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Courtesy R. Marsh Starks / UNLV Photo Services
The campus at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, which would be affected by a dramatic proposed change in the way the state's public universities are funded.
LAS VEGAS — Just off the graveyard shift, Aaron Starks refuels with coffee in the early-morning quiet of the student union at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, steeling himself for his classes in electrical engineering.
Starks, who’s 27 and raising a 19-month-old daughter, is in his third year at UNLV, persevering in the face of not only sleeplessness but deep state budget cuts that have forced courses to be canceled, programs eliminated, faculty furloughed and services exasperatingly scaled back — all while tuition has soared.
Many other students in Nevada, however, are giving up. In this world-famous gaming capital, the odds are stacked against them. Just 36 percent earn their four-year degrees within even six years, a smaller proportion than in any state except Alaska. And as tuition rises, enrollment has been falling. That, accompanied by an exodus of college-educated workers, has further shrunk the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds in this state with degrees, already the lowest in the country.
When Starks is finished, he intends to leave, too.
“I don’t anticipate staying in Nevada,” he says. “If I find the right job, sure. But what I would like to do isn’t here.”
Can colleges lead the state?
A poster child for the financial predicament in which public colleges and universities find themselves — and the degree to which education is connected to economic vitality in 21st-century America — Nevada is now proposing a dramatic turnaround under which it hopes this same battered public higher-education system will help lead it out of economic crisis.
By changing the formula under which colleges and universities are funded, policymakers plan to reward institutions for turning out graduates and research that can build new industries in a state that has proven far too vulnerable to downturns in the dominant areas of gaming and construction.
A Brookings Institution report last year found Nevada overly dependent on a consumption economy acutely prone to booms and busts, with “substantial” shortages of skilled workers and too little investment in innovation. Six of the top 10 employers are casinos.
As in other places, lawmakers in Nevada have now come to see higher education as a solution to these problems. And with the nation’s worst unemployment and home-foreclosure rates, it’s an ideal laboratory to test this idea.
“The economy has swung more from the top to the bottom here in Nevada than in any other state,” says Steve Hill, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. “And we think it’s important that education and research help lead Nevada back.”
State Sen. Steven Horsford, a Democrat who chaired the committee that recommended the new funding formula, puts it more succinctly. “We have nowhere to go but up,” he says.
Focus on credits completed
If approved by the full Legislature and the governor, the change would mean that all taxpayer money for colleges and universities would be divided up beginning next year based not on how many students they enroll, but how many credits those students successfully complete.
“We want to fund institutions based on student success,” Horsford says.
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The plan would also provide financial incentives for universities to concentrate on fields that could help revive Nevada’s economy, including natural resources and conservation, engineering, biological and biomedical sciences, architecture, and nursing.
“The performance part is to drive decision-making toward what’s important to the state,” says Assemblywoman Heidi Gansert, a Republican on Horsford’s committee. Adds Daniel Klaich, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education: “We need to incentivize our institutions to produce degrees with value.”
That’s unique among the several states that have instituted so-called “performance funding” for their public colleges and universities, says Martha Snyder, an education-policy specialist at HCM Strategists and a former U.S. Department of Education policy adviser who specializes in this topic.
“There’s an increasing understanding by leaders that higher education is an important tool, but that there need to be readjustments within higher-education systems to help states meet their economic goals,” Snyder says. “They want to be sure that their investments are driving toward what their states need in terms of helping their economies grow. The Nevada approach is the first to tie that to specific industries.”
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But while the plan would alter the way existing money is parceled out, it won’t necessarily add any new funding. Since the state collects no personal or corporate income tax, and sales taxes are only incrementally recovering from the economic downturn, there’s little chance that higher-education spending will soon increase.
Rescuing the budget-cutters
Many Nevada university administrators and faculty are in favor of the change regardless, because, among other reasons, it gives them more control over the proceeds from tuition, which now go into a central fund and are redistributed around the state — meaning students at large urban institutions end up subsidizing their counterparts at small, rural ones. But the irony is not lost on them that they’re being asked to come to the rescue of the same leaders who have deeply reduced their budgets.
