The challenge of attaining a higher education degree in Kansas certainly a newsworthy topic, received attention with formation of a student transfer agreement between community colleges and private colleges in the state. The deal between 19 community colleges and 20 independent schools should ease movement of students with an associate's degree to schools offering four year private nonprofit bachelor's degrees here to delve into this development are Heather Morgan, Executive Director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges. And Matt Lindsay, president of the Kansas independent College Association. Welcome to you both. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Thanks for coming in explaining this, I think this is a big deal. And so we should help spread the news that this is this issue and this program exists. So Matt, let's start with you. And you can talk about college access and affordability. Just really what the challenge is that community colleges and private colleges are trying to address. What is the problem? And then Heather, you can, in broad strokes, talk about what this agreement does to solve that problem. Okay. So Matt, you go first?
Well, Tim, the nationally the United States government accountability office back in 2017, did a study and they found that transfer students moving from a community college to a four year institution, public or nonprofit, lose an average of about 43% of the credits in that transfer. That's about 13 credit hours. So we're talking about a full semester last, in transferring, that has dramatically negative impacts on the ability to graduate on time to be able to graduate affordably, to get right out into the workforce, which is why most of our students are going to college. So the core of this agreement is to how do we address that challenge, at least for those students who we would love to have more of a community college students attending nonprofit colleges? And
wow, what a setback that wouldn't be the agony of having to retake classes. Okay. Heather Morgan, tell us about the agreement. And what it does.
We're really excited about this agreement. Essentially, what it does is a person who gets an associate's degree from a Kansas Community College will can now transfer to an independent college without losing those credits, and having completed all of their general education requirements. So while sometimes our regents universities, say the credit the course transfers, if it transfers an elective and not into their program of study, essentially, it leads to the problem Matt just described, which is they ended up having to retake the class, or retake a similar class at when they transfer. And so the solution that has been proposed, and is now going into effect between the community colleges and independent colleges will essentially allow our students to transfer with junior standing with two years remaining on their degree. The other consequence that you might not think about is some students leave the community college prior to receiving a bachelor's degree, because they know that they they will lose some credits and transfer. And so rather than completing the associate's degree and having that with them for the rest of their life, they may leave a few credits short, knowing that a university wouldn't take that credit, and then have to spend more time at a more expensive educational option. So we're excited that this will hopefully allow our students to graduate within four years if they're on the bachelors degree path, but then also stay with us to take those full 60 hours for an associate degree. And make sure that every one of those hours counts towards their four year degree.
So Heather, when does this program begin? When is it effective,
it's effective next fall, but technically, institutions are trying to make this work as soon as possible.
And for many of our colleges, this has already been has been in place for years, this is taking that concept and making sure that all 20 nonprofit colleges have set that as the bar.
So Madden on a case by case basis, a private college may have affiliated with one of its neighboring community colleges to form an informal agreement along these lines,
in many ways in many times. Yes. Okay. So as an example, Newman University has an articulation agreement with Butler community college, there has been many transfer students, they go from Butler to Newman, Kansas City, Kansas, and New York City, St. Mary have one, you can go down the list, but this sets not just an articulation agreement, but says this, as Heather pointed out, they enter as a junior having method GENEDGE regardless of which canceled,
very significant deal, of course, but previously, under this ad hoc system, you could say that somebody was being funneled from a certain community college to a certain university. Now it'll be more broadly applicable that's better for the students. In addition, the students who are in high school thinking about going to college can look at a system approach, and know that if they go to Johnson County Community College, then they can go they can transfer to McPherson comm. College and continuing their education there you see what I mean? That's exactly so their options are much widened.
This supports student choice to find the right place for them as they pursue their higher ed career,
it might not come as a surprise, but sometimes our students think they want to go to one institution and then transfer to another. This takes away all of the problems and confusion that happened with individual school articulation agreements and says, If you complete your associate's degree, you're assured this benefit one of our college presidents had had a daughter, who got an associate's degree from his institution, and transferred to friends. And he she entered as a junior standing because that friends had that agreement. Previously, he had another daughter who got an associate's degree from his institution and is at a Regent University, and is then required to retake six hours. So those are the kinds of challenges we're hoping to solve with this agreement.
Right? So students can save money, they can save time. And we, we think this is going to help people get closer to that four year, maybe four and a half or five year undergraduate degree timeframe to get a bachelor's degree.
