Shannon Nickinson
This should be the University of West Florida time in the sun.
Pensacola’s university saw funding restored this year following a marked improvement on the new state-mandated performance metrics.
The measurements –10 in all from academic progression rates, to graduation rates to median first-year salaries for graduates — are Florida’s latest salvo in the ever-expanding effort to apply accountability to education from preschool to higher education.
The number of college graduates in a community’s workforce tends to improve the average wage level. That is why percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree is one of 16 metrics on the Studer Community Institute’s Pensacola Metro Dashboard. Created in consultation with the UWF Office of Economic Development and Engagement, the dashboard is an at-a-glance look at the social, economic and educational well-being of our community.
Football is on its way to becoming reality at UWF as the Argos move toward fielding a team for the first home game in September of 2016. The UWF Center for Entrepreneurship is being developed, and the university has earned kudos for its outreach to veterans, and for the financial value it provides students (Read more here).
But like any student sweating out the arrival of report cards, performance funding and the metrics tied to it clearly are keeping folks on their toes.
UWF’s scores on metrics
For this year, UWF scored 37 points on a scale of 50 — a great improvement from the 21 points that it earned in 2014, when the performance metrics were implemented.
On the scale, 26 is the baseline that a university must earn to not lose funding.
“Performance funding is here to stay and we must all be focused on fulfilling our students’ needs in order to see them graduate and succeed at UWF,” said UWF President Judy Bense. “We will continue to place an emphasis on improving these metrics moving forward.”
Eight of those metrics are common to all universities. The Florida Board of Governors chooses one metric for each university; each university’s Board of Trustees picks one.
How did UWF fare?
–Percent of bachelor’s graduates with full-time jobs one year after graduation. At UWF: 67 percent, up 2 percent.
–Median wage for graduates one year after graduation. At UWF: $32,900, up 6 percent.
–Average cost of a bachelor’s degree. At UWF: $32,970, up 6 percent.
–Six-year graduation rate for first-time in college students. At UWF: 51 percent, up 9 percent.
–Academic progression rate (second-year students with at least a 2.0 grade point average). At UWF: 65 percent, up 4 percent.
–Bachelor’s degrees in programs of strategic emphasis. At UWF: 50 percent, up 5 percent.
–Percent of undergrads with a Pell grant. At UWF: 40 percent, steady from previous year.
–Graduate degrees awarded in programs of strategic emphasis. At UWF: 47 percent, up 4 percent.
–Bachelor’s degrees awarded without excess hours. At UWF: 66 percent, up 1 percent.
–Percent of adults age 25 or older enrolled as undergrads. At UWF: 32 percent, up 1 percent.
The view moving forward
Last year’s State of the University address was delivered shortly after the UWF faculty union took a no-confidence vote in Bense’s leadership. That vote, which came the same week the UWF Board of Trustees gave Bense her annual evaluation and deemed her tenure a success, was followed by a show of support by trustees, who called a special meeting to show their support of the job Bense has done leading the school in financially trying times.
On Sept. 30, Lewis Bear Jr., chairman of the UWF Board of Trustees, will provide an update on plans to search for Bense’s successor. Bense will retire as president in December 2016.
At that same meeting, the collective bargaining agreement between the university and the faculty will be presented for ratification.
“This is an important agreement and, I believe, it will put UWF and its faculty on a stronger footing moving forward,” Bense said.
Those scores — 40 percent of UWF students are getting Pell grants to help pay for college; 32 percent of the student body are nontraditional students age 25 or older; 51 percent of students who are first-time in college are graduating in six years — are not just UWF’s story.
They are Pensacola’s story.
And that story is one of striving to do more — and sometimes struggling to get there. Of earning less than our peers elsewhere in the state, and still working to keep on keeping on. Last year at the State of UWF address, Bense praised the UWF family of strivers — A and B+ students like herself who “find a way to get it done.”
It’s that attitude that will weather the storms of performance-based funding and state standardized metrics.
We have to do it ourselves. No one else is lined up to do it for us. Maybe that will make the gains sweeter when we get there.
Shannon Nickinson is the editor of PensacolaToday.com, a news and commentary website in Pensacola, Fla. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson.com. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
