Education Committee- House and Senate
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- October 2, 2026
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:22
Good afternoon, calling meeting Education Committee meeting to order and first thing on our list is, do you have any comments you'd like to make, Representative Brooks. Uh, no,
Speaker 5
1:33
ma'am, Chair English, I will yield the floor to you. Thank you,
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:37
OK. First thing on our agenda is we need a motion to authorize the chairs to approve special expenses. Second
Her second, thank you. All in favor? All opposed. Thank you very much. OK, then we need a motion to prove the minutes from the October 7th meeting. Um, do I? Second, Oh they were. Thank you, and we need a motion to um approve the minutes from December 5th meeting. Thank you. Second All in favor? Very good, thank you.
OK, in your, um. Information here. What we decided to do is one of the things that we do in this committee is 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 in the recommendations together, so I decided that what might be
very helpful to everybody is that you have a copy of the um worksheet. Right from the beginning. So as we go through all of the, um, 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? That makes 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 we'll have to the two Senate and House committees will have to make at the end before the next legislative session. So that's that. And then, um, we have a schedule here for our committee and one of the things that uh Representative Brooks and I decided would be very helpful is
that if we plan to have a 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 uh D3. There's a list
of all the kinds of things that we'll be doing. Over the next few months. And what, what you can see on here is that we will have an
opportunity to we meet two days, usually it's the first. First Monday and Tuesday of the month, and once, so 1 half a day, we will spend on adequacy and 1 half a day we'll we'll visit schools around the state, so I would like to do 4, make sure we're each congressional district and hopefully in a charter school be 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
Representative Keith Brooks
Unverified
4:58
here? Anybody have any questions? Representative Brooks don't have a question, but I just want to highlight for the committee the, the prior thing that Senator English talked about relative to the adequacy, um, the adequacy recommendations and so last time for those of you who, uh, were a part of the committee, uh, as you know, it is a very long and arduous process, about 10 months, uh, 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 did an amazing job of presenting to us and presenting all the relevant data, um, from across the state and but once you get to the, the recommendation portion, uh, it, it can be difficult to, to recall everything went in. And so, um, that caused us not have a lot of recommendations. And so I think it's important, it's good for the health of, 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, uh, to have a little bit more measured approach as we do this
so that hopefully we can kind of come up with our recommendations along the way and And have the, the joint one at the end. So that's a little bit more of the rationale. Uh, as far as the site visits to schools go, if there is a particular school that you, uh, think would be extremely relevant for us to visit, then let us know. We, we have a general list already, um, that we're trying to cover all different areas of the state, but, uh, would certainly, uh, like to, to take any of your perspective into account as well. So thank you, Senator. Yet, so.
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
6:33
Represented the greater. Thank you so much. Uh, my question is in regards to uh, you said the dates, uh, will that be shared with us, uh, and since September and October, but no official dates on there. I'm sorry, what was that again? I'm just trying to get a, a clear understanding of when the dates were going to be, uh, in these locations, I see September, October, November, December, it just says half a day, it doesn't tell us when,
Senator Jane English
Unverified
7:03
if you look in September, so half a day in September, that's the probably the first Monday of the month. Um, half a day we'll start working on the um college workforce CTE stuff and on Tuesday, then we'll go to make a site visit someplace. Thank you. There's some interesting things
going on around the state and um, you know, sometimes you, we kind of forget about what is, what is going on in each of these schools, so it's kind of nice, she'll 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, a general context for that school and that school district, so, yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just kind of
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
7:53
go off the representative of Gruder, uh, 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 like that. Fine, I think you probably you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
8:05
could probably count on the first day, what, what is
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
8:10
the first of September. I think that's Labor
Senator Jane English
Unverified
8:19
Day possibly be probably Tuesday and Wednesday. OK. Thank you. Any other questions? We have one last little thing here we have is. Every year they um bureau sends out surveys to all the schools to the superintendents for a
variety of things. We have one specific superintendent, um. Request that has gone out and we have. Typically we don't
have too much trouble, but at the last 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 just need to be completed, uh, 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 still
haven't gotten a response back from Conway School District from 4 city school district or for Magnet Cove
School District. So those are in your area, I hope you will encourage those people to get their surveys in so that the ro can complete its work. Thank you. Now
moving right along, we have um. Doctor Ken Warden with us today.
