ALC-Higher Education Subcommittee
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Thank you.
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No, I totally agree with that.
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Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
5:30
We're going to go ahead and get started. Chair sees
a quorum. Welcome to Higher Ed Subcommittee. Senator Davis, do you have any remarks today?
Thank you. We'll go ahead right into our first item of business.
Item C, higher education supply and demand gap analysis presentation by Mr. Robert. Is that McGuff or McGough? Please come forward. If you could please
state your name and title for the record.
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Good afternoon, Jessica Jones, Director of the Division of Information
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Systems. Good afternoon, Robert Magoo, Deputy Chief Data Officer, Division of Information Systems.
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afternoon, everybody. We're here to talk about higher education supply and demand gap analysis that DIS have
put together. Before we go on to the presentation, I would like to talk about how we came about this gap analysis report. So when probably about three months ago, four months ago, back in April 2019, the Department Division of Information Systems, I apologize, put together, hosted a design thinking workshop between workforce and education agencies. The goal of the design thinking workshop was to talk about data needs, really was to bring all the agencies together to figure out where their business challenges were and what their
needs were. During that design thinking workshop, there were a couple of items that higher ed identified as some of their more important needs. One of them being aligning academic programs with workforce needs as well as matching academic programs around needs in a specific region. There were other needs identified but that's kind of the two identified needs that's what kind of brought DIS into the picture. So
Speaker 17
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DIS took the initiative and put together a supply and
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demand gap analysis to identify areas where education output in Arkansas does not meet the market needs or higher surplus of program graduates in the labor market. During the research we evaluated Arkansas employer demand,
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Arkansas education supply, and then finally we identified the gap, the alignment between the alignment between occupation demand and education program
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output. DIS looked at different states methodologies and through research
DIS decided to follow Pennsylvania's methodologies and the reason for that because in during the research the report was utilized with
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the higher ed strategic plan so we decided to follow Pennsylvania's. Now to talk about
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real quick on the methodology and this is just at a very very high level we took two different resources or sources of data first one being the most recent Arkansas State one long-term industry and occupational projections report using a
base year from 2016 projections all the way to 2026. This report is derived from a combination of publicly available data that it's from the national level, national level, state level, and county level. We also took a completion data from higher education, of what we call the completers, those that had graduated from 2016 all the way to 2018.
So we took the total number of annual graduates per program, and we matched it to the total annual job openings for corresponding occupations, so jobs and students. The crosswalk, that's why we did the crosswalk, for classification of instructional programs to standards occupation classification. So when you think about a degree program, such as somebody in electrical engineering, we match it to a specific occupation. The match was based on published federal crosswalks,
successful methodologies such as the one in Pennsylvania, and we also took some from Texas, and our own enhancements based on Arkansas-specific needs. Now, it is important to note that the report lacks real-time employer demands, as well as higher education industry trends. Before we head into the preliminary results, I thought it was pertinent to talk about education across Arkansas. The map that you see today, the heat map, shows the current percentage of people with high school diploma are hired per county.
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The darker the shade, the greater the number, the percentage of individuals with
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a high school diploma. The top chart that you see on your left-hand corner shows the education level of those who participate in labor force. If you look
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at the top line, it's the darker green. It shows that about 85% of the population who are actively participating in labor force have a bachelor's degree or higher. The bottom chart shows the highest education attainment level independent of employment status, and that is for ages between 25 and 64.
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All right, on to the preliminary results. It is important to know that when we're showing this information or discussing any data outputs from the analysis, it is important to convey that we are only presenting them as examples of what the methodology can provide. So we're not here to present or interpret data itself. We are working along with higher ed on,
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so they're validating the results and they're validating the methodology. On this preliminary
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results, the chart that you see in front of you presents the projection
of individuals that will graduate with a certain degree versus the projected annual job openings. Now in this results, the results suggest that in Arkansas, we will have an annual projection of almost 22,000 job openings that will require
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a bachelor's degree. However, we can see that we will have close to 16,000 individuals that will graduate with a bachelor's degree, about a 6,000 gap. Unlike the master's degree, we can say that in these results, what this suggests is job openings that require a master's degree will be less than the supply.
So we will have a lot of individuals graduating with a master's degree compared to those jobs that require a master's degree. Looking a little bit further at the results, the suggested results, annual supply and demand by career
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cluster. From the top, we can see that the results suggest that there will be a high demand for business management and administration versus the supply. So there's going to
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be more jobs on that career versus the people who are graduating with
those degrees. compared to arts or communication where there's
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going to be a surplus of supply compared to the demand so that's what the data right now it's indicating it will look in a little bit more granular data it will look at the degree supply and demand this chart right here we're able to take you know into more detail from the findings we can say on the top top chart that you see we can say that
for finance administration business administration marketing we will see about half of the supply per demand and for registered nurses we we can say that we'll have a supply of 86 percent of the job openings nurse in practice shows about 13 percent that shows a big lack in the supply therefore that warrants for further investigation on that.
We also took a look to the IT degree supply and demand, and as you can see, the overall, this model suggests that we will only be able to supply about 67 percent of the demand of the job openings that are projected. Now, of course, you know, these are just preliminary results. This is a model. Again, you know, we're just presenting the data so the data can be evaluated and the policymakers can look into it a little bit further.
