ALC-Higher Education Subcommittee
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Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
47:00
Off to a swimming start. we go. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen of the legislative branch and members and guests
in the audience, I'd like to express great appreciation for leadership, Saline County, being in the audience today to sit in on a little bit of the committee meeting. I pray everybody will be on their best behavior. And I'd just like to ask if they would please stand, would you all give the leadership, Saline County, a warm welcome, please, along with Representative Fite. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Bond is first up on the agenda today, and he's done, I'd like to offer our gratitude to him for putting together this program this month. I'm happy to preside, but I'm going to let him present. Senator,
you're recognized. Well, and don't give me too much credit, but so several of you on the committee may have lived through having a child or grandchild or nephew or something applied to college. We just went through that with our son, and it is, to me, a difficult and sort of cumbersome process, particularly if you don't have parents who have the time and energy and assets to push you through all this.
I know I've talked to several of y'all via email about this. So the idea, after going through that, and then after, and I think you've each been provided an article that ran back in October of 19. You should each
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
49:14
have a copy of that with your agenda, where our state college trend is that we're having lower enrollees. And that's
the fourth consecutive year of declines. Now, some of that may be based on some data issues we have.
But we have these challenges of making sure that we continue to enroll and get kids through our two-year and four-year college programs and other programs that are available for them. Arkansas, no matter what you think about tax structure, all these different things, one huge hurdle for us is our level of education attainment, whether that be you're getting a job certificate of some sort, a two-year degree or four-year degree. In the 2018 article that was in Arkansas Money in Politics, we ranked 49th in educational attainment,
some more recent numbers. Sometimes we usually bounce between 47th and 49th. And so it's a huge economic development issue for our state. It's something that I don't think we talk enough about. Our neighbor, Tennessee, has a program called the Drive to 55, which is an attempt to get 55% of their adult population a two- or four-year degree or job certificate. And
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
50:37
currently in Arkansas, I think we have 22.6% of our adult population, let me say that again, 22.6% of our adult population has an associate's degree, a college degree, or an advanced degree.
7% of that 22.6% is associate's degree, 14.4% is a
college degree, and 8.1% is a more advanced degree. So, the idea is to have, and
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
51:04
I really don't exactly know what the people behind me are going to say as to what they think of this idea generally. The idea is to have a portal. I've called it the Higher Education Red Tape Reduction Act for Arkansas citizens, in case that appealed to some of y'all.
I've also called it the Arkansas Opportunity Portal where you could go to one website whether you're a traditional student or a
non-traditional student and apply enter your application and apply to all our public universities and our privates who wanted to participate whoever you know who wanted to participate I think we can probably mandate the public's participate but the privates could also participate and you would apply to those through one website kind of like a common application that some of you have heard of the the big
goal of mine really is that you would also receive information scholarship offers and scholarship information through this same portal now if any of y'all have lived through the application process before you contact different schools they send you different things you also have to go to this the state website and look at the scholarships that are available to you when you go to the ADHE website, you see the state scholarships are there, but that doesn't mean you know what's available at SAU or UAM or U of A or ASU or wherever. And the same thing for the two-year
programs or even the technical programs to have kind of a one-stop shop.
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
52:38
And I think that is technically possible. And I think that the big overriding issue that we have, that I think everybody sort of can coalesce around is that we want to get as many people
enrolled and through these programs as possible which means you have to have this seamless way to do that so they know
of all the opportunities we want to empower the students non-traditional and traditional and their families or support givers with all the information and cost comparison information in one place if we can and then also I think it will create more competition for these students you know from my son for instance he may not have ever thought about going to SAU or Arkansas Tech or wherever but if he could apply at one place and then receive those admissions acknowledgments or
scholarship offers there that may have changed his decision it may have changed our family's evaluation of where he wanted to go and I think it's important that the that what we do as a state is that we empower students and families with all this information as opposed to worrying about the silos of each higher education and two-year education institution which is the only pushback that I've gotten and it hasn't been a lot I want ADHE has been incredibly kind to sort of listen to some of these ramblings from me so I
