Our View

Our View

Tying funding for education to achievement

Public funding of our state’s universities and community colleges based on performance rather than enrollment numbers will play a vital role in achieving a goal of raising the percentage of adult Arkansans earning technical certificates, associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees or higher.

That equates to a better-educated population that will attract high quality business and desirable industry to the state, which is an essential ingredient to successful economic development and quality of life.

It is almost embarrassing to point out that Arkansas currently ranks 45th in the nation in the percentage of adults who hold “high-quality certificates” or higher, according to the Lumina Foundation, a private group working to increase the number of Americans who hold certificates or degrees.

To put this into perspective, only 39.5 percent of adult Arkansans have that level of education, while the state that’s lowest in the nation – West Virginia – has 32.9 percent rate.

These dismal percentages have been an economic stumbling block for decades even though the education funding is the state’s second largest expenditure, second only to the Department of Human Services, an agency that provides government subsidies and public funded services to the state’s lowest income earners.

Because Arkansas’ population is so diversified, the method of funding our state’s 10 public universities and 22 public community colleges can not, and will not, be based on a “one size fits all” formula.

Take for example the institutions situated in eastern Arkansas and along the Delta region where unemployment is well above the national average and consists of people least likely to hold or obtain a college degree or “high-quality certificates”.

In sharp contrast, Arkansas most progressive and prosperous region lies along the western borders of the state where the University of Arkansas enjoys the benefit of educating an entirely different population. This is the part of Arkansas that hosts the massive headquarters for Walmart, high-tech industries and businesses.

And then, there are the mostly rural areas of the such as those to the north and to the south were there are an entirely different set of circumstances by which this funding formula for higher education must factor into.

And, let’s not leave out the central portion where Little Rock serves as the state capitol and hosts the state’s prestigious University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and hundreds of well-paying government jobs.

With such a diverse population and economic makeup those of us within the Delta region should be pleased that under the metric policy one measurement for funding will be based on the students themselves.

Black and Hispanic students, for example, would have a greater weighting that a student of a different race or ethnicity because they don’t graduate at the same rate as other groups. Adult students ages 25 to 54 would also have greater weighting, along with students who are eligible for the federal Pell grant and those who need non-credited remedial education. These are all important factors that our very own ASU/Mid-South Community College will rely upon when it comes to its share of state funding.

The other factors that will be considered are: Effectiveness, or having the right initiatives in place; affordability, controlling rising student costs; efficiency, doing things right; and adjustments.

With these metrics we see no reason why Arkansas can’t achieve its goal of 60 percent of Arkansans having technical certificates, associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees or higher by 2015.