TERRE HAUTE — The state’s growing emphasis on performance measures to determine funding has Indiana State University concerned about the potential impact to its budget in 2013-15.
Those measures include:
• increased degree completion
• at-risk student degree completion
• student persistence (continuing coursework, rather than dropping out),
• more science and technology degrees, and
• on-time graduation.
“I don’t have any problems with the measures themselves,” ISU President Dan Bradley said earlier this week.
He agrees that Indiana needs more degree holders, more at-risk students to graduate and more graduates with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) degrees.
But right now, ISU is in limbo, he said.
“One thing I asked the Commission (for Higher Education) to do is not keep their priorities secret,” he said.
While the commission has recommended broad categories, ISU needs to know what priority, or weighting, will be given to each of those measures, Bradley said.
And ISU needs a better definition of those measures and to know what the state wants reported and what will be compared from year to year, he said.
Without that information, it’s difficult to know how to use limited resources to meet those performance measures, Bradley said.
Also, he said, it may take a few years before ISU can show gains in some of the measures. ISU has seen a significant increase in enrollment the past two years, but it will take another two or three years before that translates into an increase in college degrees, he said.
The commission has made some changes in the measures, he noted. “We need some stability in this and an understanding of how much time it takes to get results. If the commission changes criteria faster than we can get results, we never get caught up,” he said.
Rising emphasis on performance
Currently, 5 percent of the state’s $1.2 billion higher education budget — roughly $61 million — is distributed in ways that are based on performance measures.
But under a recommendation the commission approved earlier this month, that figure would increase to 6 percent (an estimated $73 million) in 2013-14 and to 7 percent by 2014-15.
The Legislature would have the final say when it builds the next state budget in 2013. The 2012 Legislature is not a budget-writing session.
The recommendation reflects Indiana’s ongoing transition from an enrollment-based to a performance-driven funding formula, said Teresa Lubbers, state commissioner for higher education.
The performance measures fall into three main categories: completion, progress and productivity.
• The completion measures include overall degree completion, degrees earned by low-income students and high-impact degrees in STEM-related fields aligned to state economic development needs.
• The progress measures include remediation success (two-year colleges) and persistence incentives. For example, under the persistence measure, campuses such as ISU would be rewarded based on an increased number of students successfully completing 30 and 60 credit hours.
• The productivity measures reward increases in on-time graduate rates and improvements on an institution-defined measure that will be selected by each college and approved by the commission.
In a telephone interview Thursday, Lubbers said that Bradley “has been very good about working with the commission. We’ve met with him as we have with others in an attempt to do exactly what he wants — to provide as much clarity and certainty as we can.”
Lubbers also said, “This is way ahead of what we’ve done before in terms of budget instructions to institutions.”
The new performance criteria won’t be acted on until 2013. “I think we’ve given as much time as we can,” she said.
The commission can’t weight the measures until it receives more data from institutions to see how it will work, she said.
It also did factor in the colleges’ different missions, and she believes the performance measures give the colleges “a fair opportunity to compete for performance dollars.”
The most important measure is getting more students in Indiana to graduate from college, Lubbers said. Institutions that succeed in that measure “will do really well with this formula, especially if students graduate on time.”
If colleges show improvement in degree completion, “the formula will be kind to you,” she said.
The data used would compare two three-year averages — 2006 through 2008 versus 2009 to 2011. High impact (STEM) and at-risk measures would be funded at levels lower than the primary measure of overall degree completion, according to the commission website.
The Legislature ultimately approves funding for colleges and has made it clear the priority is progress in degree completion, regardless of how long it takes, she said. Colleges can earn additional money if degrees are earned on time, or if more at-risk students (Pell eligible at graduation) earn degrees.
Lubbers said in recent years, the Legislature has supported commission recommendations related to performance funding.
‘We’re doing things backward’
Bradley said ISU needs to know before the measurement period what it is being measured on. “Don’t tell people what the performance metrics are after the time period is over,” he said. “Tell them ahead of time so they can work toward those goals.”
He believes “the private sector would never do things like this. … We’re doing things backward.”
He’s also concerned about potential cuts to ISU’s budget in the next biennium. The current formula hasn’t been kind to ISU, which lost 5 percent of its state operating appropriation.
Another hit like that in the next biennial budget would be “a major catastrophe, particularly at a time when we can’t raise tuition very much,” he said. When a college is always dealing with budget cuts, it’s difficult to focus on performance measures, he said.