Education Committee- House and Senate
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Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:00
Good afternoon. Calling the Education Committee meeting to order. And first thing on our list is do you have any comments you'd like to make? Representative Brooks. no ma'am chair English
Speaker 5
1:28
I will yield the floor to you thank you okay first thing
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:34
on our agenda is we need a motion to authorize the chairs to approve special expenses second or her second thank you all in favor all opposed thank you very much okay then we need a motion to approve the minutes from the October 7th meeting do I second all in favor thank you and we need a motion to approve the minutes from December 5th meeting
thank you second all in favor very good thank you okay in your information here what we decided to do is one of the things that we do in this committee as anybody who's been on this committee for a long while knows is our whole focus ends up being on adequacy but one of the things that most people don't have any idea about is the end of the process when we have to put the
worksheets and the recommendations together. So I decided that what might be very helpful to everybody is that you have a copy of the worksheet right from the beginning. So as we go through all of the reports from the Bureau on adequacy, then you have some idea of what that's attached to we can begin to think about it rather than waiting until the end. Does that make sense? Does that make sense?
So anyway, so that's what we have here is Exhibit D2 is the recommendation
so that as we go through this process, you can begin to put your thoughts and ideas out on this worksheet, thinking about the recommendation that the two Senate and House committees will have to make at the end before the next legislative session. So that's that. And then we have a schedule here for our committee,
and one of the things that Representative Brooks and I decided would be very helpful
is that if we plan to visit some schools, one of the things we do is we spend a lot of time talking about what they ought to be. It would be helpful if some of us went out and looked at some different schools. So on this D3, there's a list
of all the kinds of things that we'll be doing over the next few months.
And what you can see on here is that we will have an opportunity to, we meet two days. Usually it's the first Monday and Tuesday of the month. And so one half a day we will spend on adequacy, and one half a day we'll visit schools around the state. So I'd like to do four to make sure we're in each congressional district and hopefully in a charter school amongst those. So we're working on a list right now.
We'll get that to you, make sure that everybody is cool with that. And so are there any questions here?
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
4:59
Anybody have any questions? I don't have a question, but I just want to highlight for the committee the prior thing that Senator English talked about relative to the adequacy recommendations. And so last time, for those of you who were a part of the committee, as you know, it is a very long and arduous process, about 10 months. What we found was that once you get to the end of that, most people don't necessarily remember exactly everything that went into it.
We have a giant binder that our friends at BLR do an amazing job of presenting to us and presenting all of the relevant data from across the state. But once you get to the recommendation portion, it can be difficult to recall everything went in. And so that caused us to not have a lot of recommendations. And so I think it's important. It's good for the health of our overall adequacy recommendations to make sure that as many people are as engaged as possible. And so Senator English and I felt that it would be appropriate to to have a little bit more measured approach as we do this.
So hopefully we can kind of come up with our recommendations along the way and then have the joint one at the end. So that's a little bit more of the rationale. As far as the site visits to schools go, if there is a particular school that you think would be extremely relevant for us to visit, then let us know. We have a general list already that we're trying to cover all different areas of the state. but would certainly like to take any of your perspective into account as well. So, thank you, Senator. Yes, so, Representative McGruder.
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
6:28
Thank you, Senator. Thank you so much. My question is in regards to, you said the dates, will that be shared with us? I didn't see September and October, but no official dates on there. I'm sorry, what was that again? I'm just trying to get a clear understanding of when the dates we're going to be in these locations. I see September, October, November, December, it just says half a day.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
6:55
It doesn't tell us when. Yeah, so if you look in September, so half a day in September, that's probably the first Monday of the month.