We hope that this is helpful. Again, this was just a couple of examples, and we hope that it was helpful in bringing you actionable insights into aligning our education supply with workforce needs. Thank you. Do any
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
15:39
members have questions? Yes. So one thing that's real interesting to me is in the STEM field, we have a lot of people,
it looks like, completing STEM degrees, but small demand. And I know we've made a huge effort in that push, I think even nationwide, not just in Arkansas, of course, but since there are no jobs or we have more people than jobs, do we know, is there a way to find out, this might be a question for workforce services, but are those people leaving the state? I mean, do we know what's happening? Are they just being underemployed here in the state? Are they leaving for other job opportunities? And we don't want to
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interpret those results. We do have the details to drill
into. I mean, that one kind of caught my eye, so I was curious, but that has a lot of natural sciences like surpluses in biology and in that stem it includes a lot of natural sciences such as it is so it includes a lot of natural sciences such as biology and things like that and it's there are a lot of cautions about using supply demand analysis responsibly and it's usually suggested to use it for where
there are strong direct correlations between the instructional program and the occupation and to really focus more on the shortages than the surpluses and this is this is the first step in maturity you know
Speaker 41
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to really make it usable you have to validate it and you have to start pushing forward into more skills-based matching. Senator Elliott you're recognized. Thank you Mr. Chair,
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
17:14
so did you say this is the first step in validating this? Is that what you said, the study?
The first step in getting to a valid maturity or something you
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said. I'm sorry, I didn't understand. I'm sorry. In the current
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best practices for matching supply and demand education workforce, there are known concerns to this sort of occupation to instructional program-based matching. And a lot of
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the leading edge research there breaks it down into the skills that those provide or need. And
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
17:48
so if we're breaking it down to the skills, how do we, excuse me, do you know if there is a way to account for,
maybe you can look into this going forward. If it's a particular job that I know has nothing is static, but more static, discrete skills, I can easily say, compare, here are the positions I have, here are the number of degrees I have, and you can make that, you can decide what that tells you. But is there anything out there, there are so many jobs now, where those skills, they might be discrete right now, but the job itself requires a constant churn
and a constant changing and thinking and so forth. is there anything that we can discern that says if you want to be that person who's constantly changing and moving forward what your skills should be as opposed to being so finite about the skills for something I want you to do right now does that make sense yes
Speaker 11
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okay we haven't looked that deep yet that that should be plausible given the data availability and I
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
19:01
think that's something really, really, because some people, for example, have the misconception that the folks
in Silicon Valley are all STEM majors, and they're not. A large degree of them are what people call those liberal arts majors, some even in philosophy people. And so that's another question I had about maybe just what we do here in Arkansas, if, for example, we don't have as many people, as many positions that require, let's just say, a master's degree or a high-level degree,
what does that tell us? Does it tell us that we have too many over-educated people? I kind of doubt it? Or does it possibly tell us that in order for us to reach a higher quality of life and to attract more of the higher skilled jobs that we just aren't attracting? Or perhaps we have set our sights maybe a little too low or we have not set our sights as far reaching as we
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should. Any thoughts about that? And I'm not a policy expert in that area. I'm
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here to help provide tools to help the agencies bring their data together.
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
20:25
But there's nothing in the tools or the research that you, that's, I know that's strictly a policy decision for
us, but I'm just wondering if the data just, if I draw a conclusion that doesn't make sense, you know, regarding the data. You know, somebody to say you're drawing a conclusion doesn't make sense. But I want us to
think about, is it as black and white as we see it on this paper? Because if we are not aspirational, we don't have any reason to think that we need to continue to attract people with professional degrees, higher degrees, if we as a body politic are not aspirational about this, because I'm just trying to interpret what we could get from it. I do feel
Speaker 12
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comfortable saying it's not as black in line, as you see in that paper. There's subjectivity involved. There's forecasts on
both sides, and there's some subjectivity of the matching. We use all of the data and best practices available. We shouldn't shy away from using
Speaker 41
21:24
that to help inform our policies and where we might want
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
21:28
to look. Yeah, well, I really appreciate this report because, and one of the things I appreciate as much as anything is that a recognition that higher ed is and must be a part of job workforce. We tend not to think of higher ed as workforce. Well, it is. So thank you. I mean beyond two-year colleges.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
21:46
All right. Thank you. Senator Clark, you recognize her question? Yes. Is there any study along with this to show whether those that are receiving
these degrees are then qualified for these job openings. I know Senator English has done some work, has led on this subject, but.
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Not that I'm aware of. I didn't specifically look in that direction. And I was more looking at the technical side of how to bring this data together than
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
22:30
the policy application. Okay. I bring that up, Senator Elliott and I have worked a lot on literacy and reading, and I've been visiting a lot with young teachers and schools, and lots of young teachers are telling me that in spite of the tests that we put in place, that until they take the RISE training, even though they have a degree, that they're not qualified to teach reading,
and which seems to be a very basic part of teaching and so I asked even if they have the degree are they that are they then qualified to take the job that seems to be just as important as when we have these job openings because if you have the degree and use and and the university still hasn't made sure that the degree is applicable that it's doing us
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any good. I am aware in surveying the other states at approaches, Florida combined some qualitative
research with the quantitative research that is looking at the hard numbers and the crosswalks using survey mechanisms with employers and universities to
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tease out those differences that you wouldn't get maybe with
Chair
Unverified
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the quantitative data. Thank you. Representative Godfrey, you're
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
23:51
recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And my question is similar to Senator Clark's question. I'm wondering in particular about the gaps for occupations in both business and in IT,
if most of those jobs require an additional license, an occupational license, or if those are, if they only require the degree. And the crosswalk we
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had from the National Center of Education Statistics and the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education didn't really include that information. If we had the additional data, we could add that, and that's some of the things we've added to the Arkansas approach.
The National Center for Education Statistics didn't even really take the degree type into account when matching instructional program classifications to occupations. And so when the higher education community started looking at that data to tailor our state-specific reference data, that was one of the
Speaker 41
24:51
feedback items we got. And so we added that, and that improved the quality of the match. But there are probably other things we can do for our state to further improve the quality of the match.
Chair
Unverified
25:07
Senator English, you're recognized for
Senator Jane English
Unverified
25:09
a question. Thank you. thanks for the information but I think what we see here is some some information some statistics some data but what this leads to I believe is that much larger conversation that we have to have about what do some of these things mean and what is that further data it's pretty hard to draw implications just
from this but I think what they want to do is give you an example of what this information could look like or what this data could look like but I think you know as a state we need to have this much larger conversation about where are we going what does this data what kind of other data do we need and are we making sure that the pathways we're setting up for our young people in K through 12 and in higher ed are actually what they'll be able to use but that That requires a larger conversation.
