Regents plan aims to boost grad rates, minority achievement

Iowa's three regent universities will work to improve four-year graduation rates and increase grad rates of underrepresented minority students under a strategic plan approved by state regents Thursday.

The new strategic plan lays out eight goals and timelines for reaching measures. The state Board of Regents met in Iowa City Thursday.

The goals set a timeline of 2016 for improvements, but regents President David Miles said the board will break the goals down into annual subgoals to better measure progress.

The eight goals address: affordability and access for qualified Iowa residents; degree attainment of minority students; increasing four-year graduation rates; increasing distance education opportunities for place-bound Iowans and nontraditional students; meeting or exceeding reading and math standards for students at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School and the School for the Deaf; developing student outcomes assessment programs for each academic program; contributing to the expansion and diversification of Iowa's economy; and being increasingly efficient and productive.

The goal regarding minority students says the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa will close the gap between six-year graduation rates of underrepresented minority students and nonminority students by 50 percent by 2016.

The plan also calls on the universities to set aside an additional 6 percent of tuition revenues for students grants and scholarships by 2016, and to increase four-year graduation rates to the median of each university's peer group, or 40 percent, whichever is greater, by 2016.

Regent Rose Vasquez of Des Moines said the universities must be careful that raising graduation rates of minority students does not lead to keeping some lower-performing students from admission.

“You've got to be careful that it doesn't mean excluding students,” she said.

The new goals do not change the approach that every qualified Iowa student gains admittance, Miles said. He pushed for the strategic plan to have specific targets, which was not done in the past.

“If you want a strategic plan to really have meaning, you create measures that people will be held accountable for,” he said.