Half a day we'll start working on the college workforce, CTE stuff. And on Tuesday, then, we'll go to make a site visit someplace. Okay. Thank you. There's some
interesting things going on around the state. And, you know, sometimes we kind of forget about what is going on in each of these schools, so it's kind of nice to take a look and see. And we get the report card, and we know they're A through F or whatever, but we don't really get a general context for that school and that school district.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
7:38
So, yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just kind of go off the Representative McGruder line of questioning. Do we have an idea of when these dates may be published so that way members can build out their schedules and so forth
Senator Jane English
Unverified
7:59
like that? Fine. I think you could probably count on the first day. What is the 1st of September? I think
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
8:05
that's Labor Day, possibly. So it would be probably Tuesday and Wednesday.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
8:09
Okay. thank you any other questions okay we have one last little thing here we have is every year the bureau sends out surveys to all the schools to the superintendents for a variety of things we have one specific superintendent request that has gone out and we have typically we don't have too much trouble
but at the land this last time we've had about 10 or 12 that were really having a hard time getting those surveys in they're not long they're not arduous they're just need to be completed pretty general questions so so far even though we have called and we have sent emails and we have had the Bureau do that we We still haven't gotten a response
back from Conway School District, from Forest City School District, or from Magnet Cove School District.
So if those are in your area, I hope you will encourage those people to get their surveys in so that the
Bureau can complete its work. Thank you. Now, moving right along, we have Dr. Ken Warden
Senator Jane English
Unverified
9:42
introduce yourself, you will be recognized.
Speaker 34
9:48
Ken Warden, Commissioner, Arkansas Division of Higher
Speaker 38
9:54
Education. Go ahead. Senator, members of the committee, thank you for your time today. I was asked to come down and talk a little bit about return on investment in higher education, and I'm happy to do that. Before I get into the slides, I want to point out a few things. Nationally and in Arkansas, there has been a lack in confidence of higher education over the last decade or so. In 2015, Gallup, the pollsters that you all know,
began doing a poll to gauge the confidence in higher education. And in 2015, 57% of the individuals that answered the survey responded that they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education. In 2023, that number had slipped to 36%. From 57% to 36% in eight years. In 2024, it was the same number, and we don't think it's going to change any this year.
Now, we've got to think about how we are accountable in higher ed to this perceived lack of confidence and do a better job of understanding what's driving that. Now, the pollsters, when they drill down, the lack of confidence came from three things. Anybody guess what those three indicators were that why people are losing confidence in higher ed? Number three was relevant skills. Number two, I heard cost. And number one was political agendas.
So people think that their institutions of higher education nationally cost too much, aren't teaching relevant skills, and are pushing political agendas. So over the last year, we have gathered data on all the institutions and degrees that are offered in Arkansas and looked at what is the ROI. I think that while students and parents may not know everything there is to know about our education is that they understand a bottom line of the dollar bill. So this slide show today talks a little bit about how we measured that and what we found through the process.
So the way we gauged return on investment for degrees in Arkansas was we calculated the net program completer's earnings. So we compared the amount the individual earned after their degree, and then we subtracted what it cost them to go to school. Now, the cost of attendance was tuition fees, books, et cetera, and we backed out the scholarships that we gave because we can account for federal and state scholarships. So that was not a cost to the individual, so we pulled that cost out.
