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Ten years from now the senior year of high school could serve as a freshman year in college. Need-based aid might be more widely available. Attendance could be required at certain "gateway" college courses, currently plagued with failure rates approaching 40 percent. And taxing districts might support two-year instruction.
Those are among ideas the state Board of Regents is floating in its HighEd 2020 Plan, assembled in recent months in response to Gov. Gary Herbert's instructions to better align higher education with Utah's economic needs. The foremost goal is to increase the portion of the state's adult population with college degrees from 39 percent to at least 55 percent, and another 11 percent with some kind of post-secondary certification.
"That's not a goal driven by an educational need. That's a goal driven by a business need. The best research in the country says we are going to need the eighth-most educated work force by 2020," Regents Chairman David Jordan said. "If we are going to be prepared for the knowledge-based economy of the future, we need to increase the output of higher education. We have to attract both more students to the system and have to increase our completion percentage."
Some 66 percent of jobs will soon require some type of post-secondary certification, according to a study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
"We have a large gap to fill," Commissioner of Higher Education William Sederburg warned at recent Regents meeting.
To achieve the goals spelled out in the draft plan, which will be finalized at the Regents' Dec. 9 meeting, Utah's system of higher education has to enlarge its "pipeline" of students and patch its many "leaks."
That means better preparing high school students for college; getting more students, especially women, enrolled; and ensuring they stay through graduation. College enrollments will need to grow by 109,000 by 2020, a 66 percent increase.
Fewer than half of those additional students could be accommodated on Utah campuses under current conditions, so that kind of growth will require the equivalent capacity of two more Utah Valley University campuses, according to the Regents' draft plan.
Officials say Utah must send many more of its high school graduates directly to college. Now, only 44 percent enroll within a year of graduation. Enrollment among the state's 19-year-olds has actually dropped 14 percent since the early 1990s, versus a nationwide increase of 8 percent.
"If you have fewer high school graduates going to college, you're going to produce less college graduates," Jordan said. "As the economy of Utah transforms itself, people who don't have the skills won't be prepared for the work force of the future."
The Regents plan hopes to build a "college-going culture," but that could require hiring hundreds of counselors to help middle and high schoolers prepare themselves academically and financially for college. Counselors are particularly important for low-income and minority students, whose parents are less likely to have college experience.
The state currently employs one counselor per 772 students, about one-third the staffing level recommended by the National College Board.
Sederburg said gains could be made by restructuring concurrent enrollment to better align with students' college aspirations. Thousands of high school students earn college credit through this program, but many find later that the credits do not advance them toward a degree in their desired major.
Meanwhile, Utah can do a better job of graduating students once they get on campus. Some 370,000 Utah residents, or 28 percent of the adult population, completed some college without earning a degree.
Less than half of the state's first-time, full-time freshman complete a bachelor's degree within six years. For those seeking associate's degrees, only 40 percent graduate within three years. UVU, destined to be Utah's largest institution, has one of the nation's worst graduation rates, chronically below 20 percent, according to federal data. Officials expect that will change as UVU settles into its new role as a "comprehensive regional university" and makes its commuter campus more amenable to student life.
Sederburg expects Utah's regional campuses — UVU, Weber State University and Dixie State College — to preserve their two-year missions in "community college centers" within their campuses as they rapidly expand their four-year offerings.
Students fail to complete college because they are not well prepared academically, are poorly advised, short on financial aid, can't transfer credit and can't find courses that fit their schedules. Patching these leaks and accommodating the resulting influx of students, of course, would cost real money, which is scarce in state coffers.
"We don't have to do this in one bite. This is a decade-long effort," Jordan said. "You can't just build more buildings to house all the students coming into the system. You have to make more efficient use of your existing brick and mortar infrastructure."
Increased use of technology will play a part, but Jordan does not foresee entire curricula delivered online, but rather classroom experiences combined with Internet-delivered content.
Board of Regents' 2020 plan for higher education
To meet the state's projected work force needs, the Utah Board of Regents wants to dramatically increase the number of degree-holding Utahns to at least 55 percent of the adult population. That would result in an enrollment gain of 109,000 during the next decade. Meeting the Regents' goals may require these steps:
Expanding need-based financial aid.
Imposing property taxes earmarked for two-year education.
Improving student advising.
Distributing state funds to schools according to their missions, rather than enrollment.
Overhauling remedial education and dual-enrollment programs.
To see a summary of the draft plan and weigh in on its proposals, go to http://www.higheredutah2020.org.