X. PRODUCTIVITY GOALS

This Academic Productivity Plan is designed for implementa- tion at any of three levels, depending on the availability of funding. The first level is based on revenue currently antic- ipated for the next three years. Funding for the second level includes an additional $3 million per year in revenue, dedi- cated to the enhancement of educational technology to support and improve instruction. Level 3 achieves full implementation of the Oregon Model for Undergraduate Education, as described in the proposal to the Chancellor's Office in September, 1993, and included here as Appendix B. The full cost of the Oregon Model implementation is now estimated to be about $3 million per year, rather than the $4.3 million shown in Appendix B, owing to the cumulative effect of other produc- tivity improvements that we will have implemented at Levels 1 and 2. In advancing from one level to the next, relatively small increments in funding yield major increases in academic productivity. Primary Output Measures

The preceding section on Assessment and Productivity Measurement gives a detailed account of how we intend to measure our status and report our progress on academic pro- ductivity and educational reform. It clarifies the difference between assessment and productivity measurement, and proposes a University of Oregon Portfolio as a framework for the broad measures of assessment and productivity that we will need both for our internal purposes and to present our wide range of accomplishments to the general public. In addition to the portfolio, however, we must have a small number of simpler numerical indicators, easily understood by our broader con- stituencies, that can be pointed to as productivity measures.

We propose to use three primary output measures as our basic productivity increase indicators:

• 1. The number of entering freshmen who complete their degrees at UO within six years of entry,
• 2. The total number of undergraduate degrees granted each year; and
• 3. The number of student credit hours taken by students off campus.

Numerical indicators such as these do not address the issue of quality of the educational experience. Our commitment is to reach these quantitative productivity increases with no decrease in the quality of undergraduate education at Level 1, and with significant improvements in quality at Levels 2 and 3. The section above on assessment describes how we will measure these qualitative improvements.

In the rest of this section we describe the facts and the reasoning behind the projections we make for the three levels. Starting from present data and following assumptions based on what we have already described, we explain how we have established our numerical goals. The intent here is to show the magnitude and the direction of the changes that we are committed to making--the key elements are the trends and the relative magnitudes of the changes. All of these quanti- tative estimates are, of course, made from projections that are less accurate than their 4-digit precision might suggest.

Level 1: The Basic Productivity Plan

Table 1 [not available in this gopher version] shows projections of tuition levels, enrollment, and revenue for the first level, which we might call the Basic Productivity Plan. This plan is consistent with the assumptions listed above, except that no revenue is included for the needed investment in educational technologies described in the fourth assumption there. Consistent with the current limited availability of educational technology, the number of students expected to be served off campus is lower than that described in our seventh assumption. In a broad sense, the productivity increase projected here includes teaching approximately 2000 additional undergraduates by the year 2000, representing an increase of about 15 percent from current levels, together with a gain of 5 percent in the graduation rate for these students. We assume that the quality of education is improved, or at least kept constant. We also assume that the net growth after inflation (taken to be 4 percent per year), in the Education and General (E&G) budget over this entire period is only 4 percent. This assumed growth is, of course, generated from tuition increases, since the state general fund contribution to the budget is assumed to decline.

We will achieve our productivity gains of teaching a greater number of students and getting more of them through to degrees, as well as the quality improvements we hope for, by implementation of activities such as those described on pages 6 through 15 [references may be off] of this plan. At this level, with essentially no additional revenues, many promis- ing activities such as technology enhancements, increased opportunities for learning communities and participatory learning experiences, and increased faculty involvement in advising will be implemented only to a limited degree. However, we will still be able to make significant productiv- ity gains, which we will assess and document as described above in the section on assessment.

Using Table 1, we can calculate our first productivity indicator, the six-year graduation rate. Currently, according to longitudinal data we have been collecting since 1983, approximately 56 percent of entering freshmen can be expected to receive their degrees from the University within six years. This figure is up from 47 percent of those who entered in 1983. In September 1993 we enrolled 2529 new freshmen; at current graduation rates, we anticipate that approximately 1416 of these students will receive degrees from the University within six years. Of course, this number does not count all of these students who will receive degrees--many of them will transfer to other schools and receive their degrees there, and some will receive degrees from the University in later years. Nor does it count transfer students who will receive degrees from the University. Furthermore, our entire analysis does not include any graduate degrees. These defi- ciencies notwithstanding, we will nevertheless employ the graduation rate for an incoming freshman cohort, a commonly used output measure in higher education, as a gross productivity indicator.

