University officials testify at Legislature

HELENA — The commissioner of higher education and presidents of Montana State University and the University of Montana told a legislative budget panel Thursday they are delivering on the accountability measures required by the Legislature in 2013.

“You all gave us some critical funding for the university system,” Higher Education Commissioner Clayton Christian said. “We also worked to create what I call a new environment.”

The 2013 Legislature required steps to measure accountability.

“Ultimately, I think we need to be accountable to the state taxpayers as you all are for the money you’ve invested in us,” Christian said. “I believe accountability is an important element.”

He discussed measurements such as improving student graduation rates, college freshmen retention rates and the time it takes for a student to obtain a degree or certificate.

UM President Royce Engstrom talked about the U-system’s dual enrollment efforts in which high school students can get an early start on college and save money by taking college courses at steeply discounted rates and get both high school and college credits for them.

MSU President Waded Cruzado told how the university has greatly stepped up math and writing tutoring efforts for students and is teaching some math classes in a totally different way to help students succeed at a much- improved rate. MSU devoted 60,000 hours to tutoring students in fiscal 2014, she said.

When she was a college freshman, Cruzado said the way university presidents often used to welcome the incoming freshman was to say: “Look to your left. Look to your right. Those individuals will never graduate. Were any of you welcomed with those words? I was welcomed with those words.”

“Today we have replaced that mentality of universities being failure factories with being student-centric,” she added. “We need to do that while still preserving quality because our students, their parents, want and deserve for us to have very high academic standards. Today we know that we can preserve those standards and still give students the tools to be successful.”

Subcommittee member Rep. Tom Woods, D-Bozeman, an adjunct professor at MSU who teaches molecular biology, said the university system has done a great job of meeting the goals the set by the Legislature.

However, he said he has problems with the way the priorities are being set.

“I guess what I want to say is degree production gives me the willies,” Woods said. “It’s my job to fail students.”

Woods said he worries that the corporate production model is being imposed on the higher education system.

“In our rush to set graduate times and times of degree as goals, that we don’t lose sight of the fact of what the point is and what the goal is,” Woods said. “The point is a liberal education. ...

The point is to give students the tools to think for themselves. That’s the goal. It’s not to get a job.”

After the meeting, Woods said it is not his intent to fail students, but when he teaches a class of 180 students, it is expected because not all of them can succeed.

He expressed concern about the push to graduate students leading to grade inflation.

“It’s not our job to graduate students,” Woods said. “It’s our job to educate students.”

In response, Christian said, “Being afraid of producing degrees is like a car manufacturer being afraid of producing cars.”

He said the university system has always been the keeper of that quality.

“We can have a quality institution and still help students succeed,” the commissioner said.