UH efficiency study a good sign

The University of Hawaii administration has embarked on a fact-finding mission with a goal that all should recognize as critical: delivering college education with improved efficiency.

The public has an interest in seeing that this mission succeeds, because efficiency will reduce the pressure to boost tuition and ultimately help full-time students complete their course work in a reasonable length of time.

With tuition rates continuing to rise, it’s important that students be able to get the classes they need so they can navigate through their requirements at a good pace, rather than spinning their wheels as they fork over tuition, semester after semester.

Such improvement is clearly the aim underscored in "Cost of Education and Proposed Metrics," a study recently released by the UH administration. However, the initial findings — including the fact that the UH-Manoa flagship has a student-faculty ratio that’s lower than other universities in its peer group — must be plumbed further to discover what changes need to be made in campus operations.

And digging deeper is the intention of Linda Johnsrud, UH provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. State officials and the general public should support the university in this effort, with the expectation that the administration and Board of Regents will implement the fixes identified in further study.

Here are a few of the numbers unearthed so far:

» The ratio of full-time students to full-time faculty at Manoa stands at 11.9 students per teacher, well below the 17.5-to-1 average of the peer institutions. UHM peers were listed as state universities in Colorado, Mississippi and Oregon, and the universities of Kentucky, South Florida, Utah, Illinois (Chicago campus) and New Mexico (Albuquerque campus).

» The percentage of undergraduate classes with low enrollment (fewer than 10 students) was especially high at Manoa, at 19.1 percent, and it has remained roughly at that level for the eight years studied.

» Graduation rates "within 150 percent of normal time" — six years for a four-year degree program — have been relatively steady at all the campuses but still below national averages of 57.4 percent. At Manoa, 54.8 percent of students graduate within six years.

Changing these metrics has long been a goal at UH, where there is an initiative to increase graduation rates overall by 25 percent, by 2015.

Of course, there is the popular argument that small class size is a good thing, and for certain courses, keeping things intimate is certainly essential to academic success. But figuring out exactly what is producing the low student-faculty ratios is necessary. The reasons in Hawaii’s case aren’t clear, but some national consultants have concluded low ratios, taken by themselves, may not always be a plus for students.

Just to cite one example: Educational consultant Mark Montgomery said the quality of education has more to do with faculty quality than class size. Some less successful professors may simply attract fewer students, while the better teachers shoulder the work of larger classes. Further, he said, some professors may cap their class sizes because they don’t want the workload of grading more papers and tests.

Designing an appropriate improvement plan for UH will require that administrators drill down — to the level of college deans and department heads — to determine how their courses are designed, and whether some classes should be larger while others are dropped.

It is encouraging to get this interim report from the provost, as a sign of determination to solve the university’s efficiency problem.