Chair
Unverified
26:08
Representative Lowry, you're recognized for a question. Thank you,
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
26:16
Mr. Chairman. I note, especially in light of Senator English's comments and also the big bold letters, preliminary results. My question is about the significant gap between supply and demand on STEM. Is there any explanation other than just raw numbers as to, I mean, because we've emphasized STEM for probably the last decade, and these numbers seem
to indicate that we really need to do some retooling, maybe even at the secondary level, because we have a charter school that's dedicated to STEM. We've got, I know, the new governor's school location in Russellville. They're focusing on STEM. So can you give us some additional background as to how realistic, I mean, this gap is? And the second part of that would be if students are able to get their significant STEM education
at the secondary level, could they transition when they go to college using that same knowledge but transition to business management where there seems to be a gap the opposite direction? And I
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would prefer to leave interpretation of the results up to higher education after they've validated
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And I just put the graph up there, and again, similar to his answer, I think
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it will be up to higher ed to do further research, because when you look at the numbers, if you look at the bottom where it talks about computer and information sciences in general, it seems like we are, you know, supplying the demand. But that's where it needs to be, there needs to
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
28:19
be further research on this in particular. Okay, so there's a possibility of being able to bridge those two areas. areas, or transition from STEM to the computer coding, for instance, at the Governor's Initiative
Chair
Unverified
28:30
springing forward. Possibly. Okay. Thank you. Senator Malek, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
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My question also goes along with Senator English and Representative Lowry. I know you've put the data together and you're providing the data, but what ongoing coordination efforts do you have with the division of higher ed on the data that's needed and passing along
or interpreting and using that data? Because I think at some point, higher ed's who will need at the table. And we just
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really presented the results to higher ed this week, so
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we'll begin working with them to determine those next steps. Would someone from higher ed like to kind to supplement
Chair
Unverified
29:20
that answer. Please state your name and title for the record.
Nick Fuller
Unverified
29:34
Nick Fuller, Deputy Director, Division of Higher Ed. And yes, we are planning on incorporating this data into our strategic plan that we're developing going forward for the next five years. And so, I mean, it is preliminary, the data that we have now. And our research Division is going to be working hand-in-hand with DIS to take this data that they give us and interpret it and see what needs to happen moving forward. And it will help frame our decisions for how our financial aid needs to be focused on different programs or what information we want to give to the various institutions in the regional areas. Senator English, you're recognized.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
30:09
Thank you. So the question that comes in my mind, so as we're doing a strategic plan, reusing these numbers so how will you include data from K through 12 into that strategic plan what you're doing what they should be doing or are doing because they have to go together that highway has to be together so I'd be interested to know how that strategic plan will include K through 12. Ms. Mayor and we
Nick Fuller
Unverified
30:35
are in the very beginnings of developing the new plan for the for the year so we will take that into
consideration as well. This is just one piece of the information that we're going to
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
30:48
be using. And I'm sure you'll be happy to visit with us over the coming months and keep us
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
30:57
updated. Yes, sir. Senator Davis. Thank you. You guys invited
us to your strategic planning meeting a month or two ago, and I appreciate that. It was really interesting just to hear you guys talk through some of the things that we're seeing here which is you know shortages and nursing and you know different
occupations across the state and how you work that into a strategic plan whenever you have you know also funding things that we're you know trying to work on and so I know there's a balance there and that's something that I think probably like k-12 has to deal with the same thing you know we have these conversations around you know we're being rewarded based on certain funding metrics for certain things but then we also have shortages in the workforce and I think for us this
may be a question for institutions I think at some point if they could answer you know how they use something like we know we've had a nursing shortage for years now right and so what are institutions doing to help drive people to the nursing field so that we correct that and then how do you balance that and just working through with your institutions and to have them help focus on things like that whenever they're being pulled other directions because of some of the funding metrics and stuff that we see just kind of curious how and like I said that may be a question for
institutions at some point but just how you guys look at addressing shortages in our workforce and I know one of
Nick Fuller
Unverified
32:25
the things we mentioned in that planning retreat the goals that are set forth in
that strategic plan that may help mold changes to the productivity funding as well so that we're more incentivizing those goals that need to be met throughout the state rather than pulling them in separate directions. Yeah I think
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
32:41
that's something for I hope us as a committee to to think about and consider as we I know we just review what the productivity funding is and higher ed sets it but
to be looking at things like that knowing we're asking and certain things of our departments and our institutions, but there's conflicting, I think, goals there. They're trying to meet a lot of different needs and different asks, and so I think it's something I'd like to see us keep an eye on.
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
33:10
Well, thank you for a very thought-provoking presentation. We welcome you back.
We're going to go ahead to item D. invited the folks from the UA system and the new chancellor at UALR to visit with us and get the membership up
to date on what the status is at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Welcome. If each of you could state your name and title for the record.
Speaker 97
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I'll start. I'm Melissa Rust, Vice President for University Relations at the University of Arkansas System. Christina Drell, the
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Chancellor at UA Little Rock. And I'm Joni Lee in University Affairs at
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UAE Little Rock. Well, welcome, and thanks for
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
34:15
accepting my invitation. If you have a statement or presentation to make, we'd like to go ahead and hear that now. Thank
Speaker 97
34:25
you, Representative Whitaker and Senator Davis for the opportunity to be here today.