We certainly hope so we know that every semester that they're not in the workforce is revenue loss from them, and the Kansas Workforce desperately needs their talents. And so we're hopeful that this will allow people to finish in four years,
well, every every additional semester, every additional year is really a lot of additional costs. So you know, some people, I think it's it's hard for some people to think about, oh, well, I'll just take an extra year, no big deal. But that extra year is a hell of a lot of costs that you would perhaps have to repay later on if you're in loans, right.
It's not just the direct costs of paying for another year of tuition, room and board. Those are things it's lost income,
you can be combined. Yeah, what you're talking about here is very consequential. All right. So now that you kind of touched on this, is there a comparable program with state universities such as Kansas State University, in a community college,
currently, there are very few of ad hoc, what Matt called ad hoc agreements in place, the Board of Regents is working on something they're calling the general education core, which will be 34 hours, that will be guaranteed transfer that's about a year out from implementation at least. But that's 34 hours, that isn't 60 hours, that isn't an associate degree what what community colleges would like to have is, once our students receive an associate's degree that they would transfer into the university with junior standing, not be retaking classes, and have those classes all recognized. We're not there in Kansas, yet other states have mandated and legislated those sorts of things. The Board of Regents is moving that way, but not as expeditiously as we can we just had a president retire after 40 years. And he recalled this conversation in 1970. So
well, you just don't want to learn too fast. You know, you want to think things through carefully. Right, Matt? So do you think an agreement between these private schools and community colleges will just add pressure to the Kansas Board of Regents to get off their hands and come up with a comparable policy?
I would say that that's not why we did the agreement. But no, no, sir might be that it does, because this is right. This is the right thing to do for students might be
additional motivation for the state universities k U k state WSU, because we are talking about student credit hours and and there is a competition among these institutions. For students, right?
Sure. And I would because this is about serving students, I would hope that that pressure exists, because we should all public or nonprofit, community colleges, four year institutions, we should be focused on making sure that we serve each and every student well.
So why has this taken so long? Even the community college and private schools use tag hat? Why has it taken so long to get them on the same page?
I think that it's been something that's been a goal, but it always ran into some either academic hurdle or other hurdle. And now with the cost of attendance being what it is, and really, I think a renewed focus on student success. Our president said we're done waiting, we're done. Letting things get in our way. And now is the time to get this done.
And I think for ksca schools, part of this has been, we're in a period now of coming out of the pandemic, where we are stronger than we were before. We learned some important lessons and we have some leadership continuity that we didn't have for a while. I have right now all 20 institutions with a installed president and the tenure has grown a little bit over time for those schools. So being able to have presidential leadership committed to making this happen really made a difference.
So community college enrollment has suffered in the last few years correct color
Yeah, for credit. enrollment has gone down. One of the interesting things has been we have more students who are on being served on our non credit side. Now, they may be getting a certificate or credential the training to get that talked
about, like the high school students who are taking class No, it would be
a traditional age student or adult student generally, who would be being served and trained what we call trained. They may be in a class, it's exactly like for credit, but for whatever reason, they're not choosing to take it for credit, they're choosing to get skilled up and prepared to take a certification exam supporters why anybody would do that. So the reason would be cost, so their employer may take the pay for them to take a training course. And then they set for the sort of certificate and they get the certificate without paying tuition and fees. And so for example, at Johnson County Community College, they have about 25,000 for credit students. And they had about I think it's between 16 and 20,000 people that they trained in non credit programs. So while community college enrollment, technical enrollment is going down, our training on the business and industry side is going up. And I think that's a really little known fact, in Kansas, the Board of Regents never reports on all of that customized training we're doing. Did you think about the economic development projects that have been announced recently across the state community colleges, I'm involved in all of them. And they need technical workforce in the neighborhood of seven to one. And so sometimes those companies don't care if it's for credit, what they want is a person to prove that they can have the skills and that's through certificates. Okay.
Let's get back to the reason why this wasn't done a long time ago. You know, I know higher education moves at a snail's pace in terms of reform. That's, that's just the classic higher education model. You know, don't lurch to conclusions. But I want to know more about why this isn't happening. Why this didn't happen 10 years ago, at state universities, private schools and community colleges, was there this competition for credit hours, was it turf, geography? You know, what are we talking about here? What are the complications behind the scenes that had to be dealt with?
One of the things we hear from our faculty members who are trying to work with the University to articulate the courses, sometimes faculty don't think that the course is equivalent. Maybe there's one little aspect of the course that they teach that it's not in the other course. And they said, well, because you didn't cover this one thing that might have been, you know, 10 minutes worth of lecture, your course is an equivalent and that 10 minute thing is so important. And so it was really left at the dean in the faculty level, though, to work out this is the are these courses equivalent. And oftentimes, personalities and academic freedom sort of came into play.
