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Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, like his predecessor Gary Herbert, wants Utahns to continue their studies after graduating high school.
But for some, especially women and minorities in the state, barriers prevent college dreams from becoming anything more. The Cox administration has said making postsecondary education attainable will be a critical part of building the state’s workforce.
At the beginning of his tenure last year, the governor laid out his education priorities in the One Utah Roadmap. The broad agenda included goals to provide access to higher education for all Utahns, such as removing affordability barriers for going to college and increasing “high-demand, high wage” programs.
One avenue the administration is using to bridge the postsecondary education gap is the Learn & Work in Utah education initiative, which aims to provide tuition assistance for unemployed or underemployed individuals to attend short-term certificate programs. The initiative, which started in 2020, features a UX/UI boot camp at the University of Utah, a dental assisting program at Mountainland Technical College and a crisis worker program at Weber State University.
“We’re trying to help students get short-term skills and certificates that will help them in their careers,” said Benjamin Hart, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. “This helps them get back into those programs without having to worry about the cost of those programs.”
Overcoming barriers to college success
Today about 34% of Utahns aged 25 or over have a bachelor’s degree or higher, slightly higher than the national average. But women and minorities in Utah face longer odds of getting a degree.
Women between the ages of 25-34 in the Beehive State are 40% less likely to enroll in college than men, a 2018 report by the Women in the Economy Commission found. The study said that married women in the same age group were 28% less likely to enroll if they were married and 51% less likely to enroll if they had a child under five.
“Men are more likely to be enrolled in postsecondary education if they’re married; Utah women are less likely to be enrolled if they’re married. Having one’s own children under 5 in the home is associated with lower odds of being enrolled for both men and women, but more so for women,” according to the report.
Students of color also struggle in secondary education. Latino Utahns in the same age group, regardless of gender, are also 59% less likely to enroll in college than non-Hispanic men, according to the report.
Removing college barriers for students is an issue that hits close to home for Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson. After meeting her husband during her first year at Brigham Young University, Henderson stopped going to school to help him get through physical therapy school and raise their children. In December of this year, Henderson graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s degree in history.
“It was this mountain that was in front of me that I needed to climb and there were times at the bottom of that mountain (when) I thought I’d never get to the top,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune in December. “It’s really fulfilling and exciting and just humbling for me to be finally at the summit of that big mountain.”
Traditional four-year education might not be the best option for all students, Hart said.
“One of the things that we’re doing is we look at how we can help more people to achieve a four-year degree, but also look at making sure we help all students get into the educational and career path that is best for them,” he said. “The reality is we see some school districts where underserved students may not have any opportunities for a four-year degree.”
It’s why under the direction of the Cox administration, Hart said, there has been more of an effort to reach students in junior high and high school about other postsecondary education options.
Making students of the programs Governor’s Office of Economic Development has available to help them is crucial, according to Hart.
Colleges lend a hand
Institutions in the Utah System of Higher Education, a group of the state’s eight public colleges and universities and eight technical colleges, have made their own efforts to close the college attainment gap.
In 2020, Utah Valley University opened a center geared toward students who are first in their families to attend college. The University of Utah in 2019 launched a $2.5 million scholarship fund for low-income students. The Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs held a youth leadership summit geared toward junior high school students of color earlier this year.
At Salt Lake Community College, about 32% of students are nonwhite, about 50% are first-generation students and about a third of students work full time, said Jason Pickavance, an associate provost for academic operations at Salt Lake Community College. He added that the school serves the most diverse student population in the state.
“We’ve always been doing work around trying to close that achievement gap,” he said. “In many ways, community colleges are defined by that challenge because we’re open-access institutions.”
Pickavance said Salt Lake Community College offers free schooling to Pell Grant eligible students taking nine credits or more through its SLCC Promise program. It’s also focused some of its equity efforts on hiring diverse faculty of color.
“We have a whole initiative around increasing diversity in our hiring, particularly with faculty, because we know that for many of our students having a faculty member that looks like them is an important ingredient to their success,” he said.
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