“ ‘We’ve cut the heck out of you, but, oh, guess what? Now we really need you to be the engine of the economy,’ ” says Neal Smatresk, president of UNLV, where funding is down 40 percent, or more than $73 million, since 2008, forcing the elimination of 740 faculty and staff positions, 15 academic departments and 31 degree programs. “ ‘Quick, help us build a new economy.’ There’s a little irony here, or maybe a big irony, which is that no one seems to have any long-term memory.”
The tension between wanting more from higher education while paying less for it is not unique to his state, Smatresk says. It’s a national phenomenon. “There’s no question that policy leaders are looking to higher education to lead the way out. There’s a tacit understanding that higher education is absolutely critical.”
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In the case of Nevada, the state needs new and different industries, and “the honey-pot that draws in those industries is people who can help them with their R&D,” says Smatresk. “The other piece they need is the workforce, so they need to know we have the capacity to generate those people for them.”
Nevada’s worst-in-the-nation plight means the role played by its colleges and universities is particularly challenging — and crucial — making it, as Smatresk says, “the canary in the mine shaft of higher education.”
In Nevada, that canary is already in intensive care. The state has never made higher education much of a priority. On the wall of his office, Smatresk has photos of the few buildings on the original UNLV campus of the early 1960s, then an outpost in the desert derided as “Tumbleweed Tech.” Recent cuts have made things worse.
Sobering numbers
Fewer than two of every five UNLV students earn bachelor’s degrees within six years, according to the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. And just 10.8 percent of full-time community-college students in Nevada get their two-year degrees in three years, the organization Complete College America reports.
When nearly 60 percent of jobs will require a career certificate or college education by 2020, the Census Bureau reports that only 29.5 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds in Nevada have one — the lowest proportion in the country, and falling. Yet as tuition has increased 160 percent over the last 10 years to help make up for state budget cuts, enrollment in the state’s public universities has dropped sharply. Last year, the number of students was down 7.7 percent statewide.
Back to school and burdened with debt
Meanwhile, many college-educated people left when the economic downturn hit Nevada hard. And soon-to-be graduates like Starks see little incentive to stay, with 53.6 percent of degree-holders under 25 unemployed or underemployed, according to a recent analysis by Northeastern and Drexel universities and the Economic Policy Institute.
“No student in his right mind would stay in a Nevada with a 53 percent unemployment rate for grads,” says Mark Ciavola, undergraduate student body president at UNLV. Yet when educated people leave, so do the prospects for the kind of innovation that could bring new industries and create jobs. “It’s a chicken-or-the-egg scenario,” Ciavola says. “This is a circular cluster we’re sitting in right now.”
The new performance-funding proposal seeks to use the universities to break this cycle.
“There are those of us who believe we cannot diversify the economy into the economy of the future without a more robust public higher-education system that not only invests more over time, but aligns itself in the right way with the jobs we’re trying to create,” Horsford says.
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Still, a “knowledge fund” set up by the Legislature to encourage research that can be commercialized has no money in it; the state board of regents has asked for $10 million for this purpose — a tiny sum when compared to similar efforts in states including neighboring Utah, whose Utah Science Technology and Research initiative, or USTAR, got $179 million, plus $15 million in ongoing annual funding for research teams at the University of Utah and Utah State University, and $160 million toward the construction of $200 million in new research facilities at those schools.
Some faculty also worry that, in their desire to meet the new state goals, colleges and universities will simply make it easier for students to complete their courses.
Smatresk disagrees. “Tell a faculty member they have to cheapen their degrees and see how they respond,” he says. “You don’t game degrees.”
“Bull,” responds Sondra Cosgrove, former faculty senate chair at the College of Southern Nevada, who teaches Nevada history. Although she says she wouldn’t lower her own standards, Cosgrove fears that other long-suffering faculty might.
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“We haven’t had pay raises in four years,” she says. “If you say, ‘You still don’t get a raise unless we improve student success,’ there are a lot of things faculty will do. When people are facing foreclosures on their houses, there are a lot of things they’ll do.”
Besides, she says, for all of the anticipation about it, the performance-funding plan won’t pump more money into public higher education (though her own college will benefit, to the tune of several million dollars, from the new distribution formula).
