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A state lawmaker wants to reform Utah's technical-college system in the wake of criticism that it exaggerated its success.

State Sen. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, proposes shaking up the power structure at the Utah College of Applied Technology (UCAT) to make it more accountable.

"These are fluff numbers," the chairman of the budget committee over higher education said Wednesday. "These are numbers intended to deceive, it appears, and that's unacceptable."

The school began inflating its graduation counts in 2013, legislative auditors found in November, by including students who quit school to work and others who completed 60-hour training sessions and individual courses. UCAT also changed past years' reports dating back to 2011 to reflect the higher numbers.

The eight-campus system estimates 8,300 students completed a certificate this year. That number drops to 4,800 when excluding short programs and students who left for jobs.

The school was established by the Legislature in 2001 — a move to tailor certificates to the needs of employers. The bulk of its graduates this year (1,550) were enrolled in a nursing assistant program, while the second-most popular programs were truck driving and welding, according to a yearly report given to trustees.

UCAT's president, Rob Brems, maintains the school has catered to needs of about 15,000 companies statewide, many in manufacturing. Utah has relied on the school to help fill jobs in a growing tech corridor south of Salt Lake City, home to operations of Adobe Systems and eBay Inc.

"Welding jobs are just off the charts," Brems said. "We can't provide people fast enough."

A scramble to find a new UCAT president is on hold after top finalist, then-Sen. Aaron Osmond, rejected the offer. Brems, who had planned to retire in advance of a Mormon mission in Barcelona, Spain, has changed his plans and will stay in the job until March, when the legislative session closes.

Utah's Senate leaders, he said, asked the school's board of trustees to wait on nominating someone else as lawmakers consider reforms.

Urquhart said he wants to centralize UCAT's bookkeeping and give local boards more say in offerings at each campus. But he gave no specifics on the proposal he will sponsor in this year's legislative session, which began Monday.

Previously, legislators celebrated UCAT as a lower-cost alternative to Utah's public colleges. In 2011, Urquhart urged Brems, the UCAT president, to consider new ways to bolster recruitment and completion rates, according to meeting minutes from the Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee.

The idea of streamlining the school's accounting has come up in the past, Brems added, but has not made it into UCAT bylaws. Local boards, he said, already play a part in school leaders' decision-making and "managing the day-to-day stuff."

The November audit, called a "black eye" by one trustee at the board's December meeting, also has drawn scrutiny from Senate President Wayne Niederhauser. The Sandy Republican said Utah should not be playing a "shell game" to improve graduation rates.

But some lawmakers on the higher education panel Wednesday defended the school's cosmetology and welding degrees as a leg up for Utahns. "Let's fix it," Cedar City Rep. Evan Vickers said, referring to the counting methods, "but let's not kill the goose while we're doing it."

Supervising auditor Tim Bereece said UCAT leaders told his staff the new method of tracking completion aimed to nudge the state toward the governor's goal of two-thirds of Utahns earning some type of post-high school degree by 2020.

To stay on track, UCAT will need to graduate 9,500 next year, according to state estimates. The school is not alone in rejiggering its formula.

The national, Indiana-based Lumina Foundation, with its own goal of Americans having a "high-quality" postsecondary degree by 2025, also began counting shorter-term credentials this year.

"It was always part of the goal," said Dewayne Matthews, vice president of strategy development. "We've always thought that they should count."

But federal data have been slow to catch up, Matthews said. The U.S. Census Bureau only recently started to include certificates in its tally.

Thirty-seven states, Lumina believes, are chasing after the two-thirds ratio identified by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. The trend is spurred by global competition. Nationwide, 40 percent of adults in the U.S. have "postsecondary degrees," Lumina says, trailing other countries such as South Korea, which is at 64 percent.

Graduates with associate and bachelor's degrees are included in Lumina's count, but so are certificate-holders of programs lasting less than a year. Lumina and UCAT predict students will need to keep coming back to school.

Many of the nurses, welders and programmers whom Brems expects to earn certificates this year will end up returning for skills training, he said.

The focus on shorter programs is part of a larger shift in higher education as families continue to reel from the economic recession, technology picks up pace and coursework moves online.

The notion of a quality degree, Matthews said, "should be based on the outcomes … and not how long it takes the student to get it."

Last year, UCAT received $77 million from the Legislature. This year, the governor has proposed growing the budget to $81 million. The increase includes a program to tailor job-upgrade classes to employer needs and $400,000 to buy software to ensure the school complies with federal financial aid guidelines. Additional employee salary and health insurance increases also are included in the budget proposal.