appreciate and and and their staff but the the idea is that it's really about our citizenry and empowering them with the easiest and seamless way to know of all their opportunities and to pursue their opportunities the last thing I'll say is I did reach out to several different that tried to reach out to different high school counselors I talked to one particularly and our high school counselors some of y'all may have more minute much more experience with this than I do our high school counselors have to do so much including helping
kids understand all their opportunities and fill out all these forms or direct them and all these things anything that can make that easier to make sure kids know of all their opportunities is something we as policymakers ought to be doing so I think that's that's all I've had to say in introduction I think the folks come after me are gonna give you some great information I do think this October article is is something that we need to be aware of and I think with all
the work whether you agreed with it or not on tax restructuring and different things that have happened nationally and locally you know and this is a quote from the leader of the chamber as much as lower taxes or access to capital education is what will determine whether Arkansas business realizes its potential and we're really what always we need the the only other thing I says I'm a little concerned when we talk a lot about technical training and plumbers and electricians my father-in-law's electrician we need all those people right we need everybody to get more education to get more
training we need more tradesmen but we also still need to be pushing a lot of people through two and four-year institutions that's the only way to raise the level we need all that training to raise the level of income for the state. We don't need to focus over here, just over here, and that's the idea of the portal, to give kids and their families and non-traditional students access to information easily, cost comparisons easily, to reduce the red tape that's associated with this
and get more kids enrolled and through college, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Speaker 16
56:30
Senator Sturck, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. Senator Bond, I
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
56:34
just wanted to ask, well, first question, I guess, would be, do we know that the admission process is one of the key factors or a big factor as far as the rates? Because I guess I'm wondering how the numbers then are reported as far as those kids that you mentioned who may be getting some kind of concurrent credit while they're in high school
or going to a technical certificate program while they're in high school. So they may not be counted as going to college, though they did receive some kind of higher ed training and they went on to a job with the booming economy or whatever it
might be. Right. I think that, and I think I'm hearing your question, is what is the data really showing us? And I think that article from October points that out. You know, do we know if kids go out of state, are we tracking them appropriately, if they get other ways of training? I think that is a real question and what we have in the data. But I think a lot of the state rankings looks particularly at two- and four-year degrees.
So I think those numbers are pretty solid, but if they got something else, maybe not. Okay.
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Lowry, you recognize her question? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator, I think this is a very worthwhile project, streamlining this. One of the things I would ask you to also look at, and maybe you have already talked to some of the higher ed folks, I have become very concerned about and the information I'm getting certainly is just anecdotal
but I hear more and more stories basically the general concern is brain drain that some of our better best students ones that are you know scoring 32 33 on ACT they're getting offers from other states and not even hearing from our flagship universities in Arkansas. I mean, forget whether they're being offered a scholarship by the U of A or ASU. They're not even getting a, hey, will you take a look at us?
And that is extremely disconcerting to me. These students, and it's not that the students, the ones that I've heard about, are starting off saying, I want to go out of state. they're getting unsolicited offers of scholarships from Alabama from Southern California Belmont you know out of state and so I wonder if this is something that that you've had any conversations with higher ed or some of the other university folks what can we do I mean I've asked about it I've asked the U of
A and they go well okay I'm not gonna say what they said because it was not it was troubling was not a it was not a good answer but we need to keep those students I'm sure there are statistics about the percentage of students that when they go out of state and get their degree how many of them do not come back to Arkansas and and that is something when you talk about economic development engines that is one that we cannot afford so do you have any feedback on
that you know over the last couple years there was some back and forth particularly between myself and the UA system over what are we doing to recruit kids I'm not an expert in the area I will say they sort of convinced me that they do a good job of recruiting but I will say that some of our neighboring institutions particularly Alabama has been very aggressive in recruiting high-performing kids and making scholarship offers quickly and
And I think that's where maybe some of the anecdotal evidence and some of what we hear from our constituents, because I heard from several, well, Alabama's already offered me $20,000, or they're going to do away with out-of-state tuition and give me $8,000 based on my 32 ACT. And I think some other surrounding states are more nimble with their scholarship offers, at least in recruiting out-of-state students, than we have been in-state.