Last week, toward the latter part of last week, the University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees met, met our Fayetteville campus. And during that particular meeting, our board chairman, John Goodson, had a statement concerning our campus in Little Rock. And I won't read that statement to you, but I would like to at least share with you some of the comments that he made at that time and also share with you some of the comments and thoughts that our president, Dr. Bobbitt, also has with respect to our Little Rock campus.
and then I'd like to turn it over for any specific comments that Dr. Drell would like to make concerning her campus, and then we'll be happy to answer any questions that anybody has afterwards. With respect to the Board of Trustees, recently, UA Little Rock's Chancellor, Dr. Andrew Rogerson, as I'm sure you read in local media, resigned in the midst of financial challenges that the campus has been undergoing due to some a few years of declining enrollment while this trend in declining enrollment is not
unique to ua little rock if you look at other campuses throughout the state as well as camp higher education campuses throughout the country you will see that a lot are dealing with declines in enrollment whether that's traditional students or whether that's non-traditional students It's not unique to UALR, however, the campus has been struggling to determine basically a path forward given the financial challenges due to some declining enrollment. What the Board of Trustees said at our meeting, and they wanted to make certain that everyone
understood that the Board wanted to assure current as well as future UALR students, as well as parents, faculty, staff, supporters, general assembly, that the Board of Trustees was actively engaged with President Bobbitt as well as the system administration and the campus administration in making sure that we did everything we could to support our Little Rock campus and make certain that it continued to succeed, but to do so in a way that was financially viable as well.
Little Rock campus and the Central Arkansas community, as you know, are hugely important to the overall mission of the University of Arkansas system. It's also hugely important to the educational and the economic development component of the entire state, not just to the central Arkansas community. Having said that, UA Little Rock has a unique and an important mission within the University of Arkansas system. It's the only campus that we sometimes talk about as a metropolitan university sitting in the middle of the capital city, and we have to consider that mission in light of
of any decisions that need to be made going forward concerning enrollment, finances, et cetera. The Board of Trustees, Dr. Bobbin, and the system administration have all been working with campus leaders at University of Arkansas at Little Rock for some time. We will continue to do so. My office is heavily involved in working with Joni at the end of the table, our general counsel's office, our finance office, president's office, et cetera. You may remember that several months ago, I think it was about 18 months ago, we had some financial challenges at our med science campus at UAMS.
And at that time, a strategic plan was put in place, working with the system administration, with our board of trustees and the president, and UAMS is doing much, much better and is really poised for, I think, a very successful future. Our board believes that with the involvement, all the parties involved that I have mentioned, that we should expect a no different outcome for UA Little Rock than we have for UAMS. We're confident that everybody working together, UALR, will come out of the recent struggles
that it has experienced a much stronger and even more viable campus. Those were the comments that our board chairman shared with not only UA Little Rock officials, but all of our campuses within the University of Arkansas system. To piggyback on that, Dr. Bobbitt shared with me before the meeting just some comments that he would like for me to make today because he was unable to be here. And he said, you know, UALR has some immediate and some long-term challenges.
We all know that. I know Dr. Drell is very much aware of that and will probably address some of those today. But he said what we need to do is we need to be very strategic in the decisions that are made at the campus because without a doubt the one thing that we need to make certain of is that we have an institution and we protect and help that institution succeed as well as the students faculty and staff that are employed and or attend our institution he also wanted me to share with you that it's very important
It was important to him to find someone who could work very closely with him, with the Board of Trustees, with Little Rock's Board of Visitors, as well as faculty, staff, and students, to make certain that we address the challenges that are ahead at UALR. And he wanted me to share with you also the full confidence in Dr. Drale in being able to do that. If you've read some of the articles at the end of the paper, you will know that Dr. Drell is widely respected on the UALR campus, both by faculty, staff, and students, and
that's a great starting point, I think, for all of us. He also wanted me to share with you that he believed Dr. Drell was equipped with a necessary skill set to work with all the campus leaders in order to make certain that we move UALR forward, leave it a much more viable and fiscally sound campus, and that we are a campus that's attractive to students that have an interest in coming to school in the capital city. And with that said, unless there are any questions of me at this point, I'd like to turn it over and
and allow Dr. Drell to speak
Speaker 103
40:43
more specifically about UALR. Good afternoon, I'm
Chair
Unverified
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very pleased to be here today to represent the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and I hope to get the opportunity to work with all of you in moving our institution forward. I thank Melissa for her statements on behalf of President Bobbitt and the UA Board of Trustees and we appreciate their support as the campus seeks to rebalance its resources.
UA Little Rock continues to be committed to be the institution needed by business and government in the state's central region. We are here to meet the needs of all students in central Arkansas and statewide and beyond, but predominantly here in the center of the state. As I begin, let me address the numbers that you're all familiar with and have been reading about. As you probably have seen, our core enrollment numbers are down again this fall as they have
been over the past several years. In all, our enrollment decreased by about 8% from last year this fall. That's not a number we like to see. And we actually projected a smaller number than that when we built our budget and so we will have to accommodate that gap and in our budget planning for this year. So what we're doing right now is we're analyzing the numbers and I'll before I get
into the specifics of UA Little Rock's enrollment decline let me just echo something that Melissa said, and that is that we are, all institutions are dealing with new kinds of systemic and demographic changes in higher education. We are relying much less on traditional populations. The term I'm hearing lately now is called post-traditional students, and UA Little Rock
has more of those post-traditional students than I think many institutions do, but all institutions are growing that sector of their student body. And whereas we used to be able to just look at the high school graduation rates to predict our enrollment, and we were able to have sort of very reliable trend analysis and be able to build budgets based on that, now we're in a very different world we're in a new normal where the demographics are much more
complex much we have to look at a lot of different kinds of student populations and and there aren't easy metrics on a lot of those populations one of the things that surprised us this last year is when we had students that applied for admission there's always that yield rate that you're looking for to get students from admission to registration. And one of the things that we discovered wasn't just that we had students choosing to go to another institution.
That's normal. We expect that. But we had a lot of students choosing to go to no institution. So that was a new thing for us. Why are these students not going to school at all? Why are they opting out of higher education? So these are the kinds of challenges that we have now. And Senator Davis mentioned nursing a minute ago. How do we get, you know, how do we address the nursing shortage in Arkansas? And really all states are facing that kind of a challenge.
