The Rhode Island Senate Committee on Education holds an annual meeting to check in on the state’s three public higher education institutions: Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), Rhode Island College (RIC), and University of Rhode Island (URI). 

The Senate’s special attention makes sense, given the three schools’ colossal share of the state budget. In fiscal year 2025, Gov. Dan McKee is proposing nearly $1.5 billion, debt service included, for public higher education. Of that allotment, $584 million comes from unrestricted sources like tuition and fees.

So yes, there are big bucks involved in state schools. Is the money being well spent?

More Rhode Islanders are earning four-year college degrees

Shannon Gilkey had some answers. The state’s postsecondary education commissioner since 2021, Gilkey presented first at this year’s Senate Committee on Education hearing on Feb. 7, followed by the presidents of the three schools. He helped paint a landscape — albeit a somewhat abstract one —  of higher education in the Ocean State.

“The state doesn’t have a current strategic plan for education, kind of globally speaking,” Gilkey testified.

But Gilkey’s office does have strategic goals. One is increasing statewide completion rates for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which determines students’ eligibility for federal financial aid. Another is strengthening the state’s workforce development options, so that adults of all ages can have the training employers want and need. Earlier in the day, Gilkey, McKee and other officials cut the ribbon at the opening of a visitor center for RI Reconnect in Providence’s Shepard Building. RI Reconnect is intended to help adult learners finish their degrees.  

Another goal is to spotlight Black, Indigenous and other students of color (BIPOC), with Gilkey’s office hoping to facilitate BIPOC learners’ access to early college opportunities. The council is also eyeing BIPOC degree and credential attainment rates. While the state as a whole acquired more bachelor’s degrees than any other state in 2022, Black Rhode Islanders saw a 3% dip in their degree and credential attainment. 

Whether Rhode Island is sufficiently addressing specific populations in higher ed was a theme of the night’s discussions — not only in terms of access, but outcomes, too. 

“Folks are also trying to keep up with the rising costs and weighing whether or not educational outcomes are going to match a salary that will provide them a life of stability,” said Sen. Tiara Mack, a Providence Democrat. “What type of work are you all doing to make sure that your industry partners are paying quality high paid jobs that are providing a living wage?”

“Yeah, that’s the level of sophistication — do our talent credentials actually align to what I would call a good paying job, what the U.S. Commerce Department defines as a good paying job — that we don’t have when we look at our postsecondary credential data against our workforce data. We don’t have that alignment,” Gilkey testified.

What Gilkey did have was a broader argument for education issues predicting workforce readiness. With fewer students entering college from Rhode Island high schools, and a workforce laden with aging baby boomers, Gilkey said a “key challenge” is matching the state’s talent pool of graduates to the local economy’s “talent demand.”

That means upskilling adults for disciplines of current and future importance, like life science and renewable energies.    

“There’s some social development issues that are a result of students just being out of the classroom in high school and how those play out in the postsecondary world, which become workforce and economic equity issues for our economy,” Gilkey said.

Gilkey said removing “non-academic barriers,” like child care or access to mental health treatment, can improve adult learners’ outcomes and ease their entry into the workforce. 

“We know after serving about 3,000 Rhode Islanders over the past several years, when we spend up to between $1,500 to $2,000 to remove a barrier, 87% of the time that Rhode Islander finishes that credential,” Gilkey said. 

Senators and committee members Ana B. Quezada and Thomas J. Paolino did not attend the meeting.

Promise and Hope are making URI feel left out

McKee inked the Promise Scholarship into permanence in 2021. His fiscal 2025 budget remains keen on the program — which allows Rhode Islanders fresh out of high school to attend CCRI tuition-free — with $7.9 million devoted from the general fund for its upkeep.  

McKee also recommended $3.4 million for the Hope Scholarship, a similar program at RIC which went into effect on July 1, 2023. It’s essentially a buy two, get two deal, allowing Rhode Island students who commit to RIC to attend tuition-free for their junior and senior years. Hope is still in a pilot phase and support is set to end on July 1, 2028, but the results have been positive so far, said Jack Warner, president of RIC. For the 2023-2024 academic year, 344 RIC students were eligible. 

“One of the biggest barriers these days for students to go on to graduate school is the debt that they incur in the undergraduate years,” Warner said. “So we want to do something about that. We think Hope is a tremendous way to help address that.” 

But in Marc Parlange’s presentation, the URI president said the state-funded scholarships “unintentionally limit access to specialized programs and high wage fields the state needs to reach increased income goals.”

Without an equivalent scholarship program of its own, students might be less encouraged to attend URI — the state’s land grant institution and sole public research university. A total of 404 accepted students, of whom 54% were from “underrepresented groups,” ended up attending CCRI or RIC instead of URI. 

Another slide declared “URI is Rhode Island’s University!” — and yet, in 2023, only 49% of its student population was from the Ocean State. While many of URI’s students arrive from out of state, Parlange suggested they end up Rhode Islanders. 