“We’re not talking about extra funding,” Cosgrove says. “We’re talking about base funding. We have to compete now for the money we already get.”
This story, "Nevada asks battered universities to solve its economic crisis," was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Leave a Comment:
OMG....the home of Harry Reid....wants to fund education based on...wait for it....RESULTS!!!!! You must be joking. I hope those idiots in Chicago don't find out about this.....
This is George Bush's fault, right? I mean, Nevada is the victim here.....c'mon, Harry, help me out here....those lousy Repubs did all this.....they made Nevada depend on casinos, drive out the college educated folks, right?
Amazing how this economy focuses the mind....even a Democrat mind. Good luck, Nevada. Now that you've pulled your collective head out of your collective butt, you'll find your way out of this mess. California could use a good example.....city bankruptcy seems to be their current model....
There go the degrees in women's studies, philosophy and Elizabethan drama.
Need to put a fence around Chicago too.....
The single largest problem we have in this country is that real wages have not gone up in thirty years. Not only can we not afford the trust funds the public has paid into (social security and medicare), we can't even afford to build another ship to send someone to the moon and have to bum a ride from the country that brought themselves down in Afghanistan before we took our turn. We certainly didn't help ourselves by fighting two wars while cutting taxes and financial deregulation was a master-full stroke. At least someone recognizes part of the problem and is attempting to fix it. That is much better than our candidates or representatives in congress have done. I hope it works. Something needs to.
Smatresk disagrees. "Tell a faculty member they have to cheapen their degrees and see how they respond," he says. "You don't game degrees."
"Bull," responds Sondra Cosgrove, former faculty senate chair at the College of Southern Nevada, who teaches Nevada history. Although she says she wouldn't lower her own standards, Cosgrove fears that other long-suffering faculty might.
So, Sondra...what part of the Nevada employment market is clamoring for degrees in Nevada history? If there is no demand, there will be no funding....pretty simple.....beginning to make sense? We can no longer afford education for its own sake...there must be some return to society for the investment....you guys need to get that idea
If we can no longer afford education for it's own sake, we had better remember that the rich will always be able to afford education for it's own sake.
Nevada and history. Kind of like the Easter bunny and pumpkins.
I teach Nevada History, both halves of US Survey History, both halves of Latin American Survey History, Latin American Studies, Native American History, and the US West. As I teach my students, don't jump to conclusions before you do some research. Do you oppose students learning about the Constitution, the founders of this nation, and our presidents?
Maybe you should teach that a sense of humor is not a bad thing as well.
As for students learning about the US Constitution, I encourage it. I wish the adults in this country knew more about the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Maybe then there would have been more of an outcry when president Obama gave himself powers that are not in the Constitution and had an American citizen killed without due process of law, violating his own oath of office, the Constitution (14th Amendment) and the Bill of rights (5th Amendment). So you go ahead and teach them well. Because left up to the adults in this land, we now have people above the law, picking and choosing which laws they will follow and which laws they will or will not prosecute, all of which violates the Constitution. You can't have people above the law in a Republic, we have people above the law, therefore we now live in an oligarchy, not a Republic.
You do know the difference don't you?
And I thought the joke about Nevada and history being like the Easter Bunny and pumpkins was funny. Oh well. Thanks to the First Amendment, I can still say it.
Please teach them well sir.
According to Nevada law, students must learn about the U.S. and the Nevada Constitution. Nevada History is one of the courses that students can take to meet state requirements.
It does our students good to not only know the ins and outs of United States history, but the ins and outs of the states they live in, and others. It is a shame that with No Child Left Behind, many states have cut funding to history departments at elementary and high school levels, because they need to pass the English and Math portions of the test. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and I worry for the next generation that they will have no real concept of how and why this country came about, what drove the Founding Father's to draft the Declaration of Independence, and later, the US Constitution.
@ Glenn974637, how did you come up with such a accusation like that? you accused the President of killing Ambassador Chris Stevens using the 14th and 5th amendments then you say we live in a republic HUH? Please feel free to explain but first maybe you should use some fact-checkers... your the first that ever mentioned he actually did the killing....
Nice try meemaw.