Well, it isn't for lack of nursing programs. We have lots of nursing programs. Our program in particular has doubled in size over the last five years. It's gone from 600 students to 1,200 students. and we would, you know, we could add more because we have, you know, that many students applying. But if we have students that are opting out or they're delaying their higher education opportunities, then, you know, we have to figure out
what that's about and how to address that. And that's just one example of the kinds of challenges or the kinds of analysis that we're trying to figure out as we adjust to this new normal. We are also seeing a world where the competition is much different than it used to be, whereas higher education institutions used to have a kind of quasi-monopoly in their own region. Now it's like communications and entertainment.
Everyone is everywhere. And so we have to adjust to that kind of environment because we're competing everywhere as well. And we can no longer assume that we have the privilege of priority in our own home region. And so we have to really make sure that we're as relevant as we can be to the student markets, all the different kinds of markets that there are in Arkansas. And that's something that we have been working on and will continue to work on.
I will say also that as we face this budget shortfall, the good news is that we have been actually working on figuring out some of these issues over the last year. We have a large campus group called the Institutional Effectiveness Committee. And what this committee has been doing over the last year is examining every unit on campus. We had them all turn in a kind of self-assessment.
And this isn't just academic programs, although that's a large part of it, but this was all units, all divisions across campus. So academic programs, facilities, public safety, the procurement office, everyone turned in a self-assessment report. And this group is reviewing all of those because we're going to be all about efficiency and effectiveness We're mission-based decision-making, and the other piece of that is we're going to also be all about partnerships this year
and looking for ways to leverage our strengths with other institutions and other entities to maximize what we have. All of that said, there's no question that we will have to cut the budget because we have a revenue shortfall. This is what all companies do when they end up with an unanticipated revenue shortfall. We will do that. But what we will do is really a combination of budget cutting and revenue enhancement.
I think that in our enrollment management area, we have not had as strong an effort as we could have had in recent years. So we are doing quite a bit to really optimize our recruitment and retention divisions and those offices. We have already started on making some leadership changes there and I just think there's huge opportunities there and that's not to say that we don't have to adjust to the enrollment
trends of the day because those are real and they're very different than the kinds of enrollment trends that we used to have but that doesn't mean we give up on enrollment because I think that there's a lot to do there and I think that what is really critical for us as educators to do is to help students connect the dots they have to be able to see the connection between what we're offering and what they're going to do they have to see the return on investment that's
how we are going to reach those students who are choosing no institution no University instead of one of the wonderful universities that we have in the state of Arkansas. We have to figure out what that disconnect is about and make sure we can help them connect those dots and see the real value of higher education in Arkansas. And I want to point out actually we do have a few highlights of a few bright spots. This year for the first time in several years
we actually had an increase in our incoming freshmen and that's a good sign because as you know when you have decreases that it creates a and in this case a kind of negative bubble that goes through that matriculates through your sophomore junior and senior classes and now we seem to have we seem to be turning the corner on that and we brought in we at least are moving in the other direction now, the positive direction in bringing in a little bit larger freshman class
than we had last year. So we're encouraged by that. We obviously have had a lot of changes in the last, oh, I don't know, several months. But I have to tell you that in taking this position, is now my fourth official day on the job. The response that I have been receiving and that I am talking with people on campus has been really positive. People know that we have challenges. They realize that we have to make tough decisions, but people are just
feeling really encouraged and positive that we are ready to move forward and we're ready to make those decisions. So I'm very encouraged by that. I think we have very good people at UA Little Rock, and I think we're all ready to roll up our sleeves and get started. Thank you, and
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
50:47
I'll be happy to take questions. I'll start. You mentioned there at the end that the good news is that freshman enrollment is up. So that leads me to conclude that you're losing people
in the second, third, fourth year. it's a retention thing that hits you
Chair
Unverified
51:04
for eight percent? Well it's two part there's you know we have had declining freshman enrollment for the last several years and that feeds into our upper division enrollment so that's part of it but retention absolutely is an important part of the equation and that we have also been ramping up our retention initiatives in fact we've just put into place, created a new position called Director of Retention Initiatives, and that
person is going to help coordinate. You know, in the past, we've had a lot of people doing good things and all over campus, but they weren't very well coordinated. We weren't measuring outcomes. We didn't know if we were investing in the right things at the right time, and so now we are bringing that all together into, you know, one place and with a director who's going to coordinate those efforts not just coordinate them but measure them to make sure that we are investing wisely in those efforts so we we have a lot of things going on in that
direction and I'm we also have a campus-wide retention committee that is contributing to that so that we can maximize the buy-in on the part of our faculty and staff so we have we do have things in motion there and I think that is a really important part of the picture yes
thank you representative Lowry you're recognized for a question
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
52:30
yes thank you mr. chair I was just doing some quick research just looking at some of the enrollment data and and one of the articles
was pointing out that there was a down a downturn number of students that applied and were accepted but 500 less of those actually enrolled is there any explanation or any strategic plan for turning that around I mean the students get get approved and I assume with that is some knowledge on their part that they are going to be able to get the the funding either scholarship or
Pell Grant or whatever but yet 500 less thing applied actually showed up and
Chair
Unverified
53:17
enrolled is there Right. That's an excellent question because we just recently discovered that there was a disconnect between our financial aid office and our admissions office that a lot of people who were applying and submitting FAFSA forms, applications, that those and who had expressed an interest in attending UA Little Rock, those names weren't getting to our recruiters in our admissions office.