But we added back in the potential wages that they did not receive because they give up that time to go to school and to earn their degree. So it's their post-completion earnings minus what they would have earned had they not gone to school and then what it cost them for tuition fees books etc this slide just kind of repeats the last slide
Speaker 36
12:57
so i'm just going to skip through that we can obviously come back to this in more detail or just ask questions as we go along so who is included
Speaker 38
13:08
so the people that we include in this survey are all the students who complete a degree with the highest degree earned in that year as a reference point so if they there are situations where students may earn two degrees in a year so they'll earn an associate's degree and a bachelor's degree in the same year we counted the highest degree and if they had more than one credential in the same year we counted the stem degree because those are the ones that actually pay they tend to pay the most the math and stem programs and if none are high demand or stem we just counted the first degree they earned if they can earn more than one degree who is excluded students who re-enrolled after they just completed a degree we didn't count
those, students that we couldn't track because they went to work out of state, and students whose name or identification that we couldn't match. So the numbers and things I'm going to show you and the numbers that we use in this methodology were Arkansas students that graduated from Arkansas Public Institutions of Higher Education that went to work in Arkansas by matching their social security number. So this is not fuzzy math. These are students that we can account for. If we couldn't account for them we didn't use them in our calculations so here's a slide of I've got
only have four examples of the degrees I want to show you I want to point out something very important you see on the slide it says CIP and then there's a numbers and this slide it's CIP 11 CIP is classification of instructional program that's a number that identifies a program sip codes are six digits long we didn't we didn't measure six digit sip codes we we measured two digit sip codes to give you an example this is a category of degrees so a cip11 is computer and
information sciences so we didn't look at every individual computer science degree we looked at the category as a whole right if you look down to the individual degree the numbers are so small that it makes excuse the data and also it can get it can get to the point where some there's some personally identifiable information which we don't want to do so these are all all the degrees we measured are at the two-digit level there are only 35 different bachelor degree sip codes at the two-digit level and there are approximately i think there's 25 associate degrees in at the
two-digit sip code level on the left you see the associate degree completer on the right you see the bachelor's degree completer you'll notice that the graduation year is 2015 the reason we use 2015 as a starting year is because our state longitudinal data system is very very strong back to about 2011 when you get past that the longitudinal data system is not as as as good so we started with the 2011 start date in four years which is a standard time to earn a bachelor's degree is 2015 and that's when we clock the degrees so we started these are people who
completed a degree in 2015 if you'll look at the graph the orange line is what a high school graduate earned over the next eight years cumulatively and you'll see that that orange line starts at zero right the green line is what the degree earner earned and you'll see that that number that line starts below zero the difference in the zero line is the cost of the degree on the left you can see that that associate degree cost this individual these individuals about $40,000
the bachelor's degree in this area cost the individual looks like around $100,000 and you'll see over eight years time the the cumulative wage earnings of the high school graduate in orange versus the college degree completer in green in this category on the associate degrees it took 1.86 years for that degree to pay for itself and from that point on that individual was earning more than the high school graduate on the bachelor's degree it took
2.24 years and then over that period of time you can see that the individual earned in the bachelor's degree 482 thousand dollars these are median wages so that we get rid of the outliers that are you know way you know really really high really low these are median this is median data i wish my 401k had that kind of return so i've got four different sets of these degrees i don't have all of them today but i have those
available for you that we can send to the committee if the chairs would like the next degree we're going to highlight is an education degree so this is keep in mind this is before a fifty thousand dollar a year guaranteed salary the two-year degree in education in the eight-year period did not earn more than the high school graduate if you count cost of attendance in the four-year degree in the eight-year period it the degree paid for itself in 4.42 years so there's a story here I want to talk just a little bit about one this paints a picture of
a career pathway don't end with the associate degree if you want these degrees to pay for themselves, right? Go on and get your bachelor's degree. But think about the individuals. What occupations do associate degree education majors have? What are those people doing? They're parapros and early child care workers. And those are jobs that we have a high social value for. So monetarily, there may not be a return on investment just from a pure dollar standpoint,
but these are jobs that we need so we have to think about what do we do in this instance if there isn't a return on investment through the associate degree again you can harken back to a career pathway so you can earn and learn as you do more or you know how do we account for this we knowing we need these these these jobs filled the next one is a sip code 43 which is law enforcement firefighting protective services
