students’ investment in public institutions in terms of completed certificates and degrees?
• How can public institutions demonstrate that efficiency gains are being achieved without sacrificing student learning?

The report goes on to suggest that several policy options are available to make better use of accountability measures, including bugeting, funding, and regulation.

This afternoon the Washington House passed legislation that would alter current policies focused on tuition, accountability, and financial aid.  House Bill 1795 passed with a vote of 79-17.

The bill is a comprehensive piece of legislation that leaves little alone with regard to higher education policy. The key provision in the bill for many is the ability for four-year public baccalaureate institutions to set tuition for all students through 2014-2015 and modifies this authority based on a state funding baseline and funding for higher education institutions in the Global Challenge States through 2018-2019.

The ability for the four-year public baccalaureate institutions to set their own tuition levels is mitigated by strengthening current institutional financial aid requirements and funding the State Need Grant at the proposed increased tuition rates in the budget.  All institutions are required to remit at least 4% of operating fees back to students in the form of financial aid. This is an increase from 3.5%.

Institutions that exceed the tuition levels appropriated in the budget are required to remit 5% of operating fees back to students in the form of financial aid and provide financial assistance to students up to 125% of the Median Family Income (MFI) via a specific formula that is based on tuition price as a percentage of MFI in various income brackets up to 125% of MFI.  Finally all instititutions are required to make every effort to encourage eligible students to take advantage of federal tax credits.

The bill also requires higehr education institutions to report by December 1 on performance data that aligns with the National Governor’s Association Complete to Compete metrics with additions that include graduate and professional degrees;Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) participation; student debt load; and disaggregation of measures based on various student demographics, including socio-economic status and income levels. In addition institutions must develop a performance plan which must include a set of expected outcomes (i.e. time to degree, baccalureate degree production).

Finally the bills makes changes to dual enrollment policies, transfer and prior credit policies, and provides regulatory relief for institutions of higher education.

The bill now goes to the Senate for further consideration.

This morning the Washington Joint Legislative Audit & Review Committee (JLARC) adopted the final report, Transparency in Higher Education Data.

In 2009, the Legislature asked JLARC to explore the feasibility of linking expenditure, revenue, and performance information for the state’s public four-year institutions.

The report found that in general comparable revenue, expenditure and performance information is currently available for each of the six public four-year institutions.

The report identifies some gaps and offers suggestions for improvements to fiscal data collected in the state accounting system and performance data collected by the Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Mike Reilly, Executive Director for the Council of Presidents, testified to the value of considering the adoption and implementation of  the NGA initiative Compete to Complete. Compete to Complete  offers the state the opportunity to consolidate measures for higher education into a single framework.  The University of Washington also testified.

The final report was unanimously approved.

The National Governor’s Association (NGA) recently announced the members of the Complete to Compete National Advisory Group.

Complete to Compete is a yearlong initiative, developed by the current NGA Chair Governor Manchin (WV), focused on increasing the number of students in the U.S. who complete college degrees and certificates and improving the productivity of the country’s higher education institutions.

The members of the Advisory Group include:

Charlie Earl- Executive Director, Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges
Fred DuVal – Vice Chair, Arizona Board of Regents
Roger Ferguson, Jr. – President/CEO, TIAA-CREF
Juliet Garcia, President, Universit of Texas at Brownsville & Texas Southmost College
Bill Green, Chairman/CEO, Accenture
Brian Noland, Chancellor, West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission
Charlie Reed, Chancellor, The California State University
Eduardo Padron, President, Miami Dade College
Eric Smith, Commissioner, Florida Department of Education
Nancy Zimpher, Chancellor, State University of New York

The Financial Literacy and Education Commission is requesting comments on a proposed set of financial education core competencies.

As a part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, the Commission is required to review the national strategy to promote basic financial literacy and education. As a part of this review the Commission determined that there is a need to develop core competencies for consumers and financial education providers.

The development of core competencies is a fundamental step in establishing a clear understanding about what individuals should know and the basic concepts program providers should cover. In addition the competencies should establish a baseline of knowledge.