And we have since fixed that, so we expect that to turn around. And that's just one example of some of the structural issues that we've had in place at UALR that we are now very much aware of and are in the process of cleaning up, frankly, and we expect to see good results from that. Okay. Follow-up, Mr. Chair. You're
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
54:07
recognized for a follow-up. Okay. another question has been presented to me of in terms of budgeting and and you actually I think
either you or Melissa Russ actually pointed out that these are trends that are not just happening at UALR in terms of declining enrollment but there has been a consistent trend that we know at UALR I think there's been a 20 percent loss in student enrollment over the last 10 years correct were there not any indicators red flags so to speak that everyone seems to enjoy the term red flag so let's see if we can use it to higher education red flags that could have triggered some change
in strategic strategy I know you have a large number of students that are concurrent enrollment that are included in your enrollment figures I mean is that something and we want to encourage that, but I think most of higher ed is experiencing that kind of hit to their numbers that a lot of students show up maybe at sophomore level or even junior level because they've earned so many concurrent hours. Were there indicators to let you know
Speaker 113
55:25
that apparently what was happening was
Speaker 107
55:28
not working? The short answer to your question is yes. And
Chair
Unverified
55:35
I think, however, that hindsight is is a little sharper than than our vision at the time. I think and I won't speak to the philosophy of previous administrations, but I do think that there was a strong hope that that was a temporary that we were always hoping that was going to be a temporary condition, if you will,
and that we were going to be able to turn that around. And now I think there is, at least certainly on my part, and I believe on the part of our planning committees and our institutional effectiveness committee, we are much more data-driven now than we were, and I think we are paying very close attention to those trends. And I've been repeating the same message to our campus community, and that is that we have to acknowledge that these national trends
and the conditions of the market, so to speak, are not going away. It's not going to go back to the way it was 20 years ago. So I think there is very much a recognition of that now. But to answer your question, yes, I think the red flags were there. I think they were either not noticed by everyone or they were interpreted as temporary by many. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Fite, you're recognized for a
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
57:16
question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know a few years back that the university required freshmen to live on campus, and I believe that's when the initial drop in enrollment went down. Are
Chair
Unverified
57:35
you looking at changing that policy? Yes, we have already required our athletics students to live on campus, and we are also revisiting that policy.
We haven't made any decisions yet, but yes, that is an important thing to look at, particularly because we have an income issue with our residence halls as
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
58:01
well. Senator Elliott, you recognize our question? Thank you so much. Welcome to our party. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question about the post-traditional
students. what they I'm sure you must be thinking about a way to re-attract those students the post
traditional because it's UA Little Rock is so different in that we are urban and with that comes a lot of churn that I think many times may not be factored into the reality of our funding formulas and everything else but when the churn happens it just happens do you have a do you have a sense of or somebody in the state and by location who the students are this may be more for higher ed but who the students are who have several hours that might probably will amount to
even having up to through their junior year that's for whatever reason has just
not come back Is there a way to track
Chair
Unverified
59:07
that in any way? Do you know? And we've been paying a lot of attention to those populations. And one of the challenges with some students that have the dropouts or stopouts actually is mostly how they're referred to as the stopouts. Sometimes we find that they couldn't afford to come back.
They get into a situation where their debt builds up to a certain point where they just can't get past that. So one of the things that we've done in the past is to make contact with students, see where they are. We are looking for, you know, scholarship-ing types of opportunities for those students to help with, you know, easing the path back to finishing their degree. we've also just recently instituted something for our students that haven't stopped out yet but
are at high risk of stopping out we call it the last mile scholarship and so we're looking at we're trying to make sure we can find those students before that that decision is made and and intervene and see if we can and sometimes sometimes all they need is like you know two or three hundred dollars to pay you know a car repair bill or something like that and so there but we have done surveys of students that have stopped out and we find that really the reasons run the
gamut there are all kinds of things that are going on it's financial it's family based it's you know some cases they've got an opportunity to do something else for a while and they intend to come back later so you know there's not just one thing that's taking students out of school but many things and but gets that said it is still very important for us to maintain contact with those students and see what we can do to help them back one one thing I think that might
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:01:05
might be useful um because for students like that it seems to me you traditionally just have to go out and get them an invitation to come to the university probably is not going to be helpful um if we were to have go to where the students are so like this saturday at whatever we're having a please come home meeting or whatever i'll come back you know and have it out in places where the students are, and it probably would make it a lot more convenient for students. I think it also
sends the message, we really need you to come back and be a part of something. That's something we can talk about, but I think just as surely as they are post-traditional or non-traditional, the methods for getting them back are going to have to be just as non-traditional, is what I'm thinking it might be the case. And I wanted to ask about for the students. You're recognized for a follow-up. Yeah. Well, we don't do that in the Senate. I'm sorry.
But thank you, sir. Oh, gosh. For the students who were on the campus with the East End School, and there was, I know the vision was that a lot of those students might enroll at UA Little Rock and just have a seamless education. How is that, is that turning out to be the case or not? Well, it's funny you mention
Chair
Unverified
1:02:39
that because I just came from lunch with John Bacon
and talked about how we might restart that conversation. We unfortunately had a very physical situation that we had to resolve with the e-STEM students using our student center, and it was a clash, and it was sort of a problem, a logistics problem that we had to work out. We have since worked that out, and we are both eager to restart conversations
about academic collaboration and getting that, not only for their students to be taking either concurrent or dual enrollment courses with UA Little Rock, but also for our teacher education students to be working with them and to take the opportunity of having that campus on our campus to use it as a lab school of sorts and to really just explore the ways that we can collaborate
in supporting education in Central Arkansas. Do you
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:03:50
have any numbers so far, though, of how many students have matriculated from East End to UA Little Rock?