Table 1 projects a 13 percent growth in the number of new freshmen, from 2529 to 2857, by the year 2000. If the six- year graduation rate improves from 56 to 59 percent, just a 5 percent change in the rate, we can expect that approximately 1685 of these students will receive UO degrees--an increase over present figures of about 270 students receiving degrees, or almost 20 percent! Even allowing for the 4 percent net growth in the total E&G budget assumed over this period, this measure still yields a productivity gain of nearly 15 percent.

Although our projected increase in graduates from the incoming freshman cohort does not necessarily imply an overall 15 percent increase in the six-year graduation rate for all undergraduates, we would argue that it does represent a very reasonable estimate. For example, we are projecting an overall gain for undergraduates of 15 percent over this time period since, historically, transfer students more or less replace students from the initial freshman cohort who go elsewhere. Moreover, since all students will benefit from the activities that are designed to raise graduation rates, we can anticipate a related 5 percent gain in overall graduation rates if we are successful in achieving that level of improvement for the freshman cohort.

The second productivity indicator, degrees granted per year, cannot be determined directly from Table 1, but requires a look at the overall demographics of our student body and a projection from recent experience. If we take into account the overall enrollment growth and its distribution among the classes over time, and if we assume that each student's probability of receiving a degree will increase by 5 percent, we conclude that the overall number of degrees obtained by UO students will rise approximately 10 percent by the year 2000, and 15 percent by 2004.

The third numerical productivity measure is the number of students served off campus. At present we are providing 25,899 student credit hours (SCH) to 8710 students off campus, primarily in Portland through programs such as the Oregon Executive MBA, the Oregon Joint Graduate Schools of Engineering, and the Portland Architecture Program. We also serve a large number of persons each year in non-credit workshops, short courses, and related activities performed in response to requests from Oregon businesses, government, and other groups. Most of these students, although not on campus, are being served in traditional ways. The major opportunity for expansion in service to off-campus students is through the use of technology to serve individuals through electronic networks to their desktops. To provide this service at a level of quality that compares reasonably with that offered on campus requires major investments both in physical infrastructure and in the development of course materials that are best suited to electronic media. At this level of productivity planning, without significant additional funds to invest in instructional technologies, we will be able to make only modest gains in serving students off campus. We would strive, by 2000, to increase the number of SCH offered off campus by 50 percent. Lack of investment capital, however, will limit the gains we can make in this area. We anticipate that the growth in the number of students served off campus will contribute from 1 to 2 percent to overall University productivity.

However one interprets these productivity indicators, if we are able to achieve the productivity gains that we believe are possible at Level 1, graduation rates will improve and the number of students who will receive degrees from the University over the next ten years will grow substantially. In fact, the number of graduates projected for 2001 repre- sents a historic high for the University, achieved in spite of the budget cuts of the Measure 5 era.

Level 2: The Technology Enhanced Productivity Plan

Table 2 [not included in this gopher version] shows our projections of tuition levels, enrollment, and revenue for the second level, which we might call the Technology Enhanced Productivity Plan. Implementation of this plan will require $3 million per year dedicated to educational technology. A part of the $3 million is derived from a proposed Instructional Technology Fee of $50 per term, 20 percent of which is reserved for financial aid to resident students. This fee will net approximately $1.6 million per year for instructional technology. The remaining funds, and in all likelihood more, will be obtained through external grants, such as those discussed in Section IV, Instructional Technologies. This enhanced plan is thus consistent with all of the assumptions listed above.

We emphasize that although this Technology Enhanced Plan is presented as an alternative, it is, in fact, an absolute minimum requirement if we are to equip our graduates for the job market of the next century, and if we are to remain competitive with our peer institutions, who are making much larger investments of this type than we can now. We must have the opportunity to catch up and to move into the next century with the technology essential to meet modern educational standards.

As in the discussion above for Level 1, the productivity gain projected here includes increasing enrollment by over 2000 undergraduates by the year 2000. This assumption reflects our strong belief that because of the extremely important objec- tive the fee addresses, and because of the financial aid reserve we have included, enrollment will not suffer. Moreover, we believe that the appropriate use of these tech- nologies will improve our retention and graduation rates, so that by 2000 the percentage of students who receive their degrees within a six year period will have grown by 9 percent, from 56 percent to about 61 percent of students entering. Following the methodology described above for Level 1, we can calculate the improvement in the six-year gradua- tion productivity indicator. The increases in graduates from a freshman cohort and in number of students receiving under- graduate degrees yield a total productivity gain in the range of 16 to 20 percent, relative to the E&G budget expanded by the net income from this fee.