My understanding is that's partially because they're not exactly sure how many kids are going to apply, how much money they have, those types of things. So I agree with you. I think we need to figure out ways within the institutions to be more aggressive, to try and keep our kids here if we can. And I hope part of this idea that any of y'all could take up, right? I'm not coming back, so don't think it's a political play for me. But part of this idea is if you apply and get admitted and you can get all that scholarship information in one place,
then you'll be empowered to know well even though alabama's offering me 12 grand i can stay at asu and pay four you know maybe even if you didn't necessarily you know you can get more information you can know what all's available uh in your in-state institutions but i agree with you that recruiting and marketing by the u of a system the asu system uca tech whatever i think those are more institution specific issues but real issues because there are these surrounding schools who are very aggressive in recruiting students and a lot of private
universities very aggressive in recruiting students inside the state to go out of state right mr. chairman real challenge follow it please briefly
thank you because you're exactly right when you empower I hadn't even thought about that particular angle of it is that you're front you're frankly you're taking it out of the hands of the in-state universities to reach out to that student, you're empowering them to go, okay, my feelings may be hurt that the U of A doesn't want me to be a Razorback,
but you know what, I've got the information, and this is, you know, and just being able to provide that information when they're sitting down with their parents and they're going, listen, it's great that Alabama's offering 20,000, but, you know, I've always wanted to be a Razorback and they can offer me something, or want to be a Red Wolf, you know. So thank you for this. I think it's a great step forward in making, I think empowering is exactly the right word of putting our students and their parents
in control of the process. Well, and that's, you know, our experience with Alabama, which is that once they get your ACT and grade point, they're offering you a scholarship by return mail, essentially. There's not a lot of form filling out. There's not a delay. You get a
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
1:03:20
letter that says we're offering you this. immediately and that it is it's it makes it look real easy yeah representative
Speaker 35
1:03:32
Godfrey you recognize for a question thank you
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
1:03:37
mr. chair as an underbond you mentioned Tennessee and their quest to expand and increase their enrollment do they have a portal similar to what you're proposing here if so has it
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
1:03:48
been effective in helping their enrollment yeah they they and in uh our staff a few
months ago when this started was looking around for similar portals and there is not one that we know of i will say that the common app at the national level you pay a fee and you can apply to a bunch
of different schools you may be familiar with that would be sort of similar uh but california my understanding for the for i think they have california state university and california universities kind of like we do their california university you can apply to all i think with one app indiana has a very robust informational website but not exactly an application and admission website tennessee has the drive for 55 website and then some of the counties that i could find have different things directing people to all their different resources i'm not exactly sure
what Tennessee's doing from a from the portal standpoint but there was nothing quite like this nationally when we began looking real hard back in October so it would be something a little bit more cutting-edge great if I could have a follow-up you recognize for
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
1:05:01
a follow-up thank you mr. chair another question I had was how if it were in place you would communicate its accessibility and availability you mentioned school counselors you primarily see it at use
in the school setting or how do we get information out to parents particularly those who you mentioned maybe our first-generation college students and those who really would need and benefit from the accessibility I think it's it's
easy to think about in the traditional student setting obviously the high schools and it's easy to get the easier to get the word out there and the high school counselors the non-traditional students is more challenging you know we have a lot of people across Arkansas that that have some college or that they're close to a degree and we it would
be helpful to push those people through I think that's more difficult we've seen that with the AR futures program or where we the legislature added some marketing money and I think there would have to be a marketing of the website to some extent but I think also if you just I think that's part of the issue now if you're looking for information you kind of well I'm going to go to the tech website you know if you knew there's one place it would be helpful to everybody as opposed to having to go from college to college so but yeah it's a that's a I think that's a
challenge and I think I think that's one thing Arkansas hasn't done for throughout several different administrations is really advertise how affordable and how many things we have to offering getting people in and through school i think we rank 16th in affordability uh nationally or at least that's the numbers that are in the the article from 2018 that we rank 16th but 49th in attainment and so we've got that big gap you know where it's actually we've got some
pretty good programs out there for people but they're we're not getting them in and through the programs. Senator
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:07:07
Johnson, you recognize for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator Bond, I think you're on to something. I really appreciate this. I was visiting with Senator Starch about the fact that one commonality to all these applications, or at least it was, I'll just say a few years ago, when my
daughters were applying was the FAFSA and you know we kind of thought I said I don't think you're gonna qualify for a Pell grant of course everything about 18 year olds is you are an adult and we don't tell the parents anything we don't want them to know until they want to know the parents income in information and suddenly parents become relevant to the mix as an aside and this has to do the whole application process my younger daughter just happened to be applying for college to get
all her applications in by december 31st when the 2000 ice storm hit in central arkansas so we had no power therefore we certainly didn't have an internet connection but it made me realize how these online applications are so complex and every one of them was different but fafsa was a constant and i'm wondering if there's any way we could take a page out of facebook or something where if you happen to look at a at a box of nails on uh on amazon
then you're going to start getting ads on facebook of boy you don't don't you want this box of nails and i'm is there some way we can use that to identify these young people who maybe look at a particular school or a particular program and probably violate their privacy even more and send them an ad to get them to come. You really might want to be a Red Wolf or you might want to be a boll weevil or a Razorback. Is that something that's possible? And Senator, you're sitting there, I'm asking you, you're probably going to send that to
someone else to get an answer, but
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
1:09:04
I think it's important to what we're talking about here. No, and I think in, to say, the
higher ed and the different institutions, they do have a lot of knowledge about how to market and recruit. And I think you're going to hear from Reggie Hill here in a minute and then ADHE. And there is a lot of creativity out there. And I think all those things are possible. And ADHE is now advertising AR Futures. And I think they are doing that some digitally, as you've mentioned, and they can address that.