My immediately thought was that there was a snobbish University professor who just kind of held his nose to a community college biology class, you know, the biology University professor with PhD and all that stuff, didn't like the adjunct instructor at a community college, the suggestion that those courses were equivalent.
It's been interesting. University Professors are very nice people. But But occasionally, we've had situations where a biology class has been offered online, was not accepted to the University because it was an online class. Well, now, given the pandemic, we've all seen what what is possible through online education. And so there are just some of those personal preferences at the faculty member level that have gotten in the way of what's best for students.
And to go back to the point I made previously on leadership, that this is the type of thing especially in higher ed, where we have a faculty shared governance model that's very important for higher education, and to choose institutions. It's part of the accreditation of those institutions that emphasized the role of faculty and governance. It takes sustained and active leadership to help work, the faculty threw the value in virtue of an agreement like this, that it actually does serve their students better, that the content is not being watered down in any way. We'd love our community college students, we think they come in well prepared, but you still have to have somebody at the institution or somebody's who are championing championing it. At the same time, Heather and I worked very well together on a number of issues. And over the last few years, that relationship has helped us steer this in a way that was productive for all for both sectors.
Among all these institution, this tension between transfer has had to be just a drain over time, you know, just the battle, the battle the battle.
That's right. And building those ad hoc articulation agreements as one offs takes enormous amount of effort and time that our presidents or chief academic officers, they're stretched to the limit as well. So by doing this agreement, we're able to help them move past that baseline and start looking at other ways that we can increase student success increase learning outcomes.
This agreement been in the works, I mean, the planning that's been in the works
This pre pandemic right at the beginning of the pandemic. So
did you have to just like, pound some sense into like three people out of the 39 CEOs of these campuses? Were there a couple of holdouts, you just had to put them in a timeout room for a while,
I think that was the pandemic, there was other things that kind of got in our way and became big, bigger priorities, like trying to keep our colleges open, and operating. But I think that there were a few people, we had to bring along a little more slowly. But I would say that in the last legislative session, we knew this was gonna happen. And we had leadership 100% leadership in place, and it was just bringing along a few other people. But Tim, back to the point you just made about sort of the problem and how this solves as a solution. Unfortunately, for our community college students who transferred in the past, once they leave us, if they're told by an institution that that credit doesn't fulfill the requirement there, there is at least what the Board of Regents there was an appeal process. But that student doesn't know that there's an appeal process. And if they don't ever reach back out to their community college, we can't help them advocate for themselves. And so this just takes away all of that, that students are, unfortunately get to the university and get a surprise. Nobody wants that this is going to build trust with our students. And they know that there is no question about that, that your credits will transfer, you're not going to be retaking classes. And it makes us feel better as community college leaders, that our students are protected. We can't always advocate for them. If we don't know that they have they're having a problem.
I know you don't want to speak for the Kansas Board of Regents. But why are they focusing on a 34 credit hour package when you guys have developed one that's essentially 60 credit hours,
not speaking for the Board of Regents. But I think that the thought process is once the 34 hour package gets in place that they will then move to a they're going to try to actually a program, they're going to try to do something like this for education next year for just education majors. So they're moving four hours or something 60 hours for just education major. So the 34 hours was a first step. And then just for education major, something similar. And then perhaps if that goes well, they'll try some other majors. The word Raiders is very dedicated to student success, especially this board, it's just the speed at which this is happening is slow.
And really the the first two years is 60 hours we're talking about here, there would be some subject matter courses. Like for example, if I wanted to get a education degree, I would need to take public speaking English one and algebra. And these are the kinds of the core courses we're talking about here. But some of the more advanced instruction in education, some of that would occur at a community college. But also, that's where you would go on to a university or college or university and do it what
this allows us to do is advise students, so I was a secondary history, Ed major at a private independent College in Kansas. And so and I ended I went to a community college first, I was not able to take 60 hours, I took actually, essentially about a year, but I took a summer in high school and then a semester at community, my first semester in college was at the community college, I could we could now advise students, you should take that developmental psychology, you should take elementary reading for you know, secondary students, or whatever that is, this also allows us to better advise students. And so I think that from a student perspective, they come in and they look at their classes and the advising is is, I would say, different levels of advisors have different expertises. And so maybe they're not advised into the most the classes most advantageous to them. And so what we're hoping is to have some guided pathways so students know exactly what they need to take. If they stay on this path that they will get out. There are some other things that the Kansas Board of Regents is thinking about in terms of what they're calling math pathways. And so that college algebra would not be the math class that most majors take anymore. They're just considering some other things like that. And so there are some definite, I'd say, changes in higher education that are impacting Kansas, but this agreement with the independent colleges as a first step on what's right for kids.
