Public colleges attract students

Columbus Dispatch

Ohio’s public colleges have attracted more students and dramatically increased the number of job-training opportunities since the state rolled out a plan two years ago to soup up its higher-education system.

Enrollment and job opportunities — internships, co-ops and employment prospects — are the two areas where Ohio has shown the most progress, according to a Dispatch analysis of the 20-goal strategic plan. Schools also have kept students’ costs down, despite the sluggish economy.

But the University System of Ohio has not made as much progress in other areas:

Colleges still aren’t doing enough to reach low-skilled workers who most need education to improve their lives.

They have had difficulty getting qualified high-school seniors to take college courses and haven’t figured out how to pay for these “dual-enrollment” programs.

And they continue to struggle with too many outdated classrooms, labs and dorms. In some cases, they don’t have the money for renovations.

The university system also didn’t provide information for six of its goals. Officials said they only started collecting data in those areas.

Chancellor Eric D. Fingerhut created the higher- education plan to hold down tuition, bring college closer to students, trim duplicative programs and make sure qualified workers — and good jobs — exist to keep graduates and employers in the state.

“There was a reason this state was falling behind,” Fingerhut said. “You can’t change the state’s trajectory without tackling some of these harder-to-reach goals.”

The state has spent the past two years working on strategies to achieve the goals, Fingerhut said. And it will take another two or three years before all of the initiatives have been launched. “These are 10-year goals,” he said.

The plan calls for enrolling 230,000 more people into Ohio’s public colleges by fall 2017 and increasing the number of graduates by 20 percent.

“Our goal is to develop the best university system in the nation, which in turn will lead to job creation and economic development,” Gov. Ted Strickland said.

To mark the plan’s second anniversary, the board of regents will release a public update on every key strategy listed in the 136-page document this week, beginning today.

Several national experts praised Ohio as visionary.

“We think Eric Fingerhut is doing an excellent job moving reforms in Ohio, and that some of what he is doing with differentiated funding for performance, for example, and holding higher-ed schools accountable for the performance of their teachers is to be commended,” said Terry Ryan, vice president of Ohio programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education research group in Washington.

Under the new plan, Ohio’s public colleges have to prove that their students are succeeding in order to receive full state funding.

Of all the goals, Ohio has made the most headway with increasing enrollments. The recession has helped many schools hit record highs.