The president issued an illegal order to have a us citizen killed that was believed to be a terrorist. Believed to be and being found guilty in due process of law are as far apart as you can get in a Republic. This had nothing to do with radical Muslims killing our ambassador. You must work in our confused state department to connect the dots as you did. Try reading the news once in a while.
The problem with what the president did was that he lacked the Constitutional authority to have that suspected terrorist killed becasue that suspected terrorist was an American citizen and the president knew it. The Constitution states there had to first be a Grand Jury to indict him based on the evidence presented in the Grand Jury. Then there had to be a trial, a verdict of guilty, and then a federal Judge would have to pronounce sentence. The 14th Amendment is very clear on the due process requirement as is the 5th Amendment.
For the president to grant himself powers that are not in the Constitution and take the law into his own hands was not a good decision to make. The Constitution by design, limits the powers of government by limiting the power of the elected people conducting the affairs of government. The Bill of Rights (that would be the 5th Amendment) is a statement of citizen rights (thank you George Mason) that cannot be infringed short of a Constitutional Amendment.
I don't know if you think you are funny or cute or whatever, but this is far to serious to be clowning around about. The president's illegal order was given to Sec of Defense Leon Panetta, who also took an oath of office to follow the Constitution and should have told the president what the president wanted to do to do was illegal. But Panetta instead passed that illegal order to officers in the military who also took and oath to follow and protect the Constitution and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same" and therefore violated their oath of office as an officer in the military and they should be prosecuted under UCMJ for doing so.
People like you scare me. You are either a political hack trying to spread untruth, or a ridiculously uninformed moron. Either way, you scare me as you can vote.
To a certain degree I agree. Education for educations sake is a fools gambit. Gets you no where and wastes resources that a different student could use to get a degree that would make a positive contribution to society. Having said that, I graduated from UNR in 1993, and was required to take the Nevada / US Constitution history course. I took the course at Carson City Comm. Collage, it was heavily skewed towards the US Constitution and the history of the Supreme Court. Turns out it was not only very interesting but quite enlightening as to how the judicial branch of our gov't works and why paying close attention to the appointment process of a justice is so important.
Okay, I'll bite. Where on Earth did you get the idea that getting an education for the sake of being educated is a waste? We have gotten so far away from teaching students what they will realistically need to know and do in a career that you can't possibly consider college or education as providing those things. Maybe my journey to be educated for the sake of being educated is why students consistently show up in my office to ask questions that their department advisors won't touch. Why? I think it is because they only know their area of schooling and have never tried to learn how to think critically and independently about other areas of life. No one lives in a vacuum and the lines between various areas of our lives have blurred, thus we must learn to think globally (not as in planetary globally, but as in all around--connecting one area of life with another) to move forward. It is not possible to do this if the majority of people cannot think past what they have been told. Hey, I think I just came up with my billion dollar idea. Get people to pay me to think for them! Awesome. Thanks TMc!
Ron, Those trust funds you speak of funding Social Security and Medicare were also funded by the workers themselves. My husband paid SS tax for 40+ yrs and I'm hitting the 38 yr mark and at 56 yrs old have 9 more yrs until I'm even eligible for Medicare -- that is if it's there. This is a national problem within the states and the feds need to bud out considering they couldn't fix a flat tire if you spotted them a mechanic.
With all the cuts, they could still pay dina titus $107,855 a year to teach 1 class (women in politics). She has lived off the public dole and now soon to be, the students.
This is off of the subject and not helpful, but I observe that Nevada U. must be a real fun college to attend!
Palm tree-lined walkways, artistically curved ultra-high-ceilinged buildings. Gee, I wonder how they could cut back on costs?
Because performance based scoring/funding of schools has worked so very well with No Child Left Behind, leading to higher drop out rates and a surge in teacher/administrator cheating scandals. But on the other hand, college isn't mandatory like grade school. So graduation based incentives may have different results.
You can't expect higher education to create an economy of degreed professionals. There has to be businesses that support (pay the degree holders a living wage after graduating). If those opportunities are few and far between, this experiment will never work.
If education would create the job then it would be a good investment but if there is no job then the education is a waste of time. This is what our representatives and president should have concentrated on but they thought forcing Obamacare on us was more important.