“Our students do stay in the state of Rhode Island,” Parlange said. “If you go to Electric Boat, you will see that half of the engineers there are URI graduates. You go to Amgen, they will also tell you that URI graduates are great and that they stick in the state.” 

When asked by Sen. Hanna Gallo if enrollees in CCRI’s early college programs stayed in state, CCRI President Rosemary Costigan didn’t want to rely on anecdotes.

“A large number of them do stay in Rhode Island,” Costigan said. “I would be giving you an anecdotal response if I answered, so we’ll get you that data.”

Contractual language

Last month, CCRI’s full-time faculty union picketed on the first day of classes. 

“By statute we’re given shared governance for the college, but it hasn’t been enacted,” said Daniel O’Neill, an assistant professor of art and design at the Jan. 22 picket. “And so that’s what we’re looking for, to have a bigger role in decisions about how classes are taught and the curriculum.”

Against this backdrop of disagreement, Costigan is actually looking for more full-time faculty at CCRI. She testified that the national average for community colleges is about 40% full-time faculty — slightly higher than CCRI’s 35% full-time faculty.

Sen. Mark McKenney, a Warwick Democrat, said he didn’t want to “disparage” tenured professors but couldn’t help extolling the value of an impressive adjunct with “one foot in the real world…Some of my best teachers in both college and law school were the adjuncts.”  

Costigan didn’t downplay or disagree: “We would be lost without our adjuncts. They are precious,” she said. 

But the precious spend less time in the classroom: Full-time professors, despite being a minority of teaching personnel, are responsible for 67% of the classes taught at CCRI.

“It’s a percent differential that means they’re teaching a lot. So I would certainly welcome a few more,” Costigan said.  

At URI, meanwhile, faculty contracts, which include costs of living adjustments, comprise the lion’s share of the school’s budget ask for fiscal 2025: $11.7 million of $27.7 million requested overall. McKee’s proposed budget provided nothing to address these operating shortfalls. 

“We’re contracted to pay this $11.7 million,” Parlange testified. “So I do need help.”

But not as much as other public universities in New England: “If you look at the University of New Hampshire, they’re also in serious financial trouble. You may have seen that 75 faculty are going to lose their positions up there. University of Maine is in serious financial trouble. The public’s universities in New England are in trouble,” Parlange said. 

“We manage our budget extremely carefully. We have squeezed all areas of the university. That’s why I need your help. I am seriously asking for your help.”

And even with a proposed tuition increase that could see approval at Friday’s board of trustees meeting, Parlange reminded the senators that URI is a bargain: “We are the least expensive in New England.”

People, not buildings

In 2022, RIC gained the label of “Hispanic Serving Institution,” a designation that requires at least 25% of a college’s undergraduate students to be Hispanic or Latinx. The designation allows for certain federal funding, and it’s a distinction CCRI also acquired in 2023.   

But the student body might not be reflected in the faculty: “We have a predominantly white campus when it comes to our faculty and staff,” said Warner. “And we have an increasingly diverse student body. So there’s a bit of a disconnect there…We recognize that sometimes students of color, looking at the lack of diversity among employees and for other reasons, may not feel as welcome.”

Sen. Sandra Cano, the committee chair and a Pawtucket Democrat, followed up every president’s presentation with questions about their commitment to diversity in their institutions’ structure and leadership.

Cano asked Warner: “What are you planning to do and how intentionally are you to make sure that your organizational chart really reflects diversity, equity and inclusion?” Cano asked. 

“This is a slower thing to do, because it relies on some staff turnover, because we’re not growing rapidly…We don’t have a lot of investment capital right now,” Warner said. “So any investment we’re making in one area relies on not investing in an existing area.”

“I’m gonna push back a little bit,” Cano said, and referenced the $55 million potential investment, via bond initiative, in RIC’s new cybersecurity program:  “We are not doing any good when we don’t prioritize students and only prioritize buildings…We have to have room for both…I would love to see investment into this population that you’re serving, because without them there’s no future for Rhode Island College.”

Parlange, who presented last, said he “appreciated” Cano’s comments overall and pointed out the Talent Development program at URI. Since its inception in 1968, Parlange noted Talent Development has “never been funded by the State of Rhode Island.” But the special admission program for students of color has served over 4,000 students — including Cano’s brother, who she said was able to complete his engineering degree because of it. 

Then, in the spirit of fairness, Cano asked Parlange what URI is doing for diversity. Parlange mentioned two new hires in the university’s commitment to inclusion, as well as numerous centers on campus for a diversity of identities.

Parlange, who was absent at that morning’s inauguration for the Reconnect Center, segued smoothly into his earlier whereabouts: “Today, the reason why I wasn’t joining you is that we were actually having a Martin Luther King celebration lunch and we’re really proud that one of our alums from 2015 was there to speak,” Parlange said. “We’re in shifting political times, but the University of Rhode Island is very clear where they stand.”