the associate degree paid for itself in 1.15 years the bachelor's degree paid for itself in just under five years but there's something that's very peculiar about these graphs look at the median earnings eight years after the graduation date the associate degrees actually earn more than the bachelor's degrees but you have to look at also look at the zero line the bachelor degree was much more expensive and the associate degree cost very little about looks
like around 15 20 000 where the bachelor degree was somewhere around 70. so the bachelor's degree happens at institutions that are more expensive they're four-year institutions so their tuition fees are higher and it takes longer so the return on investment this thing hasn't paid as well as the associate degree now we only have eight years of data going back to 2023 in arkansas we'll have nine years of data this summer in the fall what we've seen in other states when we look at these degrees is that your four-year degrees and especially some of your liberal arts studies
degrees really start catching their stride about year nine or ten and when we see the short-term degrees kind of plateau after that in that time period we see wage potential growth continue to climb with higher degree levels so we suspect that we will probably see that same trend in our data as we continue to build it out over time we just don't have the data right now but it's a good start uh the next graph this is health professions so you see associate degree completers and
bachelor degree completers associate degree pays off in one year the bachelor degree 2.34 years but you look at the median wages after year eight there's not a tremendous difference in and their earnings but again this showcases you know you can do a learn and earn career pathway and again if you want to go be an aprn or do advanced studies you have to get to that bachelor's degree level these folks are probably going to be better suited or more attracted to leadership in in these health professions which over time we we know will pay more and really the experience
Speaker 36
21:37
added to the degree doesn't happen until a little later on so about and again as we've looked in other states about that 10 to 12 year point 9 to
Speaker 40
21:48
12 somewhere in there so that's short and sweet um i'd like to give you an
Speaker 42
21:55
opportunity to ask any questions or anything i can
Speaker 45
22:07
answer about that other questions from the committee representative makes all
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
22:21
right thank you madam chair so uh my question is this is all good data
are we doing anything to make this data available to prospective students so they can look at this and help them make informed decisions on which pathway that they want
Speaker 38
22:35
to pursue into the future. Yes, sir. So since 2017, all the public college and university have been required by statute to deliver a student the economic security report. It says every degree by institution, the number of graduates, the median salaries they earn, they've been required to read that information or be given that information and affirm that they've read it since 2017.
The problem is it's like your security policy on your iPhone. It comes up, it's several pages, you check the box and roll on. So we have been giving this to students, but I will contend that they're probably not reading it and something gets lost in the translation. This was intentionally about simplifying it, but there's something about simplifying that makes it resonate, in my opinion. So
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
23:20
are we going to try to do that to try to be more proactive so that students aren't just checking a box, that they're actually reviewing this for their chosen profession going forward?
Speaker 49
23:32
Yes, sir. And I think that, you know, when I started, I
Speaker 38
23:37
talked about as a state, our higher education rate is 42% people who leave high school and go on to college. And that's a very conservative rate. It's probably more like 45% or 46%, but the national average is 62%. we can increase by 50% and just be on par with the nation we've got to give this message in a way that parents and students are and understand that so so
that they can regain confidence we've suffered from an under appreciation of higher education and it's probably the biggest challenges that we have so we've got to give this message in a way that shows that if you come and you earn this degree you are going to have a very very high likelihood of prosperity
Senator Jane English
Unverified
24:24
and earning more in your life so how do you um how do we plan to do this with as we're in school by the eighth grade kids are supposed to be starting their plan for their future sort of so how are
we going to be able to incorporate what
we're learning with that helping to build that pathway Well, moving into next
Speaker 38
24:45
year, all of our eighth grade students will be
Speaker 36
24:48
required to complete a student success plan, or it may be a pilot next year, the secretary's here. I'm not the elementary secondary guy, but I will say that we are going to require students
Speaker 38
24:58
build a success plan, and through that we're also going to have a college and career-like concurrent pathway guide that helps attract those students. We do have several different platforms and things that students can engage in to better inform their decisions
on what their aptitude is and where their interests are to help drive these conversations. So
Senator Jane English
Unverified
25:18
you were referring to that thing. Was that the employment security report or whatever? No, ma'am. That's a
Speaker 36
25:25
different thing. That is a report that we've been producing. Actually, the Department of Commerce produces that report. We are required to give it to students as they apply to any institution. Well,
Senator Jane English
Unverified
25:36
it started off being really good. It got so much information, it's overwhelming.
