Fiscal Highlights - November 2013

Utah State University (USU) is the state's land-grant university, and as such, is committed to providing accessible, affordable and high quality educational opportunities to citizens throughout the State of Utah.  It does this through a combination of its regional campuses and distance education, together with concurrent enrollment.  In addition to USU-Eastern in Price and the Blanding Campus, USU operates regional campuses in the following areas:  Brigham City, Tooele, the Uintah Basin, and Salt Lake City.  In addition, USU has a continuing education center in Moab.  From these sites, education is broadcast to numerous locations throughout the state.  USU utilizes the Utah Education Network (UEN) to make all of this possible.  Students can take courses at these various sites, with teachers at other sites.  For example, a teacher could be in Vernal and have four students, but also have students in Monticello, Delta, and Logan.  All of the sites have high quality, two-way video conferencing, so the teacher and the students in the various locations can talk back and forth and have discussions in the course of the classwork.

USU has 67 full-time faculty at 7 USU sites teaching over 12,000 distance education students.  USU offers 6 associate degrees, 27 bachelor's degrees, 20 master's degrees and 1 doctoral degree through its regional campuses and distance education.  The funding for this education is much more dependent on tuition than traditional education at the Logan campus.  State funding covers approximately 18 percent of the total cost, while tuition and fees covers the balance.

Over the past couple of months, I have had the opportunity to visit the USU regional campuses.  It has been very interesting and helpful to me to better understand the programs and delivery methods.  I have been impressed that citizens throughout the state have access to higher education through USU's outreach efforts.