LOOKING IN ON: HIGHER EDUCATION

Monday, Aug. 21, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

ELKO - Ah, it's that time of year again, when U.S. News & World Report reminds the university system regents that UNLV is still in the bottom tier of all national universities and that UNR is only a notch above.

It's also the time of year when university officials wax eloquently about how the rankings are largely unfair, use 10-year-old data , favor incumbents (such as top-ranked Princeton, Harvard and Yale) and rely largely on reputation.

Jane Nichols, Nevada System of Higher Education vice chancellor of student and academic affairs, gave regents a lesson in Rankings 101 so they could understand where UNLV and UNR fell behind. The report Thursday coincided with the release of U.S. News' latest rankings, which again placed UNLV in the fourth, unranked tier.

Essentially, she said that if UNLV and UNR officials want to move their universities up in the rankings, they need to do a better job of helping students stay in college and graduate. They need to reduce class sizes. They need to hire more full-time professors and rely less on adjuncts. They need to hire better, more-renowned scholars.

They need to become more selective, admitting only the most qualified.

They need to increase spending per student.

They need to increase research dollars. They need to improve alumni giving. They need to increase the universities' total endowments. And they need to travel to higher education conferences and tap national media to convince other presidents that UNLV and UNR are on the rise.

While these are all areas regents have been addressing, they also cost a lot of money to fix, Nichols said. Regents will be asking for some of that money during the 2007 Legislature, having approved a $2.1 billion budget request on Friday that includes $1.6 billion for basic operations, $300 million to develop a health science center and $224 million to specifically address the issues facing state universities and colleges.

Regents also are asking for $380 million for new buildings.

Most of these regents will be dead before UNLV and UNR can actually move up in the rankings, Executive Vice Chancellor Dan Klaich said, but the universities can start making progress where they fall short.

So why even care about rankings?

For one, Nevada has the least-educated population in the country and the highest growth in jobs that require bachelor's degrees or higher. So there is an immediate need to improve higher education, Nichols said.

Regents signed off Friday on the creation of a joint fundraising foundation for UNLV and UNR to raise money for a new health science center, but not before raising several questions about how the foundation would work .

Several regents were antsy about starting another foundation when they had recently been dragged through the press for problems with UNLV's Research Foundation. Investigations by the Sun found that the foundation and its Institute for Security Studies had high overhead costs, inflated accomplishments and that both entities were turning over much of the research work to private companies .

Chancellor Jim Rogers stressed that the health sciences foundation would be jointly governed by UNR President Milton Glick and UNLV President David Ashley and trustees from both universities.

Ouch.

Apparently Regent Steve Sisolak couldn't resist a dig at UNLV's Research Foundation and its Institute for Security Studies during Thursday's discussion on college rankings.

When Sisolak saw that research dollars affect a university's place in the rankings, he asked Nichols whether that meant actual research done by the university or whether it included research outsourced to other companies.

Actual research, Nichols replied, over the loud boos of Sisolak's fellow regents.