But I think, you know, as a state, we've got to do all that, particularly for nontraditional students. Because, you know, you get to be 26 or 27, say you're 20 hours short of your degree. You know, we need to do everything we can to get those people to finish up, I think. Great. Try to. Thank
Speaker 47
1:09:54
you very much, Senator. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, Senator
Bond, who's up next? I see Dr. Markham's here. I was wondering if she was actually going to visit with us today.
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:10:09
Come on down as the man says. Representative Birch, you're recognized. you know I never do that right thank you mr. chair I'm just a point of personal privilege while they're transferring miss McDuff and the teacher cadets her five from Crossett High School all the way from down to the corner southeast
Arkansas are here today so best behavior for all of us
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
1:10:43
because we want to encourage them to stay in these programs and be a really big part of the education system in Arkansas. So, would y'all stand up? Thank you.
Welcome. Doctor, if you could start us off and have everybody introduce yourselves, your name, and your position for the
Speaker 60
1:11:12
record. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Maria Markham,
Speaker 63
1:11:14
Director of Division of Higher Education. Alicia Lewis, Associate Director for Communications for the
Speaker 65
1:11:22
Division of R. Ed. Justin Kinchin, Business Manager for MINAE. And Bob Sanders, the General Manager for Information
Speaker 59
1:11:29
Network of Arkansas. And I would like to start by thanking Senator Vaughn to bring this idea to our attention. I
Speaker 60
1:11:35
received a letter from him, I believe back in the summer, suggesting that we take a look at the portal and since that time we've also been surveying what other states are doing. And we've learned a lot. There are some national products for common applications. A couple of our institutions
in state have actually signed on to some of the common apps. And we also have some states who have common applications. Typically, it's opt-in. So we have some institutions in those states that participate and some that don't. And then we have in some states where there are college districts like Texas. They'll have, you know, the Dallas-Fort Worth College district, and there are common applications where students can apply to all of the institutions within those districts, and they do share some information. You're correct. I don't think we've seen any states that have universal adoption of a common application,
but we have explored that, and our partners at I&A are going to discuss that in a moment. But first, I wanted to have Alicia talk about the products that we already have in place and where something like a common application could live within that ecosystem and how we see that fitting into our mix of student
Speaker 63
1:12:44
supports alicia lewis division of higher ed over 10 years ago we contracted with information network of arkansas to create the universal portal system this portal was a game changer for students and their families when applying for state
scholarships and aid in a world where postage and snail mail were still a thing the portal eliminated a lot of back and forth between the students the institution and our agency through the years we've updated the student identifying portion of the portal for traditional high school students allowing them for them to be recognized based on data from the division of elementary and secondary education they interfaced seamlessly we have updated the application to include new scholarships such as our future and recently workforce challenge which also
allowed for a continuous application period the application period stays open year-round so you know how to eat an elephant right one bite at a time and we've taken one bite at a time over ten years in that time the scholarships have changed and so have the needs of students and their families we've been able to implement these changes into the portal I'll be it a little bit more clunky than what we would have preferred we in order to maintain a high level of user confidence and excellent customer service to our students and their families we need to implement more responsive tools we would like to deploy
chatbots that's the little thing that pops up that tells you exactly answers your question remotely pop-up information boxes that contain definitions and be able to contact students through SMS or text services for reminders and even uploading required documentation we're collaborating with dfna in Arkansas 529 plan to make make this college saver guide it's an interactive website designed to provide tools for families to accurately compare the cost of attendance across Arkansas higher as
higher education institutions this will be a side-by-side comparison where they'll be able to consider applicable state aid in conjunction with comparing those across those institutions we also created a new website that focuses solely on Arkansas's new scholarships and applicable programs of study this This website, called www.explorearcareers.com, contains a searchable database for fields of study and degree programs that are eligible for Arkansas Future
and Workforce Challenge. We also hope to implement a common app system that interfaces with our existing technology so that students may seamlessly apply for colleges. And our representatives from INA are here to detail that.
Speaker 71
1:15:22
Justin Kinchin, business manager for Information Network of Arkansas, just that. So hopefully you can
Speaker 73
1:15:28
see on your screen, I'm gonna walk you through what we're calling our universal college application proposal. So as Senator Bond kind of went into,
I think we're pretty familiar with the application process as it stands today. So every student has to fill out an application for every single institution that they might wish to attend. Similarly, if there's an application fee that's incurred in that process, they have to send those out separately as well to every individual institution. And then any statuses that are updated by the college relative to these submissions have to come back individually as well. So we want to make that look a little bit more like this. So we want to leverage the universal college application
system to really streamline this process and to create a much more efficient and consistent application experience for students. And as you can see, the benefits to students are really tremendous in this scenario because there's a single place, as you know, students can go and fill out a single form that will kick application questions to every school they wanna apply to at once. This is really gonna cut down on data entry time, duplicate of entry.
