OKLAHOMA CITY – Students at some of Oklahoma’s public colleges and universities will soon be able to pursue undergraduate degrees in artificial intelligence.

The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education approved artificial intelligence degree at Rose State College, Southwestern Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma on June 4.

While some universities have offered courses in artificial intelligence, these are the first degree programs in the state.

Trisha Wald, dean of the Dobson College of Business and Technology at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, worked to start up the program at the university. Representatives at Rose State College and the University of Oklahoma were not available for comment.

While the degree program can begin in the fall for Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Wald said the late approval means some of the new AI classes may not be able to start until the spring.

Wald said she looked at similar programs in other states to create the proposed curriculum for this new program. While Wald said there are “not as many programs as you would think,” she was able to use their programs to determine what Southwestern Oklahoma State University’s program needed.

“It’s a multidisciplinary program, so