Georgia may soon award more state money to the colleges that do the best job of graduating their students.
Gov. Nathan Deal said Thursday that a commission will look at ways to change how the state funds colleges. Giving financial incentives to schools that improve graduation rates will be one of the commission's goals.
"I think that is entirely appropriate," Deal said. "A lot of money is being spent in our institutions, and it doesn't do a lot of good" if students don't graduate.
"That is not to say we are going to downgrade the quality of our education, it simply means we are going to focus on the importance of completion."
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Deal said about 44 percent of university students graduate within six years.
Under the plan, called the Complete College Georgia Initiative, technical and university system officials will develop plans to attack the problem, as will individual campuses. A $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be used to pilot programs at four schools, including Georgia Gwinnett College and DeKalb Technical College, to help improve the results of students who enter college needing remedial help.
For remedial students in the program, it will could mean taking diagnostic assessments to both determine academic need and to set up coursework so students work at their own speed.
Deal said he would seek private donors to help start a scholarship program for low-income students who can benefit from extra help during middle and high school.
And he will issue an executive order setting up the Higher Education Finance Commission, which will consider changes to the state's decades old funding formula.
The state has budgeted about $1.7 billion for the University System this year. With tuition, fees and other sources of funding, the system will spend in the neighborhood of $7 billion this year.
Deal said the state needs to see better results on graduation rates, which have been the source of consternation in the University System for many years. The rates vary greatly by school. About 80 percent of students graduate within six years at Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, according to the University System. Less than one-third do so from schools like Augusta State and Clayton State universities.
More and more states are using performance data to help determine how much taxpayer funding schools receive.
Indiana is using about $120 million in state incentives to encourage colleges to reduce the costs of each degree. Tennessee lawmakers set specific graduation and retention goals colleges must reach.
University System Chancellor Hank Huckaby said the Board of Regents have been working on plans to improve graduation rates. Huckaby, who served in the General Assembly during the 2011 session, said lawmakers had also been talking about rewriting the formula for funding colleges.
Of Deal's plan, Huckaby said, "I think it sends the right message."
That message is that colleges that find ways to improve graduation rates may get more funding in the future.
"You have to change the atmosphere within the institutions and incentivizing them is probably the best way to do that," Deal said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Nobody can be proud when only a third or 40 percent of your entrants actually graduate."
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