Additionally, it'll really cut back, as the gentleman said earlier, having to bounce back and forth between paper applications as well as digital applications as you go through the process. Similarly, in our system here, Students would complete a single transaction, a lump sum for all of their application fees. So if they are applying to multiple schools with multiple application fees, they pay that one time and that's routed over. Most importantly, this is gonna give students a place where they can go within our solution to apply for scholarship aid,
as well as admissions at the same time and have a single place where they can keep track of status updates and changes relative to their status across all of these. So really quickly, I'll walk you through just sort of what a student journey might look like in this. So we're going to leverage the universal scholarship application system we have at present. Students can go to that, use their existing user and password to log in, or they can create a new one. And we're going to take whatever data they already have in the system to help out. And at that point, they'll be able to choose to complete either an admission application or a scholarship application.
so when they get inside of here they'll have a student profile where they'll enter some just basic demographic data about themselves and a couple of preliminary questions like this so are you an arkansas resident say yes you know are you applying as a traditional student high school student we'll answer non-traditional and you would progress forward here to a screen where you know for convenience sake we've got it broken out by two and four year schools but this could be however we decided to do it. But in this example, say I want to make an application
to Pulaski Tech, Northwest Arkansas Community College, UALR, and U of A. So I'd select the schools that I want to send my application to. And at this point, this is where the system's really going to start to do the hard work. So all of the application questions from those four schools are going to be combined. And they're going to eliminate duplicate questions. So for example, if, you know, what is your name, appear four times on four separate applications you'll see that once moving forward it's going to pre-fill fields as much as possible using the demographic data that's in your student profile
at that point a student is going to answer the remaining questions they can confirm their answers and then if necessary proceed to payment to take care of any application fees so at the point they complete this each school that has been selected would receive an application containing the answers to that school's application questions now this is what the payment screen could look like so for example again we've got it broken out by two and four year schools Pulaski Tech and Northwest Arkansas Community College have no application fees Euler has one of $40 and U of A of 60 so the student
would make one payment here they'd only have to enter their credit card information one time pay their hundred dollars and then UALR would receive a disbursement of forty dollars automatically and U of A would receive their sixty dollar disbursement automatically at this point and the student would be brought back to their profile and they would have an application status section so you can see here the four schools we selected there would be a status for all four of those so you can see timestamps we submitted all of our applications on the same day status update showing it you've
been accepted you're maybe just as have the applications been received or rejected really critically from this point we can configure text and email alerts to go to the students anytime any of these statuses are updated so you know if you're just really waiting on pins and needles to see if you're going to get into a certain school you can configure this to be alerted immediately when these statuses change and that's really a high-level view of how we kind of see the system working any questions
Speaker 59
1:20:36
Mr. Chair, while they're thinking of their questions, I would like to say that at this
Speaker 60
1:20:45
point, this is very conceptual. So this is how we see this working. We have not done any of the technical specification work. We have not interfaced with the institutions to see, you know, to get their feedback. So it's more of a, hey, does this sound like something that you're interested in? Does this meet your intent? And then we can move forward with those conversations.
There are a few limitations. This would not apply for institutional scholarships. So the scholarships that they're referring to at this point would just be our state scholarships, those that are applied through the universal application. We can definitely move in that direction and have conversations about what an institutional scholarship application, how that would feed into this. But that would be something for, you know, the next step. Also, there are differences in admissions applications. If you're applying to a two-year college, you're talking two pages of questions.
They're open admissions, so they're requiring a lot less data. Universities, typically there are essays involved. There are letters of recommendation. So that process, you know, you wouldn't want to just apply to all, you know, 40 institutions if you didn't really intend to attend a university because there's a lot more work involved in that. So that is a consideration as well. this is not going to eliminate the campus level application. So I am sure Fayetteville is still going to maintain their own online application, their own paper application for
students who just walk in and they only want to apply for that school. So those are just a couple of things to keep in mind around this concept moving forward. Thank you, Doctor. Representative
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
1:22:27
Pilkington. thank you mr. chair um i was just late walking in here so excuse my ignorance on this but did you go over the cost of
implementation for this at all and do you know what the cost is if you
Speaker 86
1:22:38
didn't go over cost we have not we have not covered that at this point can can
Speaker 60
1:22:49
you tell me what the cost is you know that's really gonna do you want to speak to that sure um that's we We really haven't gotten that far, so there will be a development cost that could be funded in a couple of ways. So we've talked about, you know, if the agency were to pay for this service, then, of course, we would need general revenue to support the development of that, so we would have to come to the legislature and request funds to develop this.
