In order to provide better higher education to the people and students of Iowa, the Board of Regents has begun an efficiency review of our three regent universities. The consulting firm hired to conduct the review, Deloitte, has already begun the process at the University of Iowa. Earlier this week, Iowa State hosted a public forum on the subject featuring Steven Leath, ISU president; Bruce Rastetter, Board of Regents president, and Deloitte representatives.

Getting public feedback has been a large priority for the regents. To that end, Iowa State has set up an email address to receive public input at [email protected]. Additionally, a point of emphasis for the regents and Deloitte has been that they will not be entering the efficiency review with predetermined ideas of where they can find savings. Despite this assurance, several veins where potential improvements could be found have already been identified.

Online classes are one such area. With vastly reduced infrastructure needs, moving certain classes to an online medium could theoretically save our schools some much needed funds. Currently, Iowa State offers a wide variety of online courses that are intended to increase convenience for students.

However, most online courses at Iowa State include an additional delivery fee for students. According to the Iowa State Online and Distance Learning website, “Delivery fees support the additional people and infrastructure for some distance education programs.”

It is understandable that adding online courses to those already offered by Iowa State will marginally increase costs, but the intent of online courses is to provide a less expensive service to students. In order to do this, they will need to actually replace other, in-person courses.

Obviously, many classes are simply unable to be offered without physical classes. These would include courses that rely heavily on discussion, such as those that utilize the Socratic method of instruction or courses with hands on components like biology labs.

Shifting those courses that could be given online, though, opens another possibility that the regents have hinted at to increase statewide savings, increasing the amount of inter-university courses offered. Such cooperation would allow students at any of the regent universities to benefit from the best professors or programs that normally would be restricted to a single campus.

Increased financial literacy, while not necessarily an avenue for efficiency at the level of a university, is nonetheless an important step forward for our state’s regent universities. Iowa State has already taken steps to reduce and inform students about the significant level of debt most of us graduate with.

Iowa State’s Financial Counseling Clinic, which will be moving from the human development and family services department to the Office of Student Affairs, offers financial services at no cost to students. The clinic, which has recently taken steps toward offering not only professional counseling but peer counseling as well, serves hundreds of students a year.

Despite these efforts, there is still much to be done in the way of educating students about their debt. Earlier this month, Iowa State became a research partner with the Enhancing Student Financial Education program. The goal of the program is to ultimately reduce student debt, but a more pressing objective is to inform students how to responsibly borrow money.

The regents’ efficiency review is a wonderful start to addressing the issues of Iowa’s public universities, but it is not a final solution. There is more work to be done for the students of Iowa who will soon become the taxpayers of Iowa.