With people like Harry Reid in the Senate, it's no wonder Nevada can't solve problems... but a bunch of kids will?
Nevada, put a fence around it......
There is a great site which maintains state worker's salaries in a nice big search-friendly data base. TRANSPARENT NEVADA: Look at some of the salaries for grade school teachers. $86,000 is the average at the Washoe County Elementary School near us. And I worked for the State of Nevada once. Once! The most unmotivated and dysfunctional population of people I've ever witnessed. And each state worker I met could tell you exactly how many years/months/days they had left till retirement. And I hate to say it, but a large part of Carson City (State Capital) and people in key positions are staunch supporters Romney (Mormon). In one instance, I never could understand how one could be Mormon in a key position at the Department of Tourism in a state that promotes legal gambling, prostitution, and binge drinking. Conflict of interest? Apparently not.
The_Mick
You would not believe all of the road projects going on in the state, including the longest bridge of it's type (580 Galena) in the country. Money crisis my foot. In Nevada, the streets are paved with gold!
Yes, obviously someone doesn't understand human nature and the desire to eat. I've seen grade inflation occur in my lifetime and part of this was that after the baby boomers went through, all this extra capacity was not being used, so they started giving higher grades to people so they could go to grad school or get a better job, or whatever. I laugh when I hear of what many people did for their PhD dissertation; its often just a joke.
So, whereas the idea of pay for production is good, how it is measured it the key, since it has to be real, not subjective: "Oh, this paper definitely looks like a 96% grade; they actually got most of their spelling and punctuation correct!" We have found that "standardized testing" doesn't work very well, since teachers spend their time getting people ready for taking tests, not learning anything. Plus, as many people are aware, the people who make the highest grades are often just good test takers, and don't really make it in the real world, since this involves working with, gasp, people!
Overall it is more complex than we are presently aware of or are capable of understanding. For one, it is a cultural problem, since if people live in a dysfunctional family or are starving, it doesn't help them learn and be well rounded and productive. It just squashes the spirit. Plus cultures orient differently toward in school type training.
As I've already said in previous blogs, most people in high school should be trained to do some sort of a real job, not a mac-job before they graduate. The same applies to college degrees. Most people should get a college degree that allows them to get a job when they are done, regardless if they are going to do it. It is good to also get liberal arts classes in the mix, but unless you're from a rich family or very talented with people, a liberal arts degree is not going to get you a good job and it doesn't really help America, IMO (no humbleness here, as I've seen too many people just screw up their lives and get stuck with huge debts and STILL not be able to get anything but a $10/hr job. It is really disgusting what we more than merely allow, but actual encourage, so it is no wonder we're so screwed up now and it is taking so long to get out of this recession.
The man with the 19 month old child trying to get a degree is an example. To try and do this really screws up the family, but especially the child. How much "fun time" do you think this child gets with her father? No wonder if she grows up to be mal-adjusted. This is not fair to the child.
Please forgive this rant, but I really still do love America, but it really is going in the wrong direction. Too long have we just allowed overselves to over look that China is becoming a dominant giant and America is becoming uncompetitive, to a certain degree. I say to a certain degree, because we still have it in us to be "the best", but presently we are just blundering along without any sort of direction, often just taking the "easy way" since that is human nature, but it is killing us competitively. We need to not merely support, we need to bankroll people into science and engineering. We need to reward the people that really produce things that make America great, not just the CEO's of banks and other big businesses. Presently the reward system is skewed toward paper pushing, like in banks, not in manufacturing, research, building, and things that make a physical change. This is an example of where capitalism is not working, since the big bucks are mostly in banking and virtual areas (think face book), not in the physical plane, since in the physical plane we are limited by physical limits. One person can only produce so much. The virtual world is expanding exponentially and so are the rewards. Those rewards need to be turned more toward the individuals who actually do the work...the middle class, not the 1%.
This is not a diatribe about the 1%, as they also have their function and do produce way out of proportion to their size. However, the 1% is not becoming more a royalty with the scion sons/daughters inheriting, whereas previous there was a certain sense of noblesse oblige toward helping the middle class. That no longer is happening as much nor as it should and that is killing the middle class. While Obama isn't perfect, at least he has a clue about what I'm talking about. Romney doesn't. I'm beginning to think he has Asperger syndrome, as obviously he's a smart guy and really not as bad as he comes across, he just lacks a certain dimension in his personality.