Speaker 15
9:42
And oh, I'll do that. You would introduce yourself, you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
9:47
will be recognized. Ken Warden commissioner, Arkansas Division of Higher
Speaker 34
9:54
Education. Go ahead. Senator, members of the committee,
Speaker 38
9:59
I thank you for your time today. I was asked to come, uh, down and talk a little bit about return on investment and higher education, and I'm happy to do that. Uh, before I get into the slides, I want to point out a few things, um.
Nationally and in Arkansas, there has been a lack in confidence of higher education over the last decade or so. In 2015, Gallup, the person, the the pollsters that you all know. Began doing a poll. To gauge the confidence in higher education and in 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 8 years in 2024, it was the same number and we don't think it's going to change any this year. So Um We've got to think about how we are accountable and higher ed to this perceived lack of confidence and 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 3 indicators were that why people are losing confidence in higher ed. Number 3 was relevant skills. Number 2, I heard cost, and number one was political agendas. So people think that the institutions of higher education nationally costs too much, aren't teaching relevant skills. And our 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, uh, 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 measure that. And what we found through the process. So the way we gauge 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. And now the cost of the tendance was tuition fees, books, etc. 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 to uh to go to school and to earn their degree. So it's It's their post-completion earnings.
Minus what they would have earned had they not gone to school, and then what it costs them for tuition fees, books, etc. This
Speaker 36
13:02
slide just kind of repeats the last slide, so I'm just gonna 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? So
Speaker 38
13:12
the people that we included in the server, all the students who completed degree with the highest degree earned in that year as a reference point. So if they, there are situations where students may earn 2 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 tend to pay the most, uh, 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 was 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 gonna 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't, account 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 4 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 the numbers and this slide it's CIP 11. CIP is classification of instructional program. That's a number that identifies a program. ZIP codes are 6 digits long. We didn't, we didn't measure six digit zip codes. We uh, we measured two digit zip 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 excuses the data and also it can get it can get to the point where 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 zip codes at the two digit level, and there are approximately, I think there's
25 associate degrees. In at the two digit zip 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 4
years, which is the 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 look at the graph, the orange line. is what a high school graduate earned over the next 8 years cumulatively. And you'll see that that orange line starts at 0, right? The green line is what the degree earner. Earned And you'll see that that number,
that line starts below 0. The difference in the 0 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 costs the individual, looks like around. $100,000. And you'll see over 8 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 that individual earned in the bachelor's degree, $482,000. These are median wages so that we get rid of the outliers that are, you know, way, you know, really, really high or really low, these are median, this is median data.
I wish my 401k had that kind of return. So I've got 4 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. Uh, the next degree we're gonna highlight is an education degree. So this is, now keep in mind this is before a $50,000 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 4-year degree in the eight-year period, it, the degree paid for itself in 4.42 years. So There's a story here I wanna 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. What occupations do associate degree education majors. Have what, what are those people
doing? The Paros and early childcare 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 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 that you can earn and learn as you do
more. Uh Or you know, how do we account for this, we knowing we need these uh these these jobs filled. The next one is a zip code 43, which is law enforcement, firefighting, protective services, the associate degree paid for itself and 1 0.15 years, the bachelor's degree paid for itself in just under 5 years. But there's something. That's very um peculiar about
these graphs. Look at the median earnings 8 years after the graduation date. The associate degrees actually earn more than a bachelor's degrees. But you have to look at also, look at the 0 line. The bachelor's degree was much more expensive. And the associate degree costs very little about, looks like around 150 to $20,000 with a bachelor's 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 8 years of data going back to 2023 in Arkansas. We'll have 9 years of data this summer. In the fall What we've seen in other states when we look at these degrees, is that your 4 year degrees and especially some of your liberal art studies degrees, really start catching their stride about year 9 or 10. 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 an associate degree completers and bachelor degree completers, associate degree pays off in one year.