So Matt, what about the skeptics who are saying, you know, community college, the academic rigor of that basic math class? That's Baloney, you know, help us with the skeptics who, who aren't impressed by community?
Well, I start with, that's not how we look at it. We are so we are continually satisfied with the community college transfers, we have about eight and a half percent of KCS enrollment comes from Kansas Community Colleges. So I was gonna ask you about 1000 About 1000 transfers a year, coming from XSplit explicitly from Kansas community colleges, and those students graduate it more frequently or at a higher rate than our regular students. From a business sense. It is cheaper to try to recruit transfer students than it is to try to go out and recruit first time Freshman that you are more likely to see success in finding those,
those will think the statistics would suggest that a high school student and take some college credit courses, a handful of even has a greater likelihood of graduating with some sort of associate's or bachelor's degree.
Oh, that's true. Early College helps as well. Another piece of this, it's important. Yes. For our schools, the demographics look very similar between these two sectors, about the same percentage are of low income students who are eligible for Pell Grants, about the same students percentage are first generation the first
of their mansplain What the what you're what you're categorizing here, when you're talking about the people that transfer
generally the enrollment at Kansas Community College about one in four of them is the first in their family to go to college and accounting for of of students at Kansas infinit. Colleges, okay. About one in three are non white at a community college, about one in three are non white at a at a private college. We both have sizable investments in student athletics, a large percentage of our students are there to play sports and get a college degree. So those students often can see a pathway for themselves. That goes from the community college to a private college because we we look similar.
Yeah, there's an affinity there that I didn't quite pieced together. I see. Therefore,
our faculty who are the ones you point out as the sort of the holdouts, if you will. They know this too. They see their classes and the demographics of that are changing in their classes in the same way they're seeing at the community colleges.
Okay, let's talk about another community college enrollment in Kansas.
Annual. We serve about 100,000 students.
Okay, per year, what about the night 20 private schools are part of your associate's? 25,000?
Really? Okay. I just want to guess more, just some of the some of the colleges are relatively small.
A number of them are relatively small. Yes. So it's easy to, you know, live Barclay College in Havilland Kansas or Havilland is a very small bird between between Pratt and Greensburg. I've heard I have. Havilland has about I think, a population about 600 or so. And Berkeley is a college of about 250. We have schools in Hillsboro.
And in their classes at K State. They have well, more than 3 million students.
So a number of our schools. And we also have what maybe the country's best chiropractic college in Cleveland University in Kansas City. That's their enrollment part of your 20. That is part of the training.
All right. So we have about 125,000 people in this mix. What how many, you know how many associate's degrees the Community College has produced on an annual basis? I'm not
sure we do produce more associate's degrees, and we do certificates, but we measure our success by two types of certificates and associate's degree. It's an definitely in the 1000s.
Okay. And then you said, you said eight and a half percent of the students that enroll at these independent colleges came from community colleges in Kansas. Right. Okay. Is what is is that true? Is that number gone up down?
It's over time it has gone up, our numbers are probably a down a little bit. Because this past fall, in part, because if the community colleges have a couple of down years of enrollment, eventually that shows up in our world,
yeah. General would hammer all these higher ed institutions
over time, but that number is going up.
I actually would have to think that I would think the number would be higher, you know, where are these people going? Are they going to universities? Or are they just not pursuing higher ed beyond that?
Well, that's a great question, Tim. The Kansas college going rate is going down and has been going down for a number of years, we're about around the 40 to 43% range of Kansas high school students are going on to second post secondary education, as the Independent Colleges share of the our students are going up. There's only one answer and that that's the enrollment decline. You know, at the Regents University somewhat. With Kansas students and in the number of our students are going on to higher education across the state, the decline should be alarming, it will have economic impacts eventually, we know that students who get some sort of post secondary certificate or degree are significantly more likely to succeed later in life and have a family sustaining wage. And so while sometimes K 12 likes to talk about post secondary success, if they're not receiving a certificate or degree long term as the economy is up and down, that's not going to be the best for Kansas.
