Entry 5: Arizonas Quest for Higher Education

Current Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, has recently announced a project that he hopes will push Arizonians into completing higher education. He makes a compelling case for the attainment of a degree or certificate by highlighting the benefits and statistics surrounding higher education. While I agree that this is a desirable goal, Ducey has significantly failed to address the issues surrounding the attainment of a degree.

You can see the article here: Arizona Achieve60. The website for the Program can also be found here: Achieve60 WEB.

No mention is made of the factors that cause people to drop out of school. No mention is made of the skyrocketing costs of an education. In addition, to these glaringly obvious oversights, Ducey proposes that his plan can be achieved by offering financial management classes and degree completion incentives. He fails to offer any details of this plan.

If I were Ducey, I would have laid out a better plan. my plan would offer phases of implementation. Phase one would be research into the factors surrounding post secondary educational enrollment, degree completion, and financial impact. Once these areas where thoroughly research and understood, I could move on to phase two. This phase would include identifying and implementing solutions. Without knowing exact causes to the identified problem areas, I cannot present an adequate solution. However, I can make a proposal to what I think would be the right course of action.

Phase 2 Solutions:

• Enrollment:
• Solutions to enrollment should come about as a secondary response from the solution to other problems. For example, a potential student might not consider enrolling because of the financial hardships of attaining an education. Making school affordable should by extension also increase enrollment.
• Identify ways to educate and inform potential students of degree pathways and opportunities. The availability of trained academic advisers with a wide array of knowledge on education needs to increase.
• Financial costs:
• Companies could partner with the State of Arizona and its educational institutions by offering loan repayment options. Perhaps the company could offer matching student loan repayment in Lieu of matching 401K to help reduce student loan debt. The state of Arizona could also offer to forgive some of the debt if a student is signed on to work for an Arizona company. This would make, sense considering if we retain the students educated they will continue to provide for and benefit local economies. 
• Ensure State Colleges follow ACE guidelines in acceptance of transfer and work related credits.
• Encourage the federal government to make changes on how it handles student loans.
• Degree Completion
• Encourage and/or require public colleges and universities to honor prior credits or ACE recommendation for credits. Offer alternatives to a 16 week course in general education classes for individuals who already have adequate knowledge of a subject.
• Offer to forgive portions of debt for students that complete a degree. 
• Encourage Colleges to offer classes that meet the needs of working families.
• Offer colleges monetary incentives for the increase and retention of students.

Phase three would include observation and analysis of solutions outcomes. It is the evaluation stage that determines if the programs implemented actually work or if they need to be adjusted. This stage ensures ongoing quality and allows flexibility in eliminating old ideas or introducing new ideas that might better suit the changing needs of college students.

No plan is perfect of course and no one individual has all the answers. However, I would expect the Governor to at least provide citizens some sort of model or implementation plan or even some ideas that he would like to try. In order to get 60% of Arizona's population to have at least one degree or certificate, will require collaboration and community lead efforts as well. This will not succeed though if a better more fleshed out plan is not available.