The bachelor's degree, 2.34 years, but you look at the median wages after year 8. There's not a tremendous difference in in 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, uh, better suited or uh more attracted to leadership in in these health professions, which over time we, we know. We'll pay more and really the
Speaker 36
21:41
experience added to the degree doesn't happen until a little later on. So about and again as we looked in other states about that 10 to 12-year 0.9 to 12 somewhere. So that's short and
Speaker 40
21:53
sweet, um. I'd like to Give you an opportunity to ask me questions or anything I can answer
Speaker 42
22:00
about that. There are questions from the committee. that
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
22:18
Oh Representative Meeks. All right, thank you, Madam Chair. So, uh, my, my question is, is, is this is all good data. Um, 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 to pursue
Speaker 38
22:40
into the future. Yes sir. So since 2017, all the public college 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 get, to, to read that information or be given that information and affirm that they've read it, uh, for 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, I will contend that they're probably not reading it and it's 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.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
23:25
So, so are we gonna 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, uh, going forward. Yes sir, and I
Speaker 49
23:37
think that, uh, you know, when I started, I talked about As a
Speaker 38
23:42
state Our higher education rate is 42% people who leave high school and go on to college.
If you, if, and that's a very conservative right. 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 that they can regain confidence. We've suffered from an underappreciation 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've earned this degree, you are going to have a very, very high
likelihood of, of, of prosperity and and earning more in
Senator Jane English
Unverified
24:29
your life. So how do you, um, how do we plan to do this with as we're in school by the 8th grade kids are supposed to be starting there plan for their future, sort of, so how are we gonna be able to incorporate what we're learning with that helping to
build that pathway. Well moving into next year, all of our 8th grade
Speaker 36
24:53
students will be, um, required to complete a student success plan or it may be a pilot next year, the secretary's here. I'm, I'm not the ary secretary guy, but I will say that we are, we are going to
Speaker 38
25:03
require students to build a success plan and through that, we're also gonna have a, a college and career like concurrent pathway guide that helps, you know, attract those students. We do have several different platforms and things that students can engage in to better inform their decisions on their, what their, their aptitude is and their where their interests are to help drive these conversations.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
25:23
So you were referring to that thing, was that the employment, I mean, um, employment security report or whatever. No, ma'am,
Speaker 36
25:30
that's, that's a different thing that 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, it started off being really
Senator Jane English
Unverified
25:41
good. It's got so much information and so I'm over overwhelming. To figure out exactly what it, what it says, yeah, excuse me, um, Representative Cozart.
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
25:54
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question that we were talking about on Thursday in Hot Springs, Garland County. Our group of superintendents met with us and we were talking about return on investment for a career. Education, um, degrees and Certificates Do we monitor that yet or have we been monitoring that enough to get know if we're getting a return on investment, so.
Speaker 65
26:25
This was our first attempt to do this with, with, um, Fidelity. And we started this
Speaker 36
26:30
last the measuring and the processing last July, and we just measured associate and bachelor degrees at that two digital digital 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 gonna 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 auto technician by trade. You've only said that before, so I believe in career technical education, but we're gonna be able
Speaker 38
27:08
to prove, disprove what those earnings are, and I think that's the least common denominator is, OK, here's what it cost you, what we, what we found early on is that our short-term certificates and and technical certificates and certificates of proficiency, have an ROI that happens very fast, it's because they don't cost of student anything. We
have enough financial aid tools and enoughportunities
Speaker 36
27:28
that they can pick up these short-term credentials, uh, academic credentials at little or no cost. But what we have to Stacked that on top of is what is the potential earnings, uh, after the degree, not just what the ROI is, but long term, what are the potential earnings. So it does kind of get the short answer is yes, we're going to measure that. I figured it was, I
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
27:49
figured it was coming, uh, shortly because we've kind of been a short time in this. So, uh, but we were talking about
that, but we thank you for the information you're giving us today and what you're gonna give us
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
28:08
in the future again. Thank you. Representative uh Duke. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, thank you for the report. That was really interesting and also done really well readable for folks, and I appreciate that. Um, I have a couple of questions if I may. They're pretty short. Um, so, um, I'm gonna fire him out here and
