Presentation to House Appropriations Subcommittee
Chancellor Thomas C. Meredith
House Appropriations Subcommittee
1:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Slide 1: Presentation to House Appropriations Subcommittee
- Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today to provide an overview of the University System of Georgia.
Slide 2: Cameron Fincher quote
- Let me start with a quote from University of Georgia professor Cameron Fincher's book on the history of the University System. He said: "In many respects and from many different perspectives the University System is the state of Georgia's most remarkable achievement and the finest thing that Georgian's have ever done for themselves."
- That is true and we take our responsibility to strengthen and improve this valuable asset -- we are good stewards of this great resource.
Slide 3: Alignment with the State's Strategic Plan
- And to that end, we have been very careful to align the University System's strategic plan with the state's own strategic plan and the goal: "Creating a safer, healthier, growing, and more educated Georgia."
- As I noted in last week's presentation, we are your neighbors -- and we are good neighbors helping the communities we serve.
- We educate the criminal justice professionals, the social workers, the lawyers and judges, and the highway engineers who are working to make a safer Georgia.
- We train doctors, dentists, nurses, and allied health professionals; we treat patients; and we conduct medical research to make a healthier Georgia.
- We attract external funding for cutting-edge research to position a growing Georgia for the strategic industries of the future $861 million last year.
- And of course, we have a critical role in "Creating A More Educated Georgia."
Slide 4: USG
- The core mission of the University System of Georgia is teaching, research, and service.
- In carrying out our core mission, we are always trying to balance access and quality. The resources we receive directly affect both the access we can provide and the quality we can offer.
- Our stewardship of these resources–or accountability–also affects the degree of access and the level of quality we can afford.
- I will talk briefly about access, quality, and accountability. Then I will touch briefly upon resources, respecting your wishes to focus today more on who we are.
Slide 5: Access
- Providing and increasing access to public higher education is one of our most important strategic goals.
Slide 6: Access--Questions
- In particular:
- Are students better prepared for college?
- Are more students enrolling in college?
- Are we improving Georgia's college-going rate?
- What access targets do we aspire to reach for Georgia's students?
Slide 7: Access–High School Graduation Rates
- Clearly, all areas of the state's educational infrastructure need to work together in close partnership to improve Georgia's high school graduation rate -- currently at 53.2 percent.
- We can't expect to create a more educated Georgia -- to see more children enroll in technical colleges and our USG institutions -- unless we work together to improve the chances of earning a high school diploma.
- We -- DOE, DTAE, and the USG -- are all in this together. We have a strong partnership that is getting better on all levels -- from the top on down. I'll talk more about this later.
Slide 8: Georgians Enrolling in College
- Improving high school graduation rates pays off in seeing more Georgians enroll in college -- currently at 60.4 percent -- above the SREB and national averages.
- We do a good job of getting children who complete high school to go to college -- but we need more of them doing so.
Slide 9: Access–USG Fall Headcount
- Student enrollment continues to increase. We had 250,000+ students this past fall. We've added more than 44,000 students since fall of 2000 -- or almost 22 percent.
Slide 10: Access - African-American Enrollment
- And our African American enrollment continues to increase -- up to 58,757 students this past fall, or 23 percent of total enrollment.
Slide 11: Access - Male Enrollment
- On another note, Georgia is following a national pattern that has seen a steady decrease in male college enrollment. This has some serious implications and we need to address it.
Slide 12: Access - African-American Male Enrollment
- In this vein, in Georgia and nationally, the percentage of African-American males who enroll and graduate from college has been declining.
- Two years ago we began a program to address this -- our African-American Male Initiative.
- And that effort is beginning to show results. Georgia is moving against the national figures in that while the percentage of African-American males who enroll in college is declining -- because of our efforts, the numbers are on the rise.
- Between fall 2002 and fall 2004, we have seen a 9.6 percent increase in African-American male enrollment in the System.
Slide 13: Access - CPC Completion
- In the last eight years, there has been a substantial increase in the number of students completing the college preparatory curriculum in high school, from 73 percent in Fall 1996 to 89 percent in Fall 2004.
- This is evidence of the cooperation and coordination between the USG and DOE with respect to the high school curriculum and college admissions.
- We are continuing this high level of cooperation as DOE implements its new Georgia Performance Standards.
Slide 14: Preparation/Learning Support
- The number of students needing remedial work has fallen from 30 percent in Fall 1995 to 21 percent in Fall 2004. Most of these students are attending at the two-year college level, where it is more cost-effective to offer this instruction. This is still too high, but the trend is headed in the right direction.
Slide 15: Access–Projected Growth in HS Grads
- Over the next decade, Georgia will experience a dramatic increase in the number of high school graduates. By 2018, Georgia will have 43 percent more high school graduates, significantly higher than the SREB and national averages. Our challenge is to create sufficient capacity to be ready for these students.
Slide 16 and 17: Access
- Through many efforts, we are providing access to public higher education for Georgians. But, in many areas, more can be done and we are working with our educational, funding and private sector partners to improve access -- particularly for key under-represented groups.
Slide 18: Access–Improving GA's college-going rate
- We must enlarge our pipeline. The bottom line is that if you don't graduate from high school, you don't have the opportunity to go to college.
- And our efforts must move forward as part of a partnership. We have great partnerships in some of the efforts underway and about to being. Some of our current and future efforts in this regard include:
- Our "Education Go Get It" campaign, which launches next month;
- The Georgia College 411 initiative -- part of a partnership effort with the Georgia Student Finance Commission, among others;
- The African-American Male Initiative I just mentioned;
- Aligning K-12 and USG curriculum; and
- Increasing the high school graduation rates through stronger teacher preparation, our involvement with the Georgia Performance Standards, and high school feedback reports.
Slide 19: Access–Target Aspirations
- We have four major objectives with respect to access:
- To support DOE's efforts to increase the percentage of students who complete high school and go on to college to 65 percent by 2010. This is the fundamental building block to increasing graduation rates in the University System;
- To increase the number of students who go on to college to the top quartile nationally by 2010;
- To increase capacity to keep up with student demand, including transitioning to a new kind of state college in Gwinnett County that will incorporate technology throughout the learning process. We want to increase the use of technology throughout the University System;
- To see the USG student body reflect Georgia's minority population by 2010.
- If we can meet these targets, Georgia will be among the national leaders in providing access.
Slide 20: Quality
- Two of our strategic goals relate to quality. Quality determines your reputation. We are a reputation-driven industry. We are considered by many to be the best higher education system in country because our quality has driven that reputation. That reputation helps in recruiting outstanding faculty and students. It also helps our in our competition for research dollars and contracts, as well as in many other areas.
Slide 21: Quality–Questions
- With respect to quality then:
- Are our institutions recognized for excellence?
- How good are our faculty?
- Are we attracting good students?
- Are students advancing and graduating?
- Are we meeting state workforce needs?
- Are we improving the economy?
- What quality targets do we aspire to reach?
Slide 22: Quality - Hallmarks
- But there are some defining hallmarks of quality, such as superior faculty, great students, facilities consistent with mission, strong external support, a high-quality product, and excellent return on investment.
Slide 23: Quality–Institutions recognized
- Our institutions are nationally competitive. We all know that our research universities are nationally ranked, but several of our four-year colleges are starting to gain regional and national reputations.
Slide 24: Quality–Faculty
- We compete nationally for faculty. Both Tech and Georgia are ranked in the number of faculty members in National Academies. We have created a faculty resource with benefits to the state far beyond the classroom.
Slide 25: Quality–Full-time faculty
- We are concerned, though, that the percentage of our courses taught by full-time faculty has been declining and in fall 2003 was at 61.8 percent due to budget cuts. This does begin to raise quality questions. As new resources are available, we will reverse this trend.
Slide 26: Quality–SAT
- Student quality is increasing across USG institutions. The Fall 2004 freshman SAT of 1042 is above the national average.
Slide 27: Quality–Scholarships
- We have a new Rhodes Scholar at Georgia Tech, and an increasing number of National Merit Scholarship recipients.
Slide 28: Quality–Retention
- Freshman-to-sophomore retention rates continue to rise, currently at more than 80 percent. Though it's hard to move the rate much higher, we think we can still do better.
Slide 29: Quality: Graduation
- Most important, baccalaureate graduation rates have made a jump, to 53.7 percent as a whole.
Slide 30: Quality: Graduation
- While we are still below the national average, we can realistically make the national average a target for the first time.
- Last January I appointed a Graduation Task Force and we are currently implementing their recommendations. Georgia has taken a national leadership role in this area and we will begin to see a rise in graduation rates as our efforts, coupled with better-prepared students who enroll, begin to really take hold.
- Most of the factors we cannot control. However some we can control and we are doing something about those.
- Again, the bottom line is that the better preparation students have in high school, the greater the chances for success in college and graduating with a degree.
Slides 31 - 32: Quality–Critical workforce degrees
- Over the past five years, the number of students graduating with business degrees, with IT degrees, with nursing degrees have all increased, sometimes quite substantially.
- While the numbers of students enrolled in education degrees has increased, the number of graduates has remained fairly constant. We clearly need to produce more teachers, which is one of our strategic objectives.
- We had proposed a program to double number and double the diversity of the teachers we produce, but no funding was recommended for this initiative in the FY06 Budget.
Slide 33: Quality--Pass Rates
- Another key mark of quality is our pass rates on licensure exams. Our doctors, dentists, veterinarians, and pharmacists pass their licensure exams at very high levels. Our nurses do very well. We need to improve the pass rate of prospective teachers on the Praxis exam.
Slide 34: Quality--Economic Impact/ Research Grants
- We are increasing our external research funding by almost $100 million per year and hit a record $861 million in FY03.
- MCG is on its way to be a premier academic medical health center. We are within shooting distance of a billion dollars a year in research grants.
Slide 35: Quality–Effect of a college education
- In Georgia, as in the rest of the country, average family income is directly related to educational attainment. A bachelor's degree person earns a million more dollars over a career than a person with just a high school diploma.
Slide 36: Quality
- We are providing a high level of quality for public higher education in Georgia.
Slide 37: Quality -- do more
- But we can do more!
Slide 38: Quality–Target Aspirations
- We have seven major objectives with respect to quality:
- To increase retention rates to 83 percent by 2008.
- To increase graduation rates to the national average by 2010.
- To have MCG in the top tier of academic medical health centers by 2010.
- To increase research funding by $100 million per year through 2010.
- To increase the percentage of classes taught by full-time faculty by 5 percent by 2007.
- To meet a larger percentage of the workforce needs for teachers.
- To surpass the national benchmarks in the pass rates on all national licensure exams.
Slides 39 - 40: Accountability
- A fourth strategic goal relates to accountability, increasing our efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Slide 41: Accountability--What we are doing/
- Within the University System, we are focusing on accountability by defining accountability indicators. and reviewing each of our 34 institution's progress in these key areas annually with our presidents. In essence, we are building accountability into performance review processes that ensure our presidents make accountability a priority.
- We are establishing academic and personnel processes that include comprehensive program review at our institutions; the SACS accreditation process, the accreditation of specialized programs, and review of faculty across the spectrum, from pre-tenure to tenure to post-tenure.
Slide 42: Accountability - Examples
- We have been taking a number of actions in the academic and business areas to increase efficiency. I won't go through all these.
- Similarly, we have been very active in the IT area. It would not have been possible to have made it through the last three years without capturing efficiencies.
Slide 43: Accountability
- Suffice it to save -- accountability and efficiency in all of our operations is a priority and a focus -- from the Chancellor's office and Board of Regents through every level of our institutions.
Slide 44: Accountability -- do more
- But, we can do more!
Slide 45: Accountability - Increasing effectiveness
- We have a number of goals to increase our efficiency and effectiveness. These include:
- To enhance the functionality of the Data Warehouse by 2007;
- To benchmark University System performance metrics to national peer institutions by 2006;
- To implement a model for sharing best practices' across the University System by the end of this year;
- To begin consolidating payroll operations this year; and
- To continue our efforts to privatize functions and achieve savings through system-wide contracts. We just hired our first System-level purchasing director, whose salary will be paid from savings accrued from his work.
Slide 46: Resources
- Let me now turn to the resources at our disposal and projected for the future needs of the System and the state.
Slide 47: Resources -- FTE
- First. Let's review the University System's per student funding levels -- or FTE -- benchmarked both against the nation and the SREB.
- As you can see, we are below both our SREB and the nation in FTE funding.
- We know it's been a tough economy. We know that if the money had been there, our funding partners would have worked very hard to keep our resources at a higher level.
- We have worked hard to manage -- we have become more efficient and effective in order to maintain quality for our students. We've taken a number of actions that we don't want to continue, such as giving up the number of full-time faculty we need.
Slide 48: Resources - Formula Funding
- That's why the funding for enrollment growth is critical for our institutions.
- Formula funding ensures predictability in our funding and planning for our 34 institutions; enhances accessibility for Georgians to public higher education; and promotes affordability in terms of our being able to maintain Georgia's historic status as a low tuition state.
Slide 49 - 50: Resources - USG Tuition Compared to SREB
- Currently among the 16-member Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states, our four-year institutions rank 15th in terms of tuition and our two-year colleges rank 13th out of the 16.
- This is very important. It demonstrates that we have worked hard to maintain access to higher education. And it shows that in terms of tuition, Georgia is in a very strong position both regionally and nationally.
Slide 51: Resources - Gov's Recommendations on Formula
- The Governor's enrollment growth recommendation of $103.4 million reflects a 5.7 percent increase in enrollment and operating expenses related to our bringing on line 873,574 square feet of new space for instruction and student support and services.
Slides 52-53: Resources - FTE charts
- These new formula dollars will begin to reverse the trend in our FTE funding levels. This is critical and, while not getting us back to where we were in 2003 and earlier, does put us on the right road.
Slide 54: Salary Increase
- We are appreciative of the Governor's recommendation regarding the two percent merit salary increase for faculty and staff that totals $17.7 million. People are the System's greatest and most powerful asset. We are people intensive; our people are our heart and soul. We must continue to do everything possible to retain our outstanding teaching faculty, researchers, student support employees and talented administrators.
- We have seen a great deal of pressure from other states seeking to recruit our good people. This recommendation helps keep Georgia competitive in its salary levels to attract and retain the best faculty and staff. Currently the University System ranks 4th among the 16 Southern Regional Education Board states in faculty salaries.
Slide 55: Capital Outlay
- We also appreciate the Governor's recommendation on capital outlay, which include:
- $65 million for MRR funds;
- $70.2 million for the top four projects on the Regents' Major Capital Priority List:
- $3.9 million for equipment for previously funded projects; and
- $3.6 million for three priority Public Library projects.
Slide 56: ROI
- Clearly, we pay back the communities we serve. Why does anyone take the time to invest in a community? Because of what the investment gives back in terms of safety, security, friendship, business opportunities and other benefits.
- The same principle holds true for your neighbor, the University System of Georgia. For a per student investment of approximately $7,000 in state funds annually, or $28,000 for a person to earn a bachelor's degree, the lifetime earnings potential for that college-educated individual increases by $1 million. That's a small investment for such an increase in potential earnings.
- Earlier I mentioned a moment ago the return on investment our research dollars provide $861 million last year. And I noted the $9.7 billion impact our institutions have on the state's economy.
Slide 57: ROI
- The bottom line on return on investment is quite simple. We have a budget of $4.8 billion. We ask you to provide a little more than one-third of that amount to fund the University System. We must find the rest. A three-to-one return is a good investment in anyone's book.
Slide 58: ROI
- In the most basic investment terms, a more educated Georgia is a safer Georgia, a healthier Georgia, a growing Georgia and a more prosperous Georgia. So viewed from this perspective, the University System is in perfect alignment with the State's Strategic Plan.
Slide 59: USG Vision
- Our vision is: "Ensuring access to academic excellence and educational opportunities for all Georgians"
Slide 60: Creating A More Educated Georgia
- And our goal is "Creating A More Educated Georgia."
- There is no question that in the University System of Georgia, this state has the nation's finest system of public higher education.
- We are in the process of proving that!
- And with your continued support -- and the close partnership we have with DOE, DTAE, our funding partners and others, we will strengthen our grip on that leadership position.
Slide 61: USG Map
- A 73-year history of academic achievement and progress on behalf of all Georgians truly is a great return on the investment this state has made.
- Through our 34 institutions, centers, and other programs and operations, we are your neighbors in every county in Georgia.
- We open the doors to the world to Georgia citizens. And in a world in which business, economics, finance, culture, and technology make us all global citizens, that door needs remain open for our citizens.
- We need Georgians ready and able to work, live and compete both locally and globally. That's what your investment in the University System helps to make possible.
- We help Georgians define and raise their aspirations and dreams. We then equip them to achieve those dreams. When that happens, Georgia wins and our country wins.
- Thank you.
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