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
25:41
to figure out exactly what it, what it says. Yeah. Excuse me. Um, representative Cozart. Thank you, madam chair. I have a question that we were talking about on Thursday and hot springs, Garnett County, our group of superintendents met with us. And we were talking about return on investment for career education, um, degrees and certificates, do we monitor that yet
or have we been monitoring that enough to know if we're getting a
Speaker 65
26:18
return on investment? So this was our first attempt to do this with Fidelity. And we started this last,
Speaker 36
26:25
the measuring and the processing last July. And we just measured associate and bachelor degrees at that two-digit level. Now, beginning this year, we are going to start measuring technical certificates and certificates of proficiency which is what you're talking about this is our current plan so we'll measure that in this year and continue to build that out
and then the next year we're going to move to uh uh into non non-credit degrees so short-term training like you're talking about because i think you know we hear a lot about and i'm an auto technician by trade you've always said that before so i believe in career technical education But we're going
Speaker 38
27:03
to be able to prove, disprove what those earnings are, and I think that's the least common denominator is, okay, here's what it costs you. What we found early on is that our short-term certificates and technical certificates and certificates of proficiency have an ROI that happens very fast.
It's because they don't cost a student anything. We have enough financial aid
Speaker 36
27:23
tools and enough opportunities that they can pick up these short-term academic credentials at little to no cost. But what we have to stack that on top of is what is the potential earnings after the degree, not just what the ROI is, but long-term, what is the potential earnings. So it does kind of get the short answer is yes, we're going to measure
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
27:44
that. I figured it was coming shortly because we've kind of been a short time in this,
but we were talking about that. But we thank you for the information you've given us today and what you're going to give us in the
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
28:03
future again. Thank you. representative Duke thank you madam chair thank you for the report that was really interesting and also done really well readable for folks and I appreciate that I have a couple of questions if I may they're pretty short and so
I'm gonna fire them out here and then you can just kind of give them to
me what are the high demand because you obviously have focused on the high demand
degrees and soon you know can you kind of highlight those what those are the The second one is you talked about the ones that go in-state versus the stay here in Arkansas and go out. I would assume you know the percentage on that, on how many are getting our degrees here and leaving. So I'm curious about what that number looks like as well. Do you
Speaker 36
28:45
want to answer those two before I? Yeah, let me get to the high-wage, high-demand. That really varies depending on how you operational
Speaker 38
28:52
define high-wage, high-demand and where you set your high-demand demarcation.
We did a bunch of work in that in DESE when the CTE for elementary secondary and took our list of 65 technical education programs and got down to a list of 18 that are high-wage, high-demand based on a multiplier of minimum wage, so on and so forth, and a number of available jobs. This is not intended to be high-wage, high-demand. It's just all it is about is wages and what the cost was. So that's a little different. We do have some of that information, and
Speaker 75
29:22
I'd be glad to share it with you. I'm not prepared to go into it in depth today.
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
29:28
I'd just be curious, since you referenced it, what are
those that you all used and found to be here in your data that you used here? And then on how many that got the degree here are Arkansas students and then left? So I will say
Speaker 36
29:41
that we can get that number, the students that got the degree, because we just count everybody that got the degree and the ones that made it into
Speaker 80
29:47
this end count from where we can account for went to work in Arkansas. And
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
29:51
I realize that's not necessarily what you're looking at, But I'm interested just because particularly of our Arkansas students, because I know that's some of the reasoning things happened in the past.
I know it impacted some of the kids that went to school with my own children and my own children, their decision-making process is Arkansas public school graduates or Arkansas graduates who went on to Arkansas colleges that were trying to keep stay in the state. I'm curious how many were losing, you know, on that piece. And then on this, that employment security report, which I found fascinating, having a college-age student right now, do you know or can you tell me, do the faculty get this report or their advisors that would, I would think, be able to utilize that in talking to their students as they're deciding their pathways and do you know if that disseminates to them?