Oh
Grandfather dear, the problem with your line of thinking is that if the only purpose of education is to teach people job skills, we hardly need a university. Except for the higher professions, most jobs either don't require much skill, or require skills of a limited nature that can be taught in places like community colleges or trade schools. I would guess from your writing skills that you have at least some education for education's sake, as someone put it. If you don't understand the need for some people to know about Nevada history, for others to study Elizabethan drama, or still others to explore philosophy then you missed something somewhere along the line.
When nearly 60 percent of jobs will require a career certificate or college education by 2020
I'm quite confused..........
NOW, over 50% of college grads can't find a job......
Over 70%, yearly, of jobs 'created' are service jobs (little pay, little if any benefits)....
Someone has a heck of a sense of positive thinking for our future. (no one that I know).
my daughter earned double bachelor degrees in five years from UNLV in 2011. she was a full-time student athlete for three of those years...and she graduated with honors. yet here she is a year after graduation and a casino hostess makes more money and better benefits than she does with a two degrees working as a writer for a local magazine. many of her fellow graduates have opted to forego jobs in their degree fields for the casino positions. so my concern is...what will the employment opportunities look like once the univerisities start producing more graduates? it seems the changes need to come by drawing businesses to nevada that can employ the new graduates or these education incentives will be like putting a bandaid on a bleeding artery.
Republican Corporate Person-hood fosters a culture of abandonment patriotism. If it is on American soil then leave. Elevate to god like power the android Corporate Person-hood and abandon real American people.
The pressure on Profs to pass sub-standard students in order to have a larger slice of a shrinking pie will be enormous. All the work done in the last two decades to raise the level of education at the Universities in Nevada is at risk. I agree, something has to be done in Nevada to stabilize the economy but this is probably not the way to go about it.
Nevada will not do well as long as California is in deep recession.
Nevada watched the Native American casinos grow throughout the country.They watch prize fights go to sites outside Vegas,a sure sign of failure.They watched forelornly as Macau grew by leaps and bounds and took the capital outside the state.
It is still a great site for conventions,although San Diego,Chicago,New York,Orlando can give them a run for the money.It has some of the finest entertainment and definitely some of the best chefs still employed.Musicians,dancers,and artists are having a far more difficult time,and many have shifted toward cruise lines.
Reid managed to avoid the nuclear storage problem,but did nothing else to ease the transition toward a diversified economy.
The best thing Nevada universities can do for themselves and for the rest of the country is to take far lower salaries adjusted to the real estate prices.Realtors,car dealers,developers,casino owners,casino employees do not have much sympathy for those who do not take cuts in salaries.There are far too many single mothers who will not vote for increases in tuition,or increases in fees,or increases in taxes.
I think these educators are blowing a lot of hot air and mindlessly dulling their teeth by useless chatter. Why do we need any scientists or engineers when our political leader have shipped our manufacturing jobs overseas to communist regimes. Our major corporations are in blood business, sucking every ounce of blood from the Chinese or whom ever else they deem has any value. We are not educating any doctors in this country because AMA does not want competition, so they allow some useless foreign doctors to come in and open up useless testing facilities such as Heart Check America and so on. Our colleges are graduating mostly philosophy students who end up working for minimum wage in service industry. Without manufacturing on a massive scale we will be down on our knees within few years, pretty much like most third world countries such as England.
Buddy you are dead on! We need those manufacturing jobs and I mean
now! We have no time to waste we are losing entire generations of skilled
experienced tradesmen and craftsmen of our once great industrialized nation those skills are dieing off!
While this sounds like a fine way to force accountability on the part of colleges and universities, let me assure you that the result will actually be an even further increase in grade inflation and devaluing of a college education. This is already rampant in the U.S. Professors refuse to fail students for not showing up, for not passing tests, for not completing assignments, all because those same students complete the professor's evaluation which has a direct impact on his or her future. Now they'll be even further incentivized to just pass students because otherwise their program may lose funding.
This system is so screwed up.