The other option that we looked at was a fee for service, so, or, you know, that cart you saw at the end where a student is checking out, there could be a convenience fee that goes along with that that
Speaker 89
1:23:19
would pay for the product so there are some options there we really have not gotten that far
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
1:23:25
down the road gotcha do you have like a ballpark or
Speaker 67
1:23:30
just it's completely what we've done at this point is we've come up with a number of hours so we're looking at you know something around 1500 to 2000 hours of implementation work for development so you know
what that turns into in terms of price is going to depend on how it's funded but also what the actual specification ends up being okay fantastic that's all thank you for indulging me representative dotson
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:24:02
you recognize for question thank you mr chair my main question was on that cost as well as far as estimates but uh also you said that you have not reached out to any
institutions in the state, or have you done any preliminary reaching out to any of them to get initial feedback on what their interest level might be as far as participating in this? I've had
Speaker 60
1:24:27
some conversation. I've met with Mr. Goodman, with the independent institutions. You know, their concern so far has been we don't want to be left out of the opportunity to participate. So I think everyone is open to the concept. There, of course, will be a lot of implementation work.
So everything that we do has to interface with the institutions. So how robust of a system we're looking to create will depend, you know, that will inform the institutions of their interest. But I don't know that anyone would want to opt out specifically if there was no cost to the institution. If this was just a benefit to our citizens and our students who are looking at institutions, then, of course, I think everyone would want to opt in as long as we're able to cover the cost of
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:25:13
implementation. Well, as you're looking at those and gauging interest
and that sort of thing, you might check with
them. Obviously, opting out probably wouldn't be a good idea for most institutions, I would think, but what the interest level might be if they were to have some buy-in and what they might be willing to help offset the cost for implementation of it to get it started and standardized their their applications across the state i like the idea and the concept though thank you
Speaker 16
1:25:47
senator sturch you're recognized for a question thank you mr chair dr markham i'll
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
1:25:53
direct this to you first and then you can kind of delegate but i wanted to see i know you said you hadn't talked to p's and c's yet and of course they'd have to be at the table but can you give give us just a general idea of how broad an application may vary from school to school or even how the fee might vary from school to school. I mean, I know each one has to pay for their own staff and their own processors and things like this, but to me, this may be an idea that we might could have cut. We might can cut some of the costs as far as application work and different things like that, but I don't know. I
Speaker 100
1:26:23
don't know what that variance is between the application
process itself and the fee that it's associated with
Speaker 101
1:26:29
it so that sure so the fee is is usually associated with how
Speaker 60
1:26:33
much manual work there is on the other side of it so that most of the two-year institutions don't charge anything because a lot of it's check boxes and yes or no there's very little qualitative information that has to be subject to interpretation by human who's processing that um on the uh the university side i mean there are there are a lot more um um qualitative pieces to that, so there are essays that have to be read and things are scored, so there's
more human capital that goes into processing those applications, and that's what the fee is associated with. So we go from zero dollars in a two-page application that's mainly, you know, demographic information for our open enrollment two-year colleges to very lengthy applications with, you know, because you're being admitted maybe to a certain college or program. So it varies quite a bit, and that's where you see the variation in the fees. For our public institutions, I think $60 was the highest one, the U of A, and there may
be several at that price point, but I don't think we went over that. The private institutions, I don't want to speak on your behalf, but I don't know where their price points are, but there is an application fee for most of those as well. Thank you, ma'am.
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:27:50
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Birch, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question is what else do you need to proceed to answer all the questions or to do the research? Do you need something from this body? Are you already going forward
and you're moving as fast as you can? Because I can't imagine that anybody that's sitting here that's ever sat beside a child trying to get through the application process for college would say this is not a good idea or a great idea even. So what's next? What do you need to propel
Speaker 60
1:28:23
this forward? I think today, really, we just wanted to gauge the interest of this group. If the appetite for investment in this type of thing was there, then we'll definitely
continue with those conversations, start talking with our presidents and chancellors, see how robust of a system we're talking about, what the scale and scope of a project like this may look like. And at that point, we would be able to come up with a more definitive idea of what it might cost. we would have a proposal at that time to this group mr.
