State of the State 2025: Two years after LEARNS, focus is on higher ed - Talk Business & Politics

State of the State 2025: Two years after LEARNS, focus is on higher ed

by Steve Brawner (BRAWNERSTEVE@MAC.COM) 294 views 

Gov. Sarah Sanders’ 2023 LEARNS Act changed K-12 education. Her focus now is on changing higher education. In her Jan. 14 State of the State address, Sanders introduced the Arkansas ACCESS plan to make higher education more workforce centered.

While she didn’t provide details, she would change the funding formula to emphasize non-degree credentials along with bachelor’s and associate’s degrees. ACCESS also would expand scholarships for those certificate pathways.

Sanders also would create a single application with one fee for prospective students to apply to any state-supported college or university. She would fund college credits while students are still in high school. Meanwhile, she called for terminating professors who she said waste time indoctrinating students.

As for K-12 education, Sanders called for banning cell phones in schools “bell to bell” and said she would use medical marijuana funding to make breakfasts free.

Sanders’ emphasis on workforce skills would match what Arkansas State University System Chancellor Dr. Brendan Kelly said his system is trying to accomplish. He said four-year colleges and universities have been reconfiguring in the last 10 years, especially as a result of the COVID pandemic, but the delivery model hasn’t changed enough. Services must be connected to learning, and learning must be connected to economic opportunities.

“I think the major trend in higher education, and I will guarantee that is true for the ASU System, is going to be transformation over the coming years,” he said. “I believe very strongly that we need to be chasing after the needs and expectations of those we’re in service to, and not the historical models that we are all used to. And that, right there, encapsulates, I think, what you are going to see is the major conversation in higher education for the next decade.”

Kelly said colleges and universities must look beyond helping students get a job when they graduate. In addition to degrees, Arkansas State University is offering short-term transitional credentials.

“I’m much more concerned about people having sustainable, progressive elevation in employment for the 40 years after graduation, regardless of what age you are,” he said. “So we’re trying to redefine the four-year sector around meeting larger swaths of people, and that includes the traditional 18-year-old who transitions from high school into college. But we have to make sure we’re accounting for much larger segments of the economy, and that’s our re-engineering process that we’re working through now.”

In addition to changes in the academic delivery model, colleges and universities are grappling with the fact that student-athletes now can be paid – in some cases millions of dollars – for their name, image and likeness.

It’s a still-evolving challenge for all schools, including ASU.

“If you want to talk about the thing that no day goes by where I don’t spend at least an hour or two on one single subject, it’s that,” Kelly said. “And that is true for presidents across the country just because it’s an incredibly complicated economy, and we do not control all the variables.”

Arkansas State University’s enrollment increased 12% from fall 2023 to fall 2024, which was the biggest percentage rise among the state’s public, four-year universities. That’s according to the annual report presented to the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board Jan. 24, as reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Student enrollment was up 3.1% across all sectors of higher education. The report counted 155,446 students, an increase of nearly 5,000 from fall 2023 but still below the 156,066 reported in fall 2019 before the COVID pandemic.

The newspaper reported that the state’s four-year schools increased tuition and fees by an average of 4% this fiscal year, while the state’s two-year schools increased those by 4.6%.

JOB FOCUS
Sanders’ workforce emphasis also would be good news for Dr. Steve Cole, chancellor at University of Arkansas at Cossatot, which is based in De Queen and has three other locations in southwest Arkansas that together have roughly 1,200 students. In addition to a comprehensive academic transfer program, the college emphasizes workforce and technical noncredit programs.

A year and a half ago, it started an entry-level aerial lineman program that was developed in partnership with industry. Students in De Queen can learn to install broadband lines through a four-week program that costs nothing and can lead to a $20-an-hour starting pay.

The program was developed in partnership with the state Office of Skills Development and industry partners along with two other colleges. ASU-Three Rivers in Malvern is providing tower training, while the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton trains in trenching and boring for underground installation. Cole called it “the perfect model for the state.”

“I actually spoke at a scholarship banquet not too long ago on our campus, and what I told the audience was, ‘Yes, we are in the business of providing an education, but ultimately that’s not our business. Our business is to get you a job,’” he said.

‘A QUALITY PRODUCT’

Andrea Henderson, executive director of Arkansas Community Colleges, said the state’s 22 two-year schools can provide short-term, focused training, including for adults who need upskilling and re-skilling.

“People come to community colleges because they want a job, and we’re increasingly seeing students that want short-term training,” she said. “They don’t want to wait two years or four years to get into a career. They want to kind of get in, get the skills they need and move back out.”

While significant legislation changes may be coming to higher education, K-12 educators are implementing the LEARNS Act. It created education freedom accounts that provided state funds to families for private and homeschool expenses. Next school year, every Arkansas student will be eligible.

Dr. Mike Hernandez, Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators executive director, said public school districts are responding to the changes.

“I think very much the trend is choice and competition, and so I think a lot of districts are trying to realize that new reality and how they have to make sure that they’re putting out a quality product for parents to want to take advantage of,” he said. “What does it mean to be a good communicator and marketer of the things that are being offered at whatever type of educational environment that they’re in?”

‘CHANGE IN THINKING’
Dr. Debbie Jones, Bentonville School District superintendent and the Arkansas Superintendent of the Year, said superintendents know they must tell their districts’ stories.

“It’s a change in marketing,” she said. “It’s a change in thinking. And so our superintendents are thinking more like CEOs. You have to be an educator, of course, but you have to think beyond that. So I do believe they’re on board with that.”

The state is implementing the new ATLAS student achievement test that was designed with educator input to align with state standards. Teachers can use it throughout the year to measure progress and address deficiencies. School districts are looking to see how ATLAS translates into the state’s A-F school letter grades.

LEARNS also increased the minimum public school teacher salary to $50,000. Hernandez said some districts are compressing salary schedules where newer teachers and veterans are making similar salaries. A lot of thought is being put into staff evaluations and how they relate to merit pay, the future of compensation, and keeping in line with other states as they raise teacher pay levels.

Bentonville’s Jones said schools need strong legislative support to address violent student actions at school. She said schools are “being required to tolerate intolerable behaviors.”

The number of such students is small, but they are time consuming, draining and disruptive. Even at the elementary level, some students need day treatment options. Jones has asked Sanders to create a standing behavioral evaluation team at the Department of Education to assess students and promptly place them in an alternative educational setting.

She said LEARNS requires districts to create a behavior threat system.

“So what do you do when you identify a student who is an imminent threat?” she said. “Where do you send them? We don’t have the state placement option when we know that they need mental health counseling, which most times they do.”

Editor’s note: The State of the State series provides reports twice a year on Arkansas’ key economic sectors. The series publishes stories to begin a year and around mid-year to provide an update on the state’s economy. Link here for the State of the State page and previous stories.

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