Governor Bobby Jindal signed the LA GRAD Act 2.0 into law Tuesday at a press conference at the Lod Cook Alumni Center.
This second round of improvements to Louisiana’s higher education system includes three updates on the original legislation.
The LA GRAD Act 2.0 will help institutions prioritize aspects of student performance, or metrics. Of the nearly 52 metrics, institutions will focus on increasing the number of graduates, improving retention rates and boosting completion rates.
This includes six year graduation rates, year-to-year retention rates and overall completers. Adopting these metric priorities will be required, as the state believes they are key components of professional success after college.
The act will also give Louisiana colleges operational autonomies in personnel, purchasing, facilities and investments. This framework presents a rewards system, wherein institutions gain more freedom to save money by making more efficient decisions when students do well.
Bill supporters expect the tiered autonomy system will improve academic outcomes and institutional functionality.
The University estimates the new flexibilities will allow administrators to save more than $52 million over the first five years of implementation.
Another goal of the act is to boost data and transparency, requiring officials to monitor individual credits and offer early warnings when students fall behind.
Jindal said the amount schools spend per student varies widely, but spending is not clearly related to student performance. However, the new legislation will help the state identify debt practices for investing higher education dollars wisely and share these techniques with other institutions.
Jindal said the revisions will cut red tape and make state oversight less bureaucratic and burdensome.
The first LA GRAD Act was a foundation for improving outcomes in higher education. Jindal said the future may see even more progress, noting a change in the Board of Regents funding and continued measures toward excellence in Louisiana’s higher education institutions.
“The legislation we will sign into law today takes the next step by operationalizing key components of last year’s framework,” Jindal said. “It cuts through state micromanagement in campus operations, allowing institutions to achieve their potential and [giving] them more and better streamlined down.”
Despite state efforts, Louisiana’s six year graduation rate of 37 percent is still below the national average of 52 percent.
Louisiana has the 13th highest number of dollars spent on students who drop out within a year.
Jindal said he believes this act will transform student outcomes for the better by giving campuses the flexibility and tools they need to improve graduation rates and performance.
“For too many years we’ve paid schools simply to be bigger, simply to offer more degree options whether they were needed or not,” Jindal said. “To instead change the incentives to say now we’re really going to be focused on rewarding campuses based on completion rates, retention rates, graduation rates and the success of students post-graduation truly is changing the culture and will change the performance of higher education in