Regents look to future

They're called "strategic directions" for higher education in Utah — six major issues in need of tweaking or downright reform.

The Utah Board of Regents, which oversees Utah's 10 state colleges and universities, met in April to come up with signposts for the future of higher education here. Chairman Nolan Karras said the result is some of the most ambitious strategic planning to take place among regents in at least three years.

Regents will try in their meeting today to prioritize issues like improving student retention and graduation rates and linking funding to institutional missions and roles.

Utah System of Higher Education Commissioner Rich Kendell has an idea where to start the discussion.

"I think high school reform . . . getting more people into college, more training . . . more people with bachelor degrees, all of those are important goals," Kendell said. "I think this needs to be a real state priority."

Earlier this year, regents framed the notion of increasing academic expectations and enhancing student success on a K-16 scale, not just focusing on a college-age population.

USHE officials and regents want to see improvements in college access and participation numbers, in meeting the post-secondary needs of disadvantaged and minority students and in getting legislators to fund increasingly popular concurrent enrollment programs. Hispanic students will be a focus.

"We're not doing a good job of attracting that student population," said Karras.

Talks will also continue on how higher education can better build Utah's workforce and economy, which includes forging more institutional and business partnerships.

Kendell sees promise for Utah State University and the University of Utah, with the governor's help, in "jump-starting" the state's economy with more research and development in the biomedical, nanotechnology and high-tech industries.

More than just rhetoric, many of these issues are expected to turn into action items for the regents during the 2005-2006 academic year.

That means, for example, working closely with the State Office of Education on distributing an "Expectations Document" to all eighth-grade students. It would detail the benefits of a higher education and outline how to prepare for a successful college career.

With an increase in accountability as the impetus, new legislation may also be a goal toward creating a tracking system to follow a student all the way through the K-12 system and into USHE institutions.

"When it's all said and done," added Karras, "my objective is to say how well we're doing in training the workforce out there."

To measure USHE's success — such as whether graduates are finding jobs in their major right out of college or if they have the skill sets they need upon being hired — may take a monumental effort to collect data for the entire system. "It's just a huge data issue," Karras said.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com