Regents’ $290,000 common application portal continues to see minimal use

IOWA CITY - Of the 50,000-plus prospective first-year students who apply to one of Iowa's three public universities annually, just 92 in the last year used a common application portal the Board of Regents spent $290,000 two years ago to create.

Those applications through March 1 are fewer than in the portal's first year, when 104 people used the new tool - which is aimed at saving applicants time and paperwork by allowing them to apply to more than one of Iowa's regent universities by filling out common forms just once.

The project - which cost $90,000 to develop, $200,000 to implement, and was expected to cost about $100,000 annually to maintain - was recommended by Deloitte Consulting, a firm the board hired in 2014 and paid more than $3.3 million to facilitate its 'transparent, inclusive, efficiency review.”

Deloitte, in facilitating the review, made other suggestions in the areas of sourcing and procurement, human resources and information technology that board officials said have saved millions of dollars.

Of the 92 prospective students who used the common application portal, 40 applied to University of Iowa, Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa; 24 applied to ISU and UI; 12 applied to UI and UNI; and five applied to ISU and UNI. Another 11 used the portal but applied to only one school.

'This is not a path that a lot of students are using,” said Brent Gage, UI associate vice president for enrollment management. 'It's not that the site doesn't work. It's just that, I think, students think a little bit more from an institutional basis when they're going through the application process.”

At an annual expense of $100,000, which staff originally projected the portal would cost 'above and beyond the ongoing IT and other support costs,” the board would be paying about $1,086 per student who used it this last year.

But, conflicting original projections, Board of Regents spokesman Josh Lehman told The Gazette, 'There aren't specific costs for the common application portal. It has been folded into the overall admissions process.”

When the portal debuted, board staff outlined rollout steps, including informing Iowa high schools of its existence and availability, working with universities to publicize the portal, making necessary website changes and monitoring and evaluating its use to 'make any necessary adjustments.”

When The Gazette last summer reported dismal use of the portal in its first year, admissions administrators across the campuses said they hadn't been pushing or promoting the new tool. The common application also wasn't accessible from the board's website at that time.

Although the board's site now has a link to the common application portal under its 'institutions” tab, none of the universities promote the tool on their main application website. UI provides a link to the portal at the bottom of a website dedicated to the regent admission index.

Iowa State, which maintains and manages the portal, also doesn't provide any link to the portal from its main application website. UNI provides a link to a 'common application,” but it's not the one the regents created.

'The Common Application” link available on the UNI home application site connects to a nonprofit organization with nearly 700 college and university members nationally, allowing prospective students to apply to more than one institution using one common application.

The University of Iowa also participates in a separate common-application project specifically aimed at supporting lower-resourced and underrepresented students. To date, the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success application project has enlisted more than 90 schools - including UI.

l Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com