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During a 40-year career in higher education, Stan Albrecht has seen his share of strategic plans emerge after interminable meetings and lots of sweat only to gather dust on the shelf.
The Utah State University president cautioned the Utah Board of Regents that its new 10-year road map — hoped to pave Utah's way to a much more educated workforce — might be destined for such a fate if the scope of its 52 recommendations is not narrowed.
On Thursday, the Regents approved the 100-page Higher Ed Utah 2020 Plan, crafted at the request of Gov. Gary Herbert, after months of meetings and consultations. The plan seeks to get more students into college and earning degrees — currently less than 50 percent graduate — while promoting the role of higher education in economic innovation and workforce development.
How? By expanding need-based aid, embracing instructional technology and conducting classes online, shoring up the community college mission at the state's regional universities, and subsidizing associate degree-seeking students, among dozens of other recommendations.
Then there is the unaddressed question of how to pay for it.
"We need a plan that is very outcome-focused. We have to decide which initiatives are the most important," said Albrecht, a one-time political science professor.
The Regents approved the plan, but asked institution presidents to identify which of the plan's recommendations they will prioritize on their own campuses. Regents' staff starred 23 of them as system priorities.
"We have to embrace reality here," Regents chairman David Jordan said. "We have a plan with a lot of strategic initiatives. Even for the largest institutions, with all their resources, focusing on more than one or two things at a time doesn't produce good results."
According to the plan, two-thirds of Utah jobs by 2018 will require some level of education after high school, but only about 40 percent of the population now holds a college degree. If the plan meets its thresholds for increasing new enrollments and improving completion rates, enrollment at the state's system of eight public colleges and universities will soar by 110,000 students.
This will require a massive public investment, noted a veteran Regent who felt the plan should be upfront with costs.
"If we want to get to 66 percent, we will have to step it up. There should be a fiscal note. I know it will be a big number," said Nolan Karras, who chairs the Regents' finance committee. "We ought to put up or shut up. It will cost us some money to do this."
After two years of cuts in state appropriations, coinciding with double-digit enrollment growth, Utah's big open-admissions schools soon may not be able to meet current demand, much less the elevated enrollment Regents hope to see, without new money.
Karras, a one-time Republican candidate for governor who once wielded the speaker's gavel in the Utah House, even endorsed the idea of raising taxes.
The governor hasn't endorsed all the recommendations, but supports its overall direction, which meshes with the recent findings of the Governor's Education Excellence Commission.
"Governor Herbert is pleased to see the collaboration of higher education with business and industry to meet the state's work force demands. Utah's work force must continue to remain strong and competitive in order to attract businesses and jobs to Utah, and the Regents' plan will help us achieve that goal," his spokeswoman, Angie Welling, wrote in an e-mail.
Some of the recommendations could be big pills for some members of Utah's conservative Legislature to swallow. The plan calls for expanding programs to assist members of groups who are not well represented on college campuses and creating voter-approved taxing districts to help students defray tuition costs during their first two years in school.
Herbert "understands that there are often costs associated with specific ideas and he recognizes that all recommendations must be prioritized and balanced against other needs in context of the overall budget," Welling wrote.
The 2020 Plan
The Board of Regents' plan would put certificates and college degrees in the hands of two-thirds of Utah's adult population by 2020. To achieve this dramatic leap in the number of degree holders, the 100-page plan spells out 52 recommendations that would make a college education more affordable, more accessible to historically underrepresented groups and more reliant on technology. Strategic priorities also focus on increasing rates of completion at Utah institutions, which currently are less than 50 percent, and promote the role of higher education in economic innovation and workforce development.
Review the plan and offer comments at HigherEdUtah2020.org. —
Regents OK Utah State's initiatives
Regents gave their approval Thursday to two ambitious initiatives put forth by Utah State University: the acquisition of 40 acres at the former Intermountain Indian School for a new Brigham City regional campus, and establishing a doctoral veterinary program in partnership with Washington State University. The veterinary program approval is contingent upon the Legislature's agreement to fund a $450,000 renovation of an animal anatomy lab and $3 million in annual funding.