Yeah, I think those the demographics of college age and what those people are doing is a cause for concern. I know it causes a lot of university CEOs significant heartburn,
but we're seeing it slightly different. We're seeing those demographic changes in state or out of state enrollment has gone up all through the pandemic and beyond. So we are in the private snare private colleges. We are seeing more and more students come to our schools from out of state part
of part of that the athletic battle lot of people are coming from Miami to play football.
I wouldn't say that necessarily coming from Miami, Florida, football Florida's got plenty of good football going on. But we are seeing plenty of student athletes coming but not just student athletes. There are some really, we have some strong programs. And
do we think that's part of that's a cost factor factors, that higher ed in some states is really
we are Regis, Kansas is one of the more affordable higher end landscapes in the country. Kansas is private colleges are consistently among the cheapest in the country are alone in terms of private institutions or private colleges, our loan debt is at a state where a low student loans state that's public and private collectively. So that is that does help the challenge. And I think the regents are wrestling with this just as much as we are, is how do we make sure those students stay here after they finish their degree. And we're pretty good at it, the private colleges, some of that small town values and things but we could be better because we to grow the economy, we're going to need more of those students with some post secondary credential, stay here. And I don't know if we can grow it, though, just by focusing on just Kansas students, we're gonna have to keep some of those from some whether
you have a point.
Yeah, Matt mentioned keeping kids in Kansas. And you know, to him that the Kansas Promise Scholarship Act was passed last year for the community colleges, there is a transfer portion to that that's not as well known. If a student is going to major in it any sort of health career education or advanced manufacturing get a transfer degree. The requirement that was changed in the lobby last session is that there must be what we call a two plus two agreement, which is essentially, the receiving institution for your institution has to take 60 hours. And so essentially, by signing this agreement, every Kansas promise scholar who's on a transfer program now knows that their transfer program will qualify it the independent colleges.
And just touch touch that issue Promise Scholarship is
yeah, the Promise scholarship is a last dollar scholarship that essentially will pay for tuition fees, books and supplies for Kansas students in exchange for staying in Kansas for two years. So that's a really good investment of taxpayer dollars. As Matt said, we have a lot a over 50% of our students who get a baccalaureate degree are leaving the state of Kansas, were one of the highest or leaving Kansas that
were across the board. All the sectors, yeah,
all sectors. And we are one of the worst percent leaving at least Oh, it's actually over 50% are leaving. And we're one of the highest states that is seeing this out migration of baccalaureate degree prepared students. And so the Promise scholarship is nice because our students avoid student debt, in exchange for living and working in Kansas in two years. And we know that once a student is out in the workplace and getting established in the community, they're more likely to stay. And so part of that is incumbent upon all of us to make sure that that students know about the great jobs that pay well here in Kansas, and then having the policy tools in place to keep people here,
you kind of mentioned college costs, and we've talked in and around this, but there's a big federal program on college loan forgiveness, you know, maybe $10,000 at the at the base for if you don't make more than $125,000, something like that. So So Matt, how do you think this loan forgiveness program could impact students that are coming out of the Kansas private university?
Well, I think we're not sure yet. And the reason I say that is the rules on how that's going to work haven't even been fully finalized yet. So I think the Biden administration is still trying to figure out how to make that work and work at a at a cost level they can they can handle. You know, we had to immediately on the announcement, my financial aid directors all talking about they had students just inundating their office saying can I take out a loan now can I take out a loan now thinking that if they took the loan out today, they can, they can get roped into this forgiveness piece. So there's also been a confusion driven by this, this initiative that is taking some time to settle out, I think in the end, the forgiveness of existing student loans has gonna have the most impact on the students who didn't get a degree, we know that the highest percentage of students who default on their student loans have less than 10,000 in borrowing and didn't finish at a post secondary credential. It's not the lawyers and doctors who got $100,000 in debt that are having the trouble, they also have the income to pay it off. It's the people who took out a loan and didn't get the asset that to pay off the liability. That's where the most benefit is going to come in. And that turns out that it's going to look like to play a lot more in communities of color in lower income communities. And so that that could have a lot of benefit on the state as a whole
community colleges
help grads. So I think Matt made a really good point. This is for people who have already had a student loan. So for our current students, this will have very little impact, then it'll be for students who took out a loan and you know, may get it forgiven and quite frankly, most of our Kansas students who take out a student loan are pretty responsible. They pay it off they're not in The fall. So while it's a benefit for them, most of our community college students, I'm not sure how much of a benefit it is because most of them have been pretty duly dutiful and paying their their loans. But certainly it'll be a windfall if this makes it through the process and doesn't get hung up in litigation and all sorts of other things in DC.