then you can just kind of give them to me. Um, what are the high demand? Cause you obviously have focused
on the high demand degrees and I'm assuming you know, can you kind of highlight those, what those are, um, the second one is you talked about the ones that go in-state versus the state here in Arkansas and go out. Do you, 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. Um, do you want me to, do you want to answer those
Speaker 36
28:50
two before I get to the high wage, high demand. those that can be, that really varies. in operational to find high
Speaker 38
28:58
wage, high demand, and, you know, where you set your high demand demarcation. Now we did a bunch of work in that in DE 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 in a number of available jobs. Um, this is not intended to be high wage, high demand. It just all is about is wages and. what the cost was, so that's a little different. We do have
Speaker 75
29:29
some of that information and I'd be glad to share it with you. I won't, I'm not prepared to go
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
29:33
into it in depth today be curious since you referenced it, what,
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 or Arkansas students and then left. So I will say that on this we can get that
Speaker 36
29:46
number, the students that got the degree because we just counted everybody that got the degree and the ones that made it into this end count from where we can account for when
Speaker 80
29:52
to work in Arkansas. And I, I realize that's not necessarily what you're looking at, but I'm, I'm
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
30:00
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, 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 we're losing, you know, on that piece. And then, um, on this, that employment security report, which I found fascinating. Having a, you know, college age
student right now. Do you know or can you tell me do the faculty get this report or they're so like their advisors that would I would think be able to utilize that in talking to their students as they're deciding their pathways and they're, do you know if that disseminates
Speaker 59
30:46
to them? It is publicly available and broadly disseminated. Now, how many of them take advantage of it, I can, that would probably be the crux of
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
30:52
the situation, probably about the same as the students. And does it come to them only when they apply, or is it any, do, 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. They receive it another time, is it
Speaker 36
31:07
just again just out there? There is no limit to how many they can receive it, statute requires that they receive it upon applying to the
Representative Hope Duke
Unverified
31:14
college. OK, 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, that's as to what to look at in, in. Degrees. I don't, I'm
Speaker 36
31:26
not sure, but yeah, it's publicly available, but I don't know how, you know what
Representative Justin Gonzales
Unverified
31:31
kind of marketing push we use to send it out. OK,
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
31:44
thank you. Appreciate it. Uh, Representative Gonzalez. Yes, thank you. Um, Thank you for your report. And, um, you mentioned, um, The paraprofessionals who obtained two-year degrees. They're associate of Arts, essentially, um, and then they, they move into those Paro rolls, also those in, um, early
childhood education, um, early early childhood. And when I was just wondering is, I know when we're looking at pathways, is that, is that a, is Is there a possibility to include, um, that for a paraprofessional, if you had a certificate program, I'm just thinking, a paraprofessional then moving to a bachelor's, um, in teaching. Now granted, not every parofessional wants to become a teacher, but for those who do want to become a teacher,
you know, that having that pathway, um, because right now the all of the paraprofessionals essentially, you know, they're, their wages are pretty dismal and, um, And so, and, and it's hard oftentimes to find really good pairprofessions or that you find one and then they, they don't remain because of the pay. Anyway, in
Speaker 53
32:55
my, in my opinion, there's, there's never been a better time than now for a parofession to transition into a
Speaker 36
33:02
licensed teacher, uh, 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 um. I won't, I won't
Speaker 38
33:17
say no cost but very little to no cost to the Paro. We, we, we believe strongly that in situations where you have um teacher shortages that grow on your own is one of the best ways to do that. So if someone is a fair pro, 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 Paro into a licensed teacher in Arkansas right now. OK, and I was,
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
33:47
I was just curious. Thank you, and I am familiar with the Grow Your Own programs and I, we actually have one. At where I work at the University of Arkansas, um, 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 pair of professionals and they're they're continually
continuously working towards that bachelor's in that interim. They're essentially still making a pretty, there's not an increase in salary because I have an associate's degree, for example. And so to me, that's a, that's kind of a, that's 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, look at the living wage that they have as they're going to school. Anyway, I just wanted your comment on that. Yes, ma'am.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
34:40
Represent you, Madam Chair, um. Mr. Warden, uh, thank you again for the report. I like the simplicity of it, um, but I do have a question just out of curiosity, I was trying to pull up the. The kind of information you said is available to the students, uh, 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 gonna be, I mean, is this.
Potential earnings. Is there a consistent place where each campus is gonna post that or is there one place where students can go? Do they have to look per campus, so they have to look per department. I can't find it. So it would
Speaker 36
35:23
be as 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, uh, Google economic security Port 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. You can look by occupation, lots
of different ways to sort the data when you get to their dashboard. Uh, but it's typically an institution I served last, we had a part of the process of the, we have to provide several things, uh, when a student applies that are required by, you know, the state or by the federal law, and that's on the list of those things, uh, so I would say that, you know, when you apply is when
Speaker 59
36:01
you would, would, would glean that. But you did say
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
36:05
that there is, um, and I didn't write it down, uh. A a website or or something a
Speaker 36
36:11
person could look at now whether they're, what was it? Yeah, it's publicly available, yeah, it's it's through the, it's a it's on the Department of Commerce, but if you'll just Google Arkansas economic security report. OK. It's the first thing that pops up. I've, I've looked it up several times. Wonderful, thank you. I will add that, you know, the Access Act, um. Ask us to or I guess uh tells us to uh.
Speaker 38
36:43
In bed 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 return, so
Speaker 36
36:53
that we are, uh, 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 gonna have a very high likelihood of increased wages and return on investment. So where are you getting the
Speaker 34
37:15
data from for the just the wage data from, it's our state longitudinal data, data,
Speaker 36
37:20
uh, system, senator. So we work with commerce and have data share agreements. So all the data that we use is
Speaker 38
37:26
data that we've gleaned from the Arkansas Higher Education Information System and then paired that back to UI Wade's match
Senator Jane English
Unverified
37:32
for Department of Workforce Services. So this
Speaker 38
37:35
is going back to 2011. 2015 is the graduation year. 2011 is when our 2010, 2011. That's what our longitudinal data system. It was is is really good from
that from their back, it's a little sketchy, but from 2010, 11 forward, our state longitudinal data system is, is good. So
Senator Jane English
Unverified
37:51
is there a way to try to kind of do that every year and, and a year on, is
Speaker 36
37:57
that what you're doing? Yes, ma'am. That is, that's the, that's the goal. So we're gonna be
Speaker 38
38:01
able to come back probably this fall and show you your 9 and then we'll start showing you 2016 graduates, graduates with 8 years, so on and so forth, so this is a this is a long term plan of continuing to look at this. And then adding uh short term
degrees to that, non-degree credentials, uh, 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 uh funding them and giving scholarships to those institutions, we're gonna start collecting that data so we can go apples to apples of someone, the cost of, of, of their education and their private careered workforce challenge, you know. Take using those scholarship dollars and what they did after the fact.
Senator Jane English
Unverified
38:51
Are there any further questions? Nobody has a question? OK. Thank you very much. I, I think it's really important to, um, to be gathering this information to be able to and, and tell me again how many um degrees are we doing or we'll. So far we've got 3 or
Speaker 36
39:12
4. Well, no, we have all of them, but when you go with the categories of a two-digit zip code. There
Speaker 38
39:17
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 associates degree complement. Not everything has a 22 4. So yeah, when you go to that categorical two-digit level, there's only 35 bachelor's degrees and 25 associate degrees. So we talk a lot about kids
Senator Jane English
Unverified
39:37
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
um I'll probably almost half of their students come why would
Speaker 36
39:53
we not expect that they would go back home. Well, I don't know about that, but I anecdotally, I will tell you that we're net positive on bachelor's degrees in the
Senator Jane English
Unverified
40:04
state. We import more than we export. Good, excellent. OK. No further questions.
We have one last thing, and that is we have a um. Consideration of adoption of the interim study proposal, um, it's in your package here Senator, I'm excused, aren't I? Thank you very much. Um, but Representative Gramlich.
So do I hear a motion to accept this. Motion in a second. Thank you. All in favor. Thank you very much. OK, 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
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