The intention of the competencies is to define what consumers should know and be able to do to successfully understand and make informed decisions about their personal finances. To this end, the Commission has identified five core concept areas: (1) earning, (2) spending, (3) saving, (4) borrowing, and (5) protecting against risk as well as specific core competencies for each area.

The deadline for comments regarding whether the list of Core Competencies is complete and whether there are portions that should be deleted, revised, or expanded is September 12.  The request for comments is one of several steps in the validation phase of the development of the competencies.

This week, the new chairman of the National Governor’s Association (NGA), Joe Manchin III, Governor of West Virginia, announced a plan to create a common set of measures to monitor progress and compare states.

The report, Complete to Compete: Common College Completion Metrics recommends the common higher education measures that all states should collect and report publicly.

According to the NGA website:

Comparable, reliable metrics are essential for states under current fiscal constraints. Information on the progress toward, and degree completion of, all students in higher education allows state leaders to gauge whether policies are successful and helps inform future funding decisions. NGA convened a Work Group on Common College Completion Metrics to make recommendations on the common higher education measures that states should collect and report publicly.

The Work Group on Common College Completion Metrics, convened by the NGA, recommends four outcome metrics and six progressive metrics.

Outcome Metrics

• Degrees and certificates awarded
• Graduation rates
• Transfer rates
• Time and credits to degree

Progressive Metrics

• Enrollment in remedial education
• Success beyond remedial education
• Success in first-year college courses
• Credit accumulation
• Retention rates
• Course completion

Governor Manchin stated “we’re facing a generation of students that is projected to have lower educational attainment than their parents…an alarming stat”.

Manchin’s comment is well supported. The U.S. ranks 10th in the percentage of young adults with college degrees according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. In addition, both the Obama Administration and other higher education focused organizations, such as the Lumina Foundation for Education, have both set laudable goals for increasing the portion of Americans with college degrees.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science announced the awarding of $250 million in grants to twenty state education departments to design and implement a statewide longitudinal data system.

Among the twenty state education departments awarded funds, Washington received $17.3 million to assist in the development and implementation of systems that promote linking of data across time and databases, from early childhood into career, including matching teachers to students, while protecting student privacy and confidentiality consistent with applicable privacy protection laws.

The grant funds will be directed by Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Education Research and Data Center.

The grants are funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, a.k.a. stimulus dollars) of 2009.  The awardees were selected in a competition based on the merit of the applicants’ proposals and the funding available for the program. All fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands applied.

Reports from the Higher Learning Commission’s annual meeting emerged this week that indicated the Administration’s intent to continue the pressure initiated during the Bush Administration on colleges and universities to prove they provide a quality education at an accessible price.

The message from national higher education leaders who spoke at the meeting clearly communicated the Administration’s determination to hold colleges and universities accountable for performance or face undesirable consequences if institutions do not make meaningful changes on their own.

As Molly Corbett Broad, the president of the American Council on Education stated, “To the extent that federal policy makers are now willing to bail out banks and other financial institutions, and to take major equity positions in our auto makers, because those companies are too big to fail, then I believe it’s wise for us to assume they will have little reservation about regulating higher education now that they know it is too important to fail.”

So why all of this tough love? The Administration believes the vehicle by which to successfully educate more students to drive the economy is a college education.  However, for this success to materialize the Administration believes their is room for improvement with regards to performance.

Actions that underlie this intention are not hard to find.  In a brief scan of the higher education-related areas in which the Obama Administration has already delved, it is easy to recognize areas that historically would have been viewed as off-limits to federal action.

These include but are not limited to:

• A prescriptive guide to accreditation recently released by the Administration.
• A negotiation of proposed rules that define”credit hour” and other issues that impact academic quality.

Still many college leaders are left scratching their heads with regard to specifics about how to bring about innovation that might persuade critics that believe higher education can be more productive without lowering quality.

The fact is that higher education institutions may not have much time to ponder. As Broad stated at the meeting, “If we fail to act, it is likely that change will be imposed upon us, with potentially serious consequences for the governance structure that has allowed the United States to develop the best, most inclusive ‘higher education system in the world.”