This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

"Knowledge is good"

– Motto of Faber College, the setting for "National Lampoon's Animal House"

What does it say about Utah's educational readiness when the people measuring that readiness aren't doing the math right?

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has made it a cornerstone of his governorship to see that, by 2020, 66 percent of Utah adults have some kind of post-high school completion, meaning anything from doctoral degrees to trade certificates.

It is an ambitious goal, and the governor is to be commended for it. Unfortunately, we really don't know how close we are to that goal because one major provider of training, the Utah Colleges of Applied Technology, apparently has been padding its numbers.

A legislative audit released earlier this month showed that UCAT had "diluted" its graduation data for the past two years by counting eight-hour courses and 60-hour job trainings as certificate programs.

The red flag was that UCAT appeared a little too successful in pursuing the governor's goal. It claimed a 43 percent increase in certificates between 2011 and 2014, but we now know that the increase was driven by counting training that previously did not lead to certificates. One example is a licensed cosmetologist who takes a brief brush-up course on hairdressing. Such a course does not lead to any new certifications, but UCAT started handing out "diplomas" and calling them certifications.

What's more, UCAT can't even tell us how many people got certificates. They only count the number of certificates. So if someone has a certificate in, say, welding, and goes back and gets another certificate in another discipline, UCAT apparently counts that person as two people.

The audit must have been a surprise to the governor, who apparently was buying the questionable data a month earlier. In his message in UCAT's annual report released in October, Herbert praised the progress made toward the 66-percent goal. "UCAT has responded to this enthusiastically by expanding its offering of vocational and technical certification programs and graduating more students than ever before."

Instead, in its effort to make itself look good, UCAT has made the whole state look bad.

"The whole effort of '66 (percent) by 2020' … it seems we're reaching it by a shell game," said Senate President Wayne Niederhauser.

There is nothing wrong, and much right, with encouraging Utahns to get more education, whether it leads to certificates or not. But when we're out there touting our educated workforce, we better know how to count.