Bills Pushing Performance Based College Funding Moving Forward
House Bill 565 has unanimously passed the Alabama House of Representatives. It and Senate Bill 344, which is still pending in the upper chamber, aim to link state funding with college performance metrics such as student progression, graduation rates, employment, and workforce demands.
“We want to challenge our institutions to raise their bars and help them financially to get there.” Limestone/Morgan/Madison counties Sen. Arthur Orr (R-3) told members of the Joint Legislative Study Committee on Higher Education Funding when they were considering the bill.
Currently, most colleges and universities use headcount as an enrollment metric for funding, but both bills would establish a program to provide bonus funding to higher education institutions that meet identified student and institution performance goals and objectives.
The CHEER Act (College and Higher Education Excellence and Results) legislation would create an outcomes-based higher education funding coordinating committee to oversee performance metrics and funding duties. A formula would be used to determine the annual amount of bonus funding available to each eligible institution.
The legislation would increase the administrative obligations of the various eligible institutions of higher education in the state to provide annual data to the coordinating committee.
26 states have already or are currently implementing outcome-based metrics, including Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee in the south. Other states are at various stages of considering the objectives-based funding formula.
If the two bills are not mirror images, they will have to be forwarded to a Conference Committee comprised of members from each chamber to reach conciliation.
If passed and signed into law by Gov. Ivey, the act would become effective on June 1.
More From Tuscaloosa Thread