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:28:53
chair just follow up or maybe this is too I'm not sure so I mean I'd like to see this come back in two months and say where are you now can we do that can we as a group or as a
committee say this is a good thing today or are there people here who are saying no it's not a good thing let them skip on for another six months I'd really like to see you go ahead and make those inquiries as soon as possible yeah five kids over here they're saying oh my goodness this is an outstanding idea looking at that from their standpoint and certainly from ours from the constituents let's do this sooner rather than later or somebody says no let's talk
Representative Birch, I assure you, and I want you to know this too, Dr. Markham, you have an open invitation to come to this committee. We would like, I know speaking for myself and some of the others that I've heard, we'd like to hear updates periodically. If that takes the form of an email or just a heads up, could we come in June? We got something, we got something we'd like y'all to look at. love to partner with you in the development of this so that we as much
as possible we can keep both branches on the same page as this develops and personally if you could when you're when you're getting feedback from colleges start asking parents too I think that our primary consumers are a whole bunch of moms and dads who are really trying hard to make a better life for their kids and they are more more confused and frustrated than their kids are I think if we could we could get a system where we could open doors for the parents I
think you might even you know along the way get a few of them showing up at your tech tech schools and community colleges or even your four-year institutions just from seeing how it works but if that answers your question sure so so I I think what
Speaker 60
1:30:59
I'm hearing is move forward with this and report back on our progress? I personally
would like to see that, sure. Okay.
Representative Dotson, you're recognized for one
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:31:14
more question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just something you said with regards to the application process for universities being a little bit more complex and having fees associated with it. Would this be something that the department would be taking
a fee, potentially, and providing that human capital, that score, that's sort of standardized across the board for all universities in the state to say,
here's the ranking for this particular applicant, and base their acceptance or not, without having to go through that scoring themselves, or would every institution that someone wanted to apply to have to do $60 here, $50 there to each one that they're wanting to apply to? We don't
Speaker 60
1:32:05
anticipate collecting any kind of fee for our labor. I mean, we're mainly just performing the duty of a clearinghouse, so we're collecting data
and then distributing that out to the institutions. We would not endeavor to determine quality of a candidate to an institution. They have their own rubrics that they use to decide So the fee would have
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
1:32:28
to go, so if they wanted to go to three different schools, they'd have to pay the individual
fee for each one of those schools
Speaker 101
1:32:37
to do their application at each one of those. Yes, because there's still going to be work done by each institution where they submit an admission application.
Okay, thank you. Well, thank you, Doctor. I don't see any more questions in the queue. I'd certainly appreciate the presentation today. You'd have
to give me a cue. Representative Vaughn, you're recognized. Excuse me, Senator.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:33:16
I just want to say thank you, number one. Y'all are always very kind to engage my craziness at times.
I really appreciate it. And also, I think everybody knows, but we have a birth downturn after the recession, so higher ed is going to be, we need more students to apply. We have to figure out ways to make it easier, and it's going to be a real challenge. Am I right about that in, what, five more years, eight more years? So if we don't get more students applying, we're in big trouble, or our institutions are in big trouble. All right, thank you. Thank you.
next up our agenda mr. Andy Goodman president of Arkansas's independent colleges and universities welcome Andy you know the drill name position for the record thank you sure
Speaker 116
1:34:23
Andy Goodman president of Arkansas Independent Colleges and Universities Reggie Hill
Speaker 117
1:34:30
I serve as the vice president of marketing enrollment at University
Speaker 116
1:34:34
of the Ozarks welcome thank you so first off thank you Senator Bond for engaging us early on this and you know talking with Senator Davis too and part of this conversation about a portal and kind of where we are talking about the common app now you know we see the value in any platform that can help a young person you know
pursue or further their education with a four-year degree obviously that's something that's that's good for us we want to be supportive as possible and in in the build-out obviously we have 11 institutions in AICU we're Harding we're Hendricks we're John Brown we're Flandersmith we're University Ozarks where Mr. Hill is from and you know we even have a different application process for our individual schools within our group um so in talking about uh a build out for
that you know i met with dr markham and expressed that you know we would like to have some some level of of influence and and talk about uh you know the specifics and and it's not just as easy as is having uh everybody in one place but in fact like the way that data comes back to the institutions data does take a good deal of grooming and mr. mr. Hill who has been in this field for about 15 years and came from Florida as well offered
his expertise and kind of discussing how some of that will work together as we move
Speaker 120
1:36:12
forward and in my opinion any cooperative that creates greater access and opportunity is a great thing for not only students but also communities one One of our biggest opportunities or challenges that we may
Speaker 122
1:36:26
face is systems integration. Each college and university use a different student information system, a different customer relationship management tool, and that information needs to seamlessly move into those institutions
systems in order for it to function well. If not, will universities have the buy-in? And if you don't have the university's buy-in just because of systems integration,
Speaker 123
1:36:55
that That may pose a challenge. The data sets specifically that we discussed
Speaker 124
1:37:00
earlier today, we were talking about, tell me again, Richard, you're talking about the AI?