I don't have that number right now, but I can get that for you. Okay, thank you. And finally, Mr. Chair, I will just take my opportunity to say this. I think the way we think about how our schools are doing and these trends that are happening, especially for people who might be new to this whole effort about higher ed,
I would like at some other time to hear from all the institutions to give us an assessment of how things are working with our new funding formula. We need to know that. because we can't just put something in place and not assess it and not be able to get good, honest answers from everybody because it is just really important to understand we have never funded higher ed as we should so we leave all these higher ed institutions
just competing over crumbs and I don't think that's the way you have vibrant, successful institutions in this state from 2003 or five or whatever it was that we came up with the fund the funding formula that we no longer have but I want you to understand we never funded that formula to start with at a hundred percent I think as best we ever got was 70 percent and then on top of that let's just
say 30 percent deficit we reworked the formula on top of a deficit that I can't see how that was taken into account. So I just want us to really be thinking about this. Do we want to seriously have vibrant, successful higher eds of institution? Because I can promise you it's not just UA Little Rock. And we need to get real, I think, about talking about the funding. And I do not want anybody to misunderstand what I'm saying, that it's just a matter of throw some money at it.
You can't keep on doing what we want to do, especially with the populations we have now, by trying to continue to tell people to do more for less when we started out in a deficit to begin with. So thank you for indulging me, Mr. Chair. But I think this is a central problem that we need to get our heads around. Thank
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
1:06:22
you. And thank you, Senator. That certainly sounds like good material for a future agenda,
if you'll work with us
Speaker 121
1:06:36
on putting something together. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 122
1:06:41
I had a concern with UALR back in the early 2000s. It didn't seem that, and I don't know if this is standard policy in other higher education institutions, but it didn't seem that the departments were bringing in professionals
and business companies in the area to encourage those students and to say, we have jobs for you in this career path that you're taking, and these are the skills that we're looking for, and we'd really like to talk to you upon graduation. And is that, I mean, I would think that that would help students focus their education and be more inclined to go ahead and graduate
and to be encouraged about getting their education at
Chair
Unverified
1:07:39
ULR. You are absolutely right about that. In fact, when I came to UA Little Rock in 2006, I was surprised that they didn't have more of a career center, career services type of operation. I think they had some semblance of that, but it really wasn't a dynamic and active operation. Since then, and really in the last four years or so, we've given that a lot of attention.
So we now have a career center. We have people in place that are very much interested and working on the issue of making those connections. We have brought in also some new software called Handshake that allows employers to send in their internship and other kinds of opportunities that we then have accessible to all students at all times so that they can go into this kind of database
and look for things that might fit. And those might be internships that they just do with the company or they might sign up for internship credits and make that a formal part of their education. But we're opening the door to that and trying to get more information to students and more directly because that's part of that connecting the dots part. And we recognize that's part of helping students understand the relevance of higher education is being able to connect to those career paths.
So we're very much keen on strengthening that area and growing it for our students. I have a follow-up. You recognize
Speaker 122
1:09:25
for a follow-up. Another concern that I had, and this might be with all of our state institutions of higher education, It seemed to me that there were a tremendous number of students who were admitted, who enrolled or admitted, who were not prepared for college work.
And yet they were taking out student loans and getting Pell Grants and going into debt, and they just weren't prepared for the writing and the math that was required for them to go forward. i'm just wondering if we shouldn't tighten up our admission requirements for higher education and require that students enter colleges with the skills they need to enter college not not accept them when they don't even have the skills they should have had in high school that is an ongoing
Chair
Unverified
1:10:21
problem not just for ua little rock but for i think many institutions in the state of arkansas we have tightened up our enrollment uh our admission requirements because we were noticing that very thing that we were having to um that we were ending up with students who were racking up a lot of debt and not able to finish and we didn't want that and that and no one wants that for for our citizens so we have tightened that up and and we are we have also uh established uh a bridge
program for some of our underrepresented potential students. And that bridge program spends time over the summer educating students and getting them up to speed so that they don't have to start with remedial courses. So that is really good for those students because even though those remedial courses get put on their transcript, they don't count towards majors typically,
and they have to pay the same price as they do for other courses. So the more we can do to get those students up to speed and not have to take developmental courses to get to the same level as another student, the better off we are. So we're really looking at that very carefully in terms of our general admissions requirements but also in the kinds of partnerships or on-site programs that we can do to bridge that gap for students because we don't want to turn all of
those students away in some cases it just they just need an intervention maybe a summer or a year before they apply for college and if we can get to them earlier then we can often make a difference uh to their success and and that's going to be really important and i i want to come back to um the question on the earlier presentation about stem uh disciplines and the you know how can we connect the need with the supply in a better way for stem part of the challenge there and i
have heard this from three STEM deans now, is that we have capacity in our programs for these students, but when they go out to recruit, and engineering schools typically do more traditional student recruiting. They go into high schools and they're looking for students in that demographic, But they have to find students that are, in essence, calculus ready in the area of math so that when they start their engineering program, they aren't starting so far back in math preparation that they have like a year to go before they can take their first calculus course.
So that's an issue that we also have to address in that ramp up to applying for college. We have to make sure that we address those gaps, if you will, in the secondary schools and offer whatever kinds of bridge programs or supplemental programs we need to do to help us supply the STEM students that we need to meet the needs of our business community.
