The Utah Board of Regents will consider a statewide proposal at its meeting this week that would put a permanent, full-time college access advisor in every high school in Utah.
The near-peer college access advisor would help students register for and complete college entrance exams, submit college applications, apply for scholarships and financial aid, and connect them to first year experience programs to ensure a smooth transition from high school to college.
This statewide college access advising program would be an expansion of the Utah College Advising Corps, which has been operated by the University of Utah since 2007. Under the current program, 12 schools in Utah have a full-time advisor. The Utah College Advising Corps model is proven to improve college enrollment andcollege graduation rates:
- Only 49 percent of Utah high school graduates make it to college immediately after high school. Students in the 12 schools with college access advisors enrolled at a rate of 58 percent.
- For every meeting with a college access advisor, students are 13 percent more likely to enroll in college.
- For every meeting with a college access advisor, students are 5 percent more likely to graduate from college.
This proposal is to scale the program statewide, under the direction of the Board of Regents, into every high school in Utah by the school year 2021-2022. Anticipated costs of the program are approximately $7 million, with $5,995,000 coming from state tax funds and the remainder found in internal reallocations from the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education. The Board will consider prioritizing the $5,995,000 as part of the unified budget request in preparation for the 2019 legislative session.
Other agenda items of interest: Capital facilities prioritization and consideration of a unified budget request
Each year, the Regents reevaluate the capital facilities needs of Utah’s public higher education institutions. This prioritization is conducted after an extensive evaluation process including site visits by the Regents’ Capital Facilities Committee, space inventories, and various scoring methods.
On Thursday, Sept. 20, the Board will hear presentations from institutions on their capital facilities requests. On Friday, Sept. 21, the Board will prioritize those capital requests and consider a unified higher education budget request for the 2019 legislative session.
Agenda
A full agenda for the two-day meeting is available here: https://higheredutah.org/agendas/september-2018-board-of-regents-agenda/, as well as live audio streaming during the President’s Report and the Committee of the Whole.
