This content was previously unavailable to the public. SCUP members and those who attended SCUP–45 in 2010, can download the entire 49-page booklet of SCUP-45 executive summaries here. The document, below, cannot be downloaded, printed, or copied from—only viewed.

After SCUP–45 in 2010, SCUP commissioned executive summaries of 20 plenary and concurrent sessions, which became a 45-page PDF resource available to SCUP members and SCUP–45 attendees only. Starting this week, we will be bringing the contents of one executive summary out each week for everyone to see. This is the first of 20. Read it and see why you need to be at 2011's premier higher education planning event! Registration is open now.

The Lumina Foundation has been carefully watching the Bologna Process and is engaged in research to determine how aspects of it which set out learning and degree requirements can be brought to the United States. It is circulating a draft of a degree qualifications profile (PDF) that is causing quite a stir in leadership circles.

The following is quoted from an Inside Higher Ed article by Doug Lederman.

"Institutions are similarly sidestepping public calls to clarify what their degrees represent in terms of student accomplishment by employing sample-based testing and assessment programs that say little about learning and even less about what all students should attain," the document states. "In the absence of clear statements of intended learning outcomes, confusion and misunderstanding are to be expected, and they currently prevail."

Statements of that sort may stoke concerns among faculty and other groups that a process that starts with defining what degree earners need to know and be able to do will inevitably lead to an attempt to set national higher education standards, which many would oppose.

Let us say first that SCUP is proud to note that the new president of the Arizona Board of Regents is Thomas K. Anderes, a long time SCUP member and leader who is currently the convener of SCUP's Resource and Budget Planning Academy.

The Lumina Foundation's Focus magazine for July 2010 (PDF) is focused on "The Productivity Push: System-Wide Reform Allows Arizona to Serve More Students." An excerpt:

Arizona is among a growing number of states that are expanding their capacity to graduate more students (see map, Pages 8 and 9). They’re doing this by spending money differently and by delivering education in new ways and in new places.

The plan Burnand shared with Cecilia that day — a joint initiative of the Maricopa Community College District and Arizona State University that jump-starts productivity even before a student sets foot in a college classroom — is but one piece of the statewide reform effort.

Once competitors for student minds — and public dollars — the schools in the state community college system and Arizona’s three four-year universities are now full-fledged partners. They’re working together to streamline transfer policies, expand student opportunity at “no-frills” regional educational centers, and keep costs down for both institutions and students — all in an effort to improve the system’s productivity and cre- ate new paths to learning.

The driving force behind this change is the 12-member Arizona Board of Regents, the panel that governs the state’s three research universities from its headquarters just a few miles from Alhambra High School. In a blunt comprehensive strategic plan released in 2008, the board called out Arizona for failing to keep pace with other states in the effort to recruit and retain low- income, first-generation and other 21st century students.