The third productivity measure, the number of students served off campus, will rise dramatically if we are able to include technology enhancements, since as we develop course materials using interactive, multimedia technologies we can begin to make them available to off-campus students. In fact, we envision developing a catalog of "on demand" courses that can be taken in a primarily electronic mode, with only minor faculty involvement, from appropriately equipped computers anywhere in the state. By 2000, we expect to be able to offer a large number of high demand courses through this on-demand mode, so that we could serve, through this and other means, a very large number of students off campus. Obviously, the ability to serve students at a distance is a major gain of the Technology Enhanced Productivity Plan.

We note, however, that there has been no market survey for the University, or for OSSHE as a whole, to determine the potential demand for such high-technology teaching. Student use of this opportunity will depend in part on the absence of more attractive alternatives in the state. Of course, for many purposes, particularly for continuing education, the ability to learn through technological means will always be attractive, so under almost any assumptions, some substantial growth in this area will occur. It is simply not possible, however, to make realistic projections of the amount of growth. As a guess, we estimate that through use of technol- ogy the University could, in principle, increase off-campus SCH by a factor of 5 to 10 over current numbers, and hence might realize a gain in its overall productivity somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 percent. For planning purposes, however, in the absence of knowing what the real market will be for this kind of off-campus education, we conservatively estimate that we can double the current number of SCH taken off-campus.

Level 3: The Oregon Model Productivity Plan

Table 3 [not in this gopher version] shows our projections of tuition rates, enrollment, and revenue for the third planning level, which we might call the Oregon Model Productivity Plan. This plan includes the instructional technology enhancements described above, as well as the full implementa- tion of the Oregon Model as detailed in our proposal to the Chancellor dated September 30, 1993, included here as Appendix B. The ideas we proposed in September have been strongly validated by the productivity planning process of the past six months, and are consistent with the discussion above. We have determined now that we can accomplish the objectives described in that proposal at lower cost than we had originally estimated, owing to the productivity enhance- ments that will already be put in place at levels one and two as described above. Funding for this program level comes from an Undergraduate Resource Fee of $100 per term, to be phased in at $50 per term in 1995-96, with an additional $50 per term in 1996-97. As with the Instructional Technology Fee, 20 percent of the fee income will be reserved for financial aid, to assure access for low income students. Thus the net income from the resource fee in 1996-97 will be about $3,000,000, compared with a net income of $4,300,000 that would have been available from the fee as proposed last September. We believe that we can achieve all of the goals described in the September proposal by using the funds from this fee. The corresponding retention and graduation rates are included in the calculations represented by Table 3.

We can determine the net productivity gain for the Oregon Model Productivity Plan by using the methodology described above. The number of students from the entering freshman cohort who will receive degrees within six years from entry is projected to grow by 30 percent, so that almost 2000 of freshmen cohort entering in the year 2000 should receive degrees. The number of undergraduate degrees granted in 2001 is projected to be 25 percent greater than the number anticipated this year. These predicted gains seem quite remarkable, but they are entirely consistent with the aims expressed in our primary and operational goals. Most of the productivity strategies that we propose will work directly toward increasing these productivity measures, so we believe that we have a good chance to achieve truly remarkable and pace-setting productivity increases. The goal is well worth striving for, but it will be difficult to achieve. Such high levels of increased productivity will only be attainable if we have available the marginal revenues we propose.

The two fees together add only 5 percent to our E&G revenue when fully implemented in 1996-97. We believe that we can safely and conservatively guarantee our public constituents that this complete productivity plan, with the modest addi- tional fees projected, will increase the number of students who succeed in receiving degrees by over 20 percent by the year 2001. Assuming the market exists, we also believe that we will be able to increase the number of SCH offered off campus by a factor of 5. Furthermore, Oregonians will acount for almost all of the growth in each of these measures, since we project a leveling of nonresident admissions next year while the number of residents admitted will continue to grow, and since essentially all of the off-campus courses will be taken by Oregonians.

[Submitted by: Charley Wright
Tue, 29 Mar 94 14:55:54 PST] [Copyright 1994, University of Oregon]