Student enrollment is projected to decline while “private institutions continue to expand, and employers relax degree standards,” the audit reads. Additionally, there’s “unhealthy competition” within the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE), which doesn’t allow some schools to succeed.

How should the system prepare for that shift and remain relevant? It should cater more to future skilled work, prioritizing programs that attract students and improve their employment outcomes.

One of the recommendations is that the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education and institutions should “develop and oversee a uniform methodology to calculate program-level return on investment, including program costs and completion rates.”

That recommendation implied cutting some programs and prioritizing others in the name of efficiency, which was met with both curiosity and skepticism, especially from House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City.

“I have concerns that we might be just using data points, but we’re not getting the full picture when we’re talking about higher education,” Romero told the auditors in the middle of their presentation to the Legislative Audit Subcommittee on Tuesday.

She added that during her time at the University of Utah, some of the classes that may not be “high performing” helped her become a “well-rounded person,” she said

While “making social good” isn’t measured in the data, auditors said that for some of the programs they studied, about 40% of graduates were no longer in the workforce five years after graduation, which could be evaluated by university presidents.

House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, highlighted a data point that stood out to him while reading the findings; in 2022 a program offered by four institutions across the state graduated a total of 14 students. Another program also offered by four institutions graduated 20 students.

There’s no information on the costs of the programs since institutions haven’t assessed them. However, Schultz said this showed that resources are sometimes “not being allocated where the growth needs are.”

“I have no doubt that those programs are needed. I’m not saying that we should do away with them. Maybe you keep one in the south end of the state and one in the north end of the state, or maybe one will work in the middle of the state,” he said.

A declining higher ed population

Schools in the system are experiencing a period of high growth that’s projected to continue until 2028, auditors wrote. However, after this period, it’s projected that the growth of student enrollment will slow and, eventually, from the mid 2020s through the 2040s, it will decline because of the fall of national birth rates.

“By 2060, Utah’s school and college-age groups are projected to represent only 15% and 10% of the population respectively,” auditors wrote. “While Utah’s general population is projected to increase due to natural migration, USHE will need to adapt to an era of enrollment decline and act more efficiently with existing and future resources.”

There are other challenges for Utah institutions, including the fact that bachelor’s degree programs within Utah’s higher education system have varying employment outcomes, with some alumns making wages that are below 150% of the poverty line for a family of four, five years after graduating.

Because wage outcomes are one of the main reasons why Utahns go to college, the legislative auditors looked at four case study areas with high workforce demands, including nursing and software engineering.

In nursing, both public institutions and private non-traditional schools (which include Western Governor’s University, BYU Pathways and Joyce University of Nursing) saw a great increase of bachelor’s degrees in nursing students, Nick Varney, performance auditor, told the subcommittee. In software engineering, public colleges and universities are maintaining their market share, largely tied to legislative funding directly targeted to increase computer science graduates throughout the state.

“Other states have experienced issues of declining enrollment and funding, forcing them to shutter or merge campuses, review for duplicative or under enrolled programs, terminate programs, lay off faculty, or rely more heavily on out-of-state students,” the audit reads. “These states provide a glimpse of the current condition of higher education in the United States and the realities Utah may face in the future.”

An inefficient system?

Geoffrey Landward, Utah Commissioner of Higher Education, described the audit as “exceptional.” With changing demographics and shifting views on the value of higher education, it’s time the system adapts, he said.

“We’ve been working with legislative leadership on designing a framework in which we can make decisions around appropriations and budgeting at an institutional level,” Landward said. “And I’m excited about what that could do for the state of Utah, and the type of investments that the state of Utah can make, and what that means for students and for industries that hire our workforce.”

The state could also help fund programs like Talent Ready Utah, a workforce development program aimed to fill high-demand jobs, the commissioner said.

“We can take investments from the Legislature and issue those as grants to the institution, saying, ‘partner with these industries, come together with the industry, and design the program with them at the table,'” Landward told the subcommittee. “That way, we’re guaranteeing that the training we provide meets that need. We do that really well with our technical colleges”

While the Legislature authorized school presidents to make decisions to use taxpayer funds to operate efficiently in 2024, auditors found that presidents don’t have the necessary information to determine which programs are efficient. They also questioned “presidents’ ability to reallocate resources to programs in high workforce demand.”

Auditors found that there isn’t enough coordination between the schools within the state’s higher education system.

“Without strong systemwide direction, at least one regional institution has expanded its online programs to serve a broader in-state and out-of-state demographic. These efforts create competition between institutions for out-of-service-region students,” auditors wrote.

Besides that, there are also reports of school marketing on the campuses of other institutions, and two institutions hiring recruiters within the same region.

That competition, Landward said, is a longstanding frustration for him.

“We have exceptional institutions of higher education, really amazing leaders, amazing faculty, serving the needs of our regions, yet I watch them all competing against each other,” he said. “And what I see is a lost opportunity.”

The network of public schools should be working together to compete nationally, Landward said. “Partnerships, not cannibalism.”

Those conversations have started in the Utah Board of Higher Education. And, while they are difficult decisions, they can simplify academic offerings, he added.

“For example, language programs that were brought up. We don’t need every institution providing every program in languages, but we need languages, so why can’t we have one or two institutions providing them on multiple campuses?” Lanward said. “That’s the benefit of having a system.”

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.