Speaker 120
1:37:08
So we're talking about whether it's an API, which is an
Speaker 122
1:37:12
application protocol interface, and how information moves from system to system seamlessly. So in the development process, we need to make sure that there's an open API that our SIS systems and our student information systems and our customer relationship management tools, which is our recruitment tools, can seamlessly receive the application. And there's not a data dump where we then have to
rebuild our data architecture to receive this information. And most
Speaker 116
1:37:45
of this, you know, we feel that if we have opportunity to come in and meet with the department and the other institutions is something that you know that's that's where the real conversation begins about how this gets ironed out and what buy-in we have from all the other institutions in the state as well so and talking about a portal as well and we talked about the admissions process as well you know part of the it's really
two-fold though because it's not just admissions that we have to speak to but also about financial aid. Now, our institutions have a lot of, of course, in-house scholarships as well that are used. And that's to be determined and can't necessarily be put on that platform. But in the same breath, the FAFSA is the largest portion of that. And without some cooperation from the federal level about how we can make some amends to that,
there's not just a whole lot of ground that we have to cover in the FAFSA and implementing that into what we're currently doing. I believe the Arkansas Challenge Grants in statute, you have to complete the FAFSA before you can apply for the Challenge Grants. And that's actually control
Speaker 129
1:39:00
and the way we've laid those grants out the way the legislature has.
Speaker 130
1:39:13
are there any questions from members the sad benefit of actually being on the
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
1:39:28
committee I guess but the idea I think part of
what we've talked about the build-out is this idea that if student bunch of students get in the portal then you create an atmosphere where the institutions are competing for the students and their attention and as opposed to the students having to go out
and gather the all the information do you see that as a possibility with the independence particularly getting more access to students who may not have considered that we create more competition amongst the institutions for students and possibly lower the cost I mean the one thing with the fees being online if you're in a portal and your fees 75 bucks and the next one's 25 you might get that fee down right I mean because you want kids to apply to your school that's the this is the idea I think is the empowerment of the student
we worry a lot about the institutions which I know are important but empowering the student of families is something that this seems like it would help with what do y'all think
Speaker 120
1:40:24
about that well the question I would pose is why would they be separate fees and why wouldn't there be just one fee in terms of if you are
Speaker 122
1:40:31
a part of this cooperative it should just be one fee and my one fee should allow me to apply to
Speaker 124
1:40:43
multiple institutions and U of O what's the fee
at University Ozarks nothing and and for
Speaker 120
1:40:53
application fees they existed when we had paper applications and someone had to hand key it no longer
Speaker 122
1:40:58
than universities use paper applications we all have application forms which seamlessly integrates into our student information system representing Pilkington you have a question you're recognized thank you
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
1:41:19
mr. chair first off go Eagles absolutely I love you so one things I know is they have an incredible program when it comes to recruiting quote-unquote the Waltons do you think that would this would somehow hurt our
ability to funnel those students into U of O and instead be going to other institutions because you know as someone who lives in the area I think that's one of the great great attributes of U of O and I would hate for us to almost hurt one of
our best best recruitment tools because we want to open ourselves up so could Could you kind of explain away
Speaker 120
1:42:02
those concerns for me? Yeah, so the biggest challenge is that we have some niche groups that actually apply to the institution, which wouldn't be eligible to apply through the portal. The challenge is that many universities, and even if you had the common application, we still use our native application, which is the institution's application. So many universities will still operate
and function to applications. And so for us, students like, what would the Walton International Scholars use, or what would international students use? And so that would be a big challenge for some universities who actually recruit outside of the country, or who recruit niche
Speaker 122
1:42:37
groups that are not eligible for other institutions. Hope I answered, did I answer your question correctly? Okay,
Speaker 135
1:42:47
all right. I don't have anyone else in the queue,
or are we finished for the day? Clear. Well, I thank you for coming and I appreciate your
input. Thank you. Seeing no other business before the committee, we are adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Opening Remarks by Co-Chairs
C. Discussion Regarding Admission and Scholarship Process
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - HIGHER EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE, Feb 20, 2020 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Handout 1 State College Trend Lover for Enrollees | Exhibit | 4 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Handout 2 AR Public Higher Education Institutions | Exhibit | 1 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Presentation ADHE YOUniversal College Application Student | Exhibit | 10 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Representative David Whitaker Chair
Unverified
Representative Mark Lowery Chair
Unverified
Senator Will Bond
Unverified
Speaker 16
Senator James Sturch
Unverified
Speaker 35
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 47
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Representative LeAnne Burch
Unverified
Speaker 60
Speaker 63
Speaker 65
Speaker 59
Speaker 71
Speaker 73
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
Speaker 86
Speaker 89
Speaker 67
Representative Jim Dotson
Unverified
Speaker 100
Speaker 101
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
Speaker 116
Speaker 117
Speaker 120
Speaker 122
Speaker 123
Speaker 124
Speaker 129
Speaker 130
Speaker 135