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
1:13:53
Thank you. Representative Lowry, I'll come back to you. I just want
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:14:01
to recognize Senator Chesterfield right now. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Still remembering being a first-generation college student, and so many of them are, one of the things that I found most invaluable was the one-on-one communication. I did go to a much smaller school in Conway, but I'm wondering how much one-on-one communication is taking place between these
young people who may not on paper appear to be ready but who do need the extra information that would come I know I almost got into your doctoral program but I couldn't find anybody you know everything is so online and so impersonal now that it's troubling and so I'm wondering how much one-on-one are we assigning a counselor to each person that comes in or is the institution too large for that what are we doing because some people are just scared when they come to school
nobody in their family's ever been there nobody can tell them what the experience will be like so what are we doing in order to make that transition a little bit easier and a
Chair
Unverified
1:15:10
little less frightening? That's an excellent question. We probably aren't doing that as evenly or consistently as we should be, but we do have several programs. First of all, every new student that comes to UA Little Rock now takes a new student orientation course, or what we call the new student experience course, and that's kind of a how to go to college type of course. It's one
hour, and everyone who comes in gets that kind of orientation, and then the teacher of that course becomes a resource and a mentor for the students in the course. We also have programs, student-oriented programs, like the African American Male Initiative that is a within our student affairs division that is uh an outreach program that provides mentors and
leadership support for those students we have several uh different kinds of those organizations and we are also now because we know that mentoring and that one-to-one uh connection that you're talking about is so vitally important particularly for first generation students we are ramping up now a full-scale peer mentoring program so that we can make sure that everyone who wants and needs
to have some help can get
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
1:16:39
it. Well, I think it's important whether they know they want it or need it or
not. Very good point. Because if I'm on campus and I remember being so afraid and people don't realize just how frightening that really is but it is as if it were yesterday so I want to just encourage you to have someone assigned to each one of those persons because to have a large
class of hey this is college you know it's still a frightening experience because some people do not respond well in large groups so one of the problems that I'm having to wrap my head around is the impersonal atmosphere that I find in college now and perhaps I was wrapped in a cocoon at Hendricks I don't know but it's rather impersonal and we in order to keep people where
they need to be we've got to do a little bit better job than that I agree with you
Chair
Unverified
1:17:45
completely Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Lowry, you're recognized for
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
1:17:51
a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My round two of questions were prompted by Senator Elliott and Representative Brown, so if y'all didn't want to hear from me again, it's their fault. Senator Elliott's admonition, and I think it's a good one, that we get reports from all the campuses of how the new funding formula,
the outcomes-based funding formula is affecting campuses, and I know you'll get your opportunity to come back at that time, but I just wanted to know how a year and a half in, I guess, close to maybe two years in on this process, how is UALR doing in terms of that funding formula? I know one of the metrics is underserved populations, which I would assume UALR gets some high marks in that area, but how has that affected
Speaker 75
1:18:40
you in terms of either increase or recommended decrease we're
Chair
Unverified
1:18:44
still sorting that out a bit but i think um one of the things that i will say about the funding formula is that it does have a great deal of flexibility in terms of um you know i mean there's there are so many different types of metrics in this formula that uh even if you say aren't doing well in one there are lots of others that might help an institution particularly like ours and our institutional research director just
recently told me that for going into the next fiscal year it looks like we will be up in our points for next year so right now we're kind of liking it it's okay but I think it's still a little early for us to really have a strong sense of how this is going to work
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
1:19:36
out. Okay follow up Mr. Chair. You're recognized. Thank you. Thank you very much. One of the concerns I had after the fact of actually sponsoring that bill is I did not know, and I should have, that the 2%
cap was based not just on decline, but also on growth. And so I can tell you, I would be an advocate if, you know, we can figure out how the money works out that we not cap at 2% any improvement based on metrics. Now, we probably still would have to put a cap on it, but I think it makes it difficult to make up that deficit that Senator Elliott was talking about. If the starting point was already behind and you have a campus that is serving underserved populations
well, their retention rates are up, their diplomas are up, it makes it difficult for them to do the catch up. As far as Representative Brown's question about, and I know she's talking about generally in the area of remediation, and you referred to the bridge program, is that similar to a co-requisite where the students take a remediation class, but they, I know UCA does this, three hours of remediation and then one hour lab, but they're able to earn college credit, whereas
with the typical the remediation what we know is remediation you're right they had to pay the same dollar value same dollar tuition but not earn a single hour of credit so the bridge gap is that something that is done or the bridge program is that something that's done in their freshman year so they can earn credit or
Chair
Unverified
1:21:19
is it something pre-admission it's pre-admission the bridge program in particular. But I will say that we also do co-requisite programming with both our
composition curriculum and our math curriculum. So students do not lose time. They're able to take those as a co-curricular piece so that they're keeping pace with their fellow students. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank
Chair
Unverified
1:21:51
Elliott, you are recognized. Thank
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:21:54
you, Mr. Chair. Would you talk to us just real quickly about what kind of
funding you have or don't have for research?
Chair
Unverified
1:22:06
That's it. Well, in terms of our budget base and our ENG funds, We have sufficient funds to support our Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, and we have a full-service unit to support our faculty researchers. Now, I will say that most of the funding that comes in beyond that is through grants, and
And we do have some rock stars, if you will, bringing in some significant grant funding. And so I think we are very, well, I mean, we certainly want to grow it more. We certainly want to expand research. But I think we're pretty comfortable with our research profile at the moment. We have a couple of research centers. that are doing very well.
We are able to support all of the faculty that want to be research active and to get help with writing research grants. So we always could use more and we always want to invest in that area. But I think that we are doing a pretty good job with research right now. Mr. Chair, would
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
1:23:37
you ask her how much the university gets from the state?
Speaker 100
1:23:42
So I'm not asking you. What she said. Do we have that figure? You mean, I don't have that figure with me right
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
1:24:05
now. I'll get back to you. Thank you. Seeing no further questions, thank you so much for coming and visiting with us. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Please keep us posted. This is an incredible journey we're watching.
Speaker 107
1:24:13
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. We're adjourned. Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
C. “Higher Education Supply/Demand Gap Analysis” Presentation --Mr. Robert McGough, Deputy Chief Data Officer, Division of Information Services
D. Briefing on University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR)
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - HIGHER EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE, Sep 19, 2019 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Handout 1 Higher Ed Supply and Demand Gap Analysis | Exhibit | 10 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative David Whitaker
Unverified
Speaker 10
Speaker 13
Speaker 15
Speaker 17
Speaker 21
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 41
Senator Joyce Elliott
Unverified
Speaker 11
Speaker 52
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Representative Mark Lowery
Unverified
Speaker 69
Speaker 80
Nick Fuller
Unverified
Speaker 97
Speaker 100
Speaker 101
Speaker 103
Speaker 113
Speaker 107
Representative Lanny Fite
Unverified
Speaker 121
Speaker 122
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
Speaker 75