Logan • Utah's system of eight public campuses is among the nation's most efficient, spending about one-third less than the national average per degree awarded, according to a report presented Friday to the Utah Board of Regents.
The system has had no choice but to deliver instruction at lower cost, given the decline in state support for higher education, Commissioner of Higher Education William Sederburg told Regents meeting at Utah State University in Logan. But that efficiency could be lost if cuts in state appropriations continue eating into college budgets.
"You reach a certain point where the next efficiency starts reducing whole-scale programs and academic opportunities and freezing enrollment, and not being able to maintain quality," Sederburg said.
The 24-page report details a variety of spending levels per student and per institutions.
"Only Florida and Washington spend less [per degree] and they have large community college systems," said Carson Howell, a policy researcher in Sederburg's office. Howell wrote the report, based on an analysis of data compiled by several national sources, including the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS), based in Boulder, Colo.
The center's data show Utah spends about $42,000 in tuition and state dollars per associate's and bachelor's degree, versus the national average of about $60,000.
"It's a fairly crude measure but what jumps out is that Utah performs at an above-average level with fewer public resources," said Patrick Kelly, a senior associate at NCHEMS. "We can't draw an exact line and say this is where you are underfunded. There comes a point when quality and the ability to provide student services and things that help students complete degrees are so diminished where the efficiency is lost."
Other findings in Sederburg's report:
• The state spends $5,328 per full-time student, or 27 percent less than the national average.
• Utah schools collect $3,679 in tuition per student, versus the national average of $4,321.
• Utah schools collected $23.5 million less in state appropriations, on average, than their peer institutions. And that figure showed a steep decline since 2006, when the disparity was $17 million. Meanwhile, enrollment at Utah schools has climbed faster than its peers'.
Utah schools aren't making up for low state spending on the backs of students, who likewise pay less in tuition, on average. If anyone is paying for Utah's cost-effectiveness, it's faculty and staff, whose salaries are 90 percent of national averages.
"This makes it difficult to recruit top talent," Sederburg said, noting that Utah's slim pay scale is hardly confined to education, but appears to apply across the work force.
Utah has also lowered its personnel costs — by far the largest expense in higher ed — by increasing reliance on adjunct faculty, increasing their ranks by 25 percent to about 2,000 since 2007, according to Howell.
Still, Utah's investment in higher education is on par with national norms, when expressed as a percentage of the state budget devoted to post-secondary learning. Higher education consumes 15 percent of the state budget, slightly less than the average. That's down from 19 percent in 1987, according to Howell.
The economic downturn of 2008 has led to three straight years of budget cuts at a time when Utah's eight-school system has seen record enrollment gains.
"The number of prospective students continue to skyrocket," Sederburg said. "We have to become more efficient and one way is to make better use of the senior year in high school and concurrent enrollment."
Weber State University has shed 10 percent of its workforce in the past three years, according to Norm Tarbox, vice president for administrative services.
"Two-thirds of that reduction has come on the administrative side," he told the Regents. "We have done our best to preserve and in fact expand teaching capacity during very challenging times."
bmaffly@sltrib.com —
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