House Media Division
Lawmakers took the first step to reform higher education funding today with committee passage of a bill to study outcome-based formulas.
“Year after year, our state colleges and universities request ever-larger appropriations, yet the outcomes they produce are less than stellar,” said state Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City. “We need to reform higher education funding to include incentives and rewards for colleges that perform at the highest level instead of continuing to provide across-the-board increases regardless of performance.”
House Bill 2517, by Kern, creates the Higher Education Outcomes-Based Funding Task Force. The group will make recommendations for the development of an outcomes-based funding model for Oklahoma’s higher education institutions that would replace the current enrollment-based funding formula.
The task force would be required to submit a preliminary report by December 31, 2012, and a final report by May 31, 2013.
Data released by the Oklahoma State Regents of Higher Education has shown that Oklahoma’s regional universities (all four-year institutions except the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University) have a six-year graduate rate of 37.1 percent. That rate has actually declined since 2004.
“We are spending billions on our schools, yet the vast majority of students fail to obtain a degree,” Kern said. “We are getting very little return on our investment and it is time to reform funding to achieve better results.”
House Bill 2517 passed unanimously out of the House Rules Committee today. It now goes to the floor of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