And I tell the story of every year, I don't do the math for power schools, the average debt on graduation, that around $24,000 total total debt, it has been less than the cost of a new Chevy mount basic Chevy Malibu down the street every year for the last 35 years. One of those depreciates the moment you get it to the other one, if you have the degree pays for itself. So it's Kansas as a whole has not been a high debt state. Therefore, the Biden initiative may not have quite the dramatic impact. Here's it might another place
that has to do we have an estimate of the average cost annual cost to attend these private schools you're talking about?
So net costs, so after aid, okay. Average for us is about 15,000 a year.
All right. And ours is our tuition and fees for 15 credit hours a semester is about 1500 bucks. So it's very inexpensive. And with the promise Act and other scholarships, you do not have to incur student debt to go to Kansas Community College,
you would be hard pressed to say no to such a proposition. Community colleges for sure.
You would think so you know, and I tell policymakers all the time, who are saying why is enrollment going down going down? It's not because of cost. Because there are various ways that we can get these costs covered. It's about students seeing the value of the credential of the degree and understanding how that's going to benefit the not only the next year, but you know, for decades to come.
Just get back to the agreement between the Korean colleges and the private colleges. There was a news release put out that suggested there's this could be the tip of an iceberg in terms of collaboration between these two clusters of higher education institutions, what would what would you be speaking of potentially,
in fact, it's part on a continuum of collaboration that's already been going on. Seven years ago, we did this around reverse transfer, where we said if a student leaves with a certain number of hours from the community college comes and finishes 15 more hours at a private college, we could send the transcript back to the community college, they could send them an associate's degree and say, Hey, congratulations, you now are a college graduate, whether or not you finish the bachelor's degree or not, you have a post secondary credential.
Yeah, I think that's a brilliant program. You know, we'll see hypothetically, you started Fort Hays, then you get through to year and a half, two years, you can call quite finished, you didn't finish your four year degree. But if you go to Johnson County, and take three more classes, you can have an associate's degree in that. And so those four days hours get shipped to Johnson County. And I think that is a tremendous program.
So I think putting this in its context of a continuum of improving and increasing the relationships in our schools is important. We had all of our presidents together Tuesday, and the conversation was already turning to how can we do more collectively a lot advising these ideas of pathways and helping students understand their options better? How can we make sure that private college voices are more present at the community colleges? How can we make sure that community college voices are more prevalent prevalent among the private college conversations? I think there's a lot more that we can do to serve students
out there collaboration. Yeah,
I think that we're really excited. Oftentimes, people think of the Regents University as its higher education in Kansas and the private colleges, independent colleges get left behind. And so the community college view is it's going to take everybody, it's going to take the regents universities, it's going to take the independent colleges, and we are laser focused on a student's success. And we've got to have good relationships, good advising, and collaboration and working together. The other thing is, we sometimes need to share faculty, in faculty who are not at full load, we need to be sharing them. We don't have enough faculty in certain areas of the state. And so we need to be working together to pool our resources to best serve hands of students.
So that can be done
through online instruction. It could be done through online instruction. But it could also be done. There's pretty close proximity from some of these independent colleges as with our community colleges. And so how does that look? How do we share a faculty? How do we co teach a class? How do we allow the private college to come on to our campuses, we have some situations where Independent Colleges are the same communities, as our community colleges to allow students to complete a four year degree in our local communities. And so those are all things that benefit Kansas and things that we're looking at.
Yeah, that would be interesting, that kind of collaboration like that it would seem efficient in terms of personnel, then would hope benefit both institutions, especially
when you look at the map of the state and see where we could be even more invested in helping achieve In higher education goals that there were not evenly distributed across the state for the four year schools. So how can we make sure we are looking to really help those parts of the state such as gap southwest, north central that don't quite have a near as much in ways of choice and opportunity. Beyond the community college? How can we work with the community colleges who are there to enhance those outcomes?
Not everybody lives four blocks from the University of Kansas campus and Lauren, right. Yeah. I think we're gonna have to leave it there. I want to thank Heather Morgan, Executive Director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges and Matt Lindsey, president of the Kansas independent College Association for explaining to this really interesting development, providing students a greater opportunity to get the kind of degree they really want. So thank you both for being here. Thank you, Tim. Thanks.