Speaker 59
30:41
It is publicly available and broadly disseminated. Now, how many of them take advantage of it? That would probably be the crux of the
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
30:47
situation. Probably about the same many as the students. And does it come to them only when they apply, or do these students receive this as they're going through their journey in college and maybe deciding, I don't think I necessarily want to do this degree? Do they receive it another time, or is it, again, just
Speaker 36
31:02
out there? There is no limit to how many times they can receive it. The statute requires that they receive it upon applying to the
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
31:09
college. Okay, and this is my last one. And high schools, is that going out to our counselors or anyone in our high schools
as they are counseling kids as to what to look at in degrees?
Speaker 36
31:21
I'm not sure. It's publicly available, but I don't know what kind of marketing push we use
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
31:34
to send it out. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
31:39
Representative Gonzalez. Yes, thank you. Thank you for your report. And you mentioned the paraprofessionals who obtain two-year degrees.
They're Associate of Arts, essentially. And then they move into those parapro roles, also those in early childhood education, early childhood. And what I was just wondering is, I know when we're looking at pathways, is there a possibility to include that for a paraprofessional? If you had a certificate program, just thinking, a paraprofessional then moving to a bachelor's in teaching.
Now, granted, not every paraprofessional wants to become a teacher. but for those who do want to become a teacher you know that having that pathway because right now that all of the paraprofessionals essentially you know their their wages are pretty dismal and um and so and and it's hard oftentimes to find really good paraprofessionals or that you find one and then they they don't remain because of the pay
Speaker 53
32:50
so anyway in my opinion there's there's
never been a better time than now okay for a paraprofessional
Speaker 36
32:57
to transition into a licensed teacher we have an apprenticeship program where a lot of where most all of the work is offered online we pair them with a with with someone on their campus and that is
Speaker 38
33:12
um i won't i won't say no cost but very little to no cost to the parapro we we we believe strongly that in situations where
you have teacher shortages that growing your own is one of the best ways to do that so if someone is a parapro they know what the environment is where they are and this is a tremendous opportunity to to advance themselves and have more earning potential so it's it's a very good time to move from a para-pro into a licensed teacher in Arkansas right now. Okay,
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
33:42
and I was just curious. Thank you, and I am familiar with the Grow Your Own programs, and we actually have one where I work at the University of Arkansas. I'm very much in favor of those, but at the same time, I'm just thinking,
well, if they've earned a two-year degree and they're a paraprofessional and they're continuously working towards that bachelor's, in that interim, they're essentially still making a pretty – there's not an increase in salary because they have an associate's degree, for example. And so to me, that's kind of an area that there's a little bit of a gap, and we want to keep them doing what they're doing, but at the same time look at the living wage that they have as they're going to school.
Anyway, I just wanted your comment on
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
34:36
that. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner Wharton, thank you again for the report. I like the simplicity of it. But I do have a question. Just out of curiosity, I was trying to pull up the kind of information. You said it's available to the students on the various campuses, so I was looking at UALR and the department I graduated from to see if I could find that information.
Is it going to be, I mean, is this potential earnings? Is there a consistent place where each campus is going to post that, or is there one place where students can go? Do they have to look per campus? Do they have to look per department? I can't find it. So it would
Speaker 36
35:18
be, if you apply to that institution, they're going to be required to give you a copy of that or an electronic copy of that economic security report. And if you Google economic security report Arkansas, there's a dashboard. There's lots of metrics and things you can look at.
You can look by degree. You can look by institution. You can look by occupation, lots of different ways to sort the data when you get to their dashboard. But it's typically, in the institution I served last, we had a part of the process of the, we have to provide several things when a student applies that are required by, you know, the state or by federal law. And that's on the list of those things. So I would say that, you know,
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
36:00
that. But you did say that there is, and I didn't write it down, a website or something a person could look at now.
Speaker 36
36:07
Yes, ma'am. What was it? Yeah, it's publicly available. Economic development? Yeah, it's on the Department of Commerce's website. But if you'll just Google Arkansas Economic Security Report. Okay. Thank you. It's the first thing that pops up. I've looked it up several times. Wonderful. Thank you. I will add that, you know, the Access Act asks us to or,
Speaker 38
36:35
I guess, tells us to embed an ROI metric in the current funding formula.
