Oregon Lawmakers Set Ambitious College-Completion Goals

June 22, 2011, 11:06 am

Oregon’s Legislative Assembly has passed a bill setting as the state’s goal that 40 percent of all adults have at least a bachelor’s degree by 2025, The Oregonian reports. The legislation calls for another 40 percent of adults to have earned at least associate degrees or other postsecondary credentials, and for the remaining 20 percent to hold high-school diplomas or the equivalent. For now, U.S. Census figures show that 28 percent of Oregonians 25 and older have bachelor’s degrees or higher, and 8 percent have associate degrees.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

E-mail

wilkenslibrary

A laudable goal, but has the legislature included funding for the extra faculty, support staff, classrooms, equipment, etc. that will be needed?

Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College
akprof

So is the legislature planning to provide additional funding? At least one Oregin university had so little state funding that it became a private corporation, enabling it to raise monies without some of the restrictions inherent in being an arm of state government.
just_me1

The University of Oregon is last in almost every state support measure of AAU institutions, and the other colleges aren’t funded any better. Guessing good thoughts and pixie dust will accomplish this goal.
bdr8y

Additional resources will certainly be needed to reach the 40% goal as we know from Berger’s, Milem’s, and Titus’s research on institutional expenditures per FTE and college completion, but I don’t think it will mean increasing enrollments as some comments imply. At least it doesn’t have to given what I can gather from the states collective completion statistics. Like other states, if Oregon institutions, public, private, and proprietary, could close even the six-year achievement gap between students-of-color and white students it appears that they could meet the 40% goal. In addition, it looks as if the institutions with the lowest graduation rates also have higher percentages of Pell recipients (a proxy I will use here for low-income student enrollments, though flawed) enrolled. This suggests to me, that like other states, Oregon does not do well in graduating their low-income students. Thus, closing the acheivement gap between Pell recipients and non-recipients would also set Oregon on a path to meet the 40% goal. Last, trends from the past decade suggest that Oregeon institutions in the upper half of graduation statistics have steadily improved their numbers over that time while institutions at bottom have steadily worsened. The latter appear to be either proprietary schools or what I can assume are grossly underfunded state institutions (eg. Southern Oregon University), hence where the suggestions of increased funding comes into play. However, even the most successful of Oregon institutions, Willamete, is only in the middle of the pack at graduating their students when compared to national peers despite having one of the highest ed & general expenditures per-FTE within their national comparison cohort.
badger74

This is more evidence that state governments have grown completely out of touch with the reality they created through a decade of or more of slashed budgets and now they try to point the finger at the undermanned institutions they have gutted. Time for the colleges to just say no and give the state a reality check..