Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Guest column:

Regents chairman sets plan to cut costs while raising standards for higher education

Reducing overhead, focus on community colleges, streamlined presidential review process among goals

This year the governor and our legislative leadership made a historic investment in education and Nevada’s future. While the lion’s share was set aside for rebuilding K-12, the funding increase to higher education was sizeable. Both investments will benefit higher education in the years ahead.

My interactions with the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents over the past four years have helped me crystalize four goals for our colleges and universities that, as the incoming chairman, I will recommend to my colleagues.

As we start building the budgets for the 2017 legislative session, we must first address administrative costs. Starting with the Nevada System of Higher Education office and the chancellor, we will scrutinize all administrative expenditures. We intend to become more efficient and more responsive to our overall mission of student success.

At the same time, we have requested each president to reduce administrative overhead. In addition, each president is charged to examine all policies to remove bureaucratic impediments to teaching, research and student success. Once we have trimmed administrative costs, those savings can go directly to the classrooms and labs.

Next, we must continue to focus on our community colleges, ensuring fiscal sustainability, transparency, accountability and responsiveness. The board and its newly created Community College Committee, together with the Effectiveness and Efficiency Initiative, will provide the leadership to ensure that our community colleges share services in areas such as information technology, human resources and purchasing.

The Community College Committee also will look to the newly created college advisory boards for input and guidance on how to more closely align our workforce training with our business community.

We will identify specific areas where state investment in workforce development programs will help us train the workers for the new industries that have moved and are moving into the state. We should examine specific state supplements to the funding formula, requesting incremental new state investment in workforce development courses and programs.

These new investment opportunities will include a clear statement of the return on these new investments. Our focus is the crucial mission of our community colleges to build and expand a skilled and creative workforce, aligning our colleges with the State Plan for Economic Development.

Both of our universities have embarked on the voyage to become top-tier national research universities, a goal crucial for the new Nevada. National top-tier research universities require a significant increase in research grants and research professors.

UNLV and UNR must each increase their research grants to over $400 million — an increase of five to 10 times current amounts — to be in line with similarly classified universities.

An increase of research funds of this magnitude flowing into Nevada would have enormous economic impacts.

This task won’t be easily nor quickly achieved, but Nevada will be better for the effort, regardless of how long it takes. We will provide the state with the investment opportunities required to reach this goal.

Finally, we will streamline the presidential review process. We have asked each president to provide us with the criteria to stretch their goals against which their performance will be evaluated — such as graduation rates, enrollment, research and grants — tailored for each institution, with realistic yet challenging goals for each metric. We will continue our practice of in-depth focus on two institutions each quarter.

By defining clear, measurable metrics that are publicly posted, we can track institutional performance and presidential leadership as part of this review. This process supplements the three-year regents presidential review.

Our shared goal is student success. We will continue to offer a high-quality education to Nevadans as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Rick Trachok is chairman of the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.

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