So we're working through that process now to see how we can responsibly look at what all of our degrees are, what have a
Speaker 36
36:48
return, so that we can guarantee the taxpayers of Arkansas that they're going to engage in programs, our public institutions, that they're going to have and use taxpayers' money to pay for that, that they're going to have a very high likelihood of increased wages and
Senator Jane English
Unverified
37:06
return on investment. So where are you getting the data from for the wage data?
Speaker 34
37:11
Yes, it's our state longitudinal data system, Senator. So we work with Commerce
Speaker 36
37:15
and have data share agreements. So all the data that we use is data that we've gleaned from
Speaker 38
37:21
the Arkansas Higher Education Information System and then paired that back to UI wage match for
Senator Jane English
Unverified
37:27
Department of Workforce Services. So this is
Speaker 38
37:30
going back to 2011? Well, 2015 is the graduation year. 2011 is when our – 2010, 2011 is when our longitudinal data system is really good. From there back, it's a little sketchy, but from 2010, 11 forward,
our state longitudinal data system is good.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
37:46
So is there a way to kind of do that every year and a year
Speaker 36
37:52
on? Is that what you're doing? Yes, ma'am. That's the goal. So we're going to
Speaker 38
37:56
be able to come back probably this fall and show you year nine, and then we'll start showing you 2016 graduates with eight years, so on and so forth. So this is a long-term plan of continuing to look at this and then adding short-term degrees to that, non-degree credentials, and so on.
And Senator, on a related note, you know we did some work on Workforce Challenge, and we have zero data of this nature for graduates from private career ed schools. But I think that since we are funding them and giving scholarships to those institutions, we're going to start collecting that data so we can go apples to apples of someone, the cost of their education at a private career ed workforce challenge, using those scholarship dollars and what they did after the fact. Are there any further questions?
Senator Jane English
Unverified
38:48
nobody has a question okay well thank you very much I think it's really important to to be gathering this information to be able to and tell me again how many degrees are we doing so far we've got three or four well no
Speaker 36
39:07
we have all of them but when you go with the categories of a two-digit zip code right
Speaker 38
39:12
there are only 35 categories for bachelor's degrees in Arkansas and there's about 25 for associate degrees.
Some bachelor's degrees don't have an associate degree complement. Not everything has a two, but a four. So, yeah, when you go to that categorical two-digit level, there's only 35 bachelor degrees and 25 associate degrees. So we talk
Senator Jane English
Unverified
39:32
a lot about kids leaving the state, but I guess it's the University of Arkansas, so many of their students come from Texas, and I don't know about the other schools
as well, but probably almost half of their students come, why would we not expect that they would go back home?
Speaker 36
39:50
Well, I don't know about that, but anecdotally I will tell you that we're net positive on bachelor degrees in the state.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
39:59
We import more than we export. Good. Excellent. Okay, no
further questions. We have one last thing, and that is we have a consideration of adoption of an interim study proposal. It's in your package here. Senator, I'm excused on it. thank you very much by representative Gramlich so do I hear a motion to accept
this motion in a second thank you all in favor thank you very much okay any further questions or issues anybody wants to bring up have anything representative Brooks then I thank you very much for being here. The meeting is adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Authorize Chairs to Approve Special Expenses Incurred by the Committees
C. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the October 7, 2024, and the December 5, 2024, Meeting Minutes [Exhibits C1-C2]
D. Discussion of Adequacy Study Requirements and Tracking Sheet, Adequacy Study Recommendations and Worksheet, and the Upcoming Meeting Schedule [Exhibits D1-D3]
E. Consideration for Adoption of Interim Study Proposal (ISP) [Exhibit E]
F. Presentation of College Return on Investment [Exhibit F]
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 5
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 34
Speaker 38
Speaker 36
Speaker 40
Speaker 42
Speaker 45
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 49
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
Speaker 65
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
Speaker 75
Speaker 80
Speaker 59
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 53
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified