An incentive fund called, rather forthrightly, “Bucks for Brains,” has enabled the University of Kentucky, which must match each state dollar with one of its own, to increase the number of endowed chairs from 21 to 66 and to attract prominent scholars in education, engineering, finance and music, among other fields.             The University of Louisville has added 34 new endowed chairs with its “Bucks for Brains” money and likewise has lured several top scholars to the campus, including Suzanne Ildstad, a noted bone marrow transplant researcher.

Photo Credit: Stewart Bowman Kentucky Governor Paul Patton has made higher education reform his highest priority since taking office in December 1995.

            Other incentive funds are aimed at increasing enrollment, improving graduation and retention rates, and providing more student financial aid, among other goals.

            The newly created Kentucky Community and Technical College System has been asked to play a major role in efforts to increase the state’s undergraduate enrollments by 50% in the next 20 years.

            Higher education spending has almost doubled in the last four years and will account for about 16% of Kentucky’s general fund revenue by 2002, a higher percentage than in most states.

            Few of these initiatives have had time to take hold, so Kentucky’s grades in this edition of Measuring Up are one B, two C’s and two D’s, but it would be surprising if they do not improve in future editions.

            Georgia’s grades are not remarkable, either—a B minus, a C, two D plusses and an F—but sweeping changes have been introduced in the last few years by Chancellor Stephen Portch of the University System of Georgia, with strong support from two Democratic governors—Zell Miller, who held office from 1990 to 1998, and Roy Barnes, the current governor.

Photo Credit: Robin Nelson, Black Star Chancellor Stephen Portch of the University System of Georgia has been credited with implementing the HOPE merit scholarship program, raising the system’s academic standards, and creating partnerships between higher education and the public schools.

The HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) scholarships provide full tuition and fees at public campuses and $3,000 toward tuition and fees at private institutions for Georgia high school students who graduate with at least a B average. These scholarships, which have been copied all over the country, have been awarded to more than 65,000 students in Georgia so far.             HOPE, which is funded by a state lottery, has enabled Georgia to reverse a “brain drain” and keep some of its brightest high school graduates in the state. The average SAT score for entering freshmen at the University of Georgia has risen about 100 points since the program was introduced.

            A flaw was corrected this year, when the law was changed to allow HOPE scholarship winners to apply for federal Pell Grants as well. This should enable more low-income students to take advantage of the HOPE awards.

            But HOPE is just the best known of Georgia’s higher education reforms. Faculty salaries have been increased substantially; new campus buildings are rising at a rapid clip; admissions standards have been raised; the curriculum has been revamped; and there have been significant investments in educational technology. A P–16 (pre-school through college) initiative crosses the traditional boundary between public schools and higher education, attempting to raise academic standards at all educational levels.

. . . . Many states are examining their higher education arrangements closely, trying to prepare themselves to meet the demands of the new century. . . . .

North Carolina also has taken steps to strengthen ties between K–12 schools and higher education, with enthusiastic support from Governor James B. Hunt and from President Molly Corbett Broad of the University of North Carolina System.

            “All the pieces of the PK[pre-kindergarten]–16 puzzle must fit together tightly if we are to achieve real and sustained academic progress in our schools,” Broad wrote recently. Toward that end, the university system has allocated more than $5 million for several initiatives, including these:

·       $1.8 million has been distributed among the system’s 15 education schools to enable students to begin their practice teaching earlier and to make sure university faculty members are there to supervise them.

·       All of the university’s master’s degree programs in education have been revamped, to align them with both state and national standards; in addition, teachers who earn master’s degrees are now eligible for salary increases of 10%.

·       “NC Teach,” an effort to persuade mid-career professionals from other occupations to switch to teaching, has enrolled 120 students in its first year, “and we have more applications than that for next year,” said Charles Coble, vice president for university-school programs.

            Although the grades for Texas are not strong in this first report card—three C’s, a D and a D plus—the state has moved on several fronts in recent years to make higher education more accessible and more affordable.

            Instead of building new, stand-alone campuses to accommodate an anticipated enrollment boom, Texas has encouraged the development of “university centers,” where several colleges and universities offer classes in the same location. There are five of these now and a sixth has been approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

            “I hope we see more of them,” said Don Brown, Texas commissioner of higher education. “They look like a promising way to get the most out of the facilities and resources that we put into higher education.”

            In The Woodlands, a northern suburb of Houston, an enterprising community college district raised $12 million to build one of these centers and persuaded six universities—Sam Houston State, the University of Houston, the University of Houston Downtown (which is a separate institution), Prairie View A & M, Texas A & M, and Texas Southern—to offer upper-division and graduate courses there.

Last spring, about 1,800 students were enrolled in more than 50 bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. Many of them were working adults who lived in the area and had neither the time nor the nerve to thread their way through Houston’s massive traffic congestion to reach another campus.             “This is all about access,” said Gail Evans, executive director and dean of The Woodlands University Center. “These are people who might not finish their degree work if we weren’t here.”

Photo Credit: Todd Yates, Black Star The $12 million University Center in The Woodlands, Texas, has the latest in educational technology for both campus classes and distance education.

            Texas also has increased state spending for need-based student financial aid by 63% since 1996.

            Need-based student financial aid also has been significantly increased in Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and, perhaps most dramatically, California. There, the “Cal Grant” program is expected to double in the next six years—from $503 million to $1.2 billion per year.

            In the past, many high school graduates who were eligible for Cal Grants did not receive them because the money ran out. In the 2000–01 academic year, for example, 136,022 students were eligible but only 57,254 received new awards.

            The new law makes Cal Grants an entitlement program, like Medicare or Social Security. Every student who meets income criteria and who graduates with a 3.0 grade point average is eligible for full tuition and fee payments at the state’s public colleges and universities and up to $9,708 to attend a private institution. The law requires the state to provide enough money for all eligible graduates.

            The legislation passed despite opposition from Democratic Governor Gray Davis, who wanted a new merit scholarship program, similar to HOPE and its many replicas around the country, but feared the cost of making Cal Grants an entitlement. However, a bipartisan coalition of state senators told Davis he could have his merit scholarships only if he approved the large Cal Grant expansion. Faced with a possible veto override, Davis agreed.

            South Dakota’s grades are middling—one B minus, two C’s, one C minus and a D plus—but in the last few years the state has instituted a series of reforms that could well lead to higher grades in the future.

Many of the reforms grew out of a series of “roundtable” discussions that were started by the Board of Regents of the South Dakota University System in 1995. Business leaders, officials from both K–12 and higher education, and state policymakers attended the sessions, which were first sponsored by the Institute for Research on Higher Education, at the University of Pennsylvania, and later by the Board of Regents and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

. . . . Grades are calculated on the basis of the most recent information available and in most cases that means data from 1998. As a consequence, the benefits of recent policy changes might not have appeared as yet. . . . .

            Before the roundtables began, the college-going rate in South Dakota was well below the national average and enrollment in public colleges and universities was declining. Faculty salaries were low and the state provided very little student financial aid.

            Some of these problems continue but others have been solved. A new “base-plus” budget approach has replaced old formulas that were based entirely on enrollment. A “Reinvestment Through Efficiencies” initiative has led public campuses to identify savings of 10% in their base budgets and then use that money for special needs. The number of low-enrollment classes has been sharply reduced.

            Instead of what had been a system of “feudal monarchies,” as one college president put it, the campuses now have a higher degree of unity. Budgeting and other important decisions are made on a systemwide basis.

            Seeking to increase Indiana’s production of both two- and four-year degree earners, Democratic Governor Frank O’Bannon this year started the state’s first community college system.

            Until this year, Indiana depended on the regional campuses of Indiana University and Purdue University, and the 23-campus Ivy Tech State system, to produce a sufficient supply of two-year associate degrees. But the state lagged well below the national average in this area as well as in bachelor’s degrees earned by older adults.

            “We think there are 30,000 to 80,000 adults who could be in higher education but are not,” because of the lack of a community college system, said Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Stan Jones.

            Ken Sauer, deputy commissioner for research and academic affairs, said, “We have a low educational attainment rate in this state and we have to catch up if we want to remain economically viable.”

            O’Bannon and Jones have taken an unusual approach to creating the new system. They have asked Vincennes University (which is not a university but a junior college), a small, underfunded institution in the southwest corner of the state, to provide liberal arts courses on 10 campuses of Ivy Tech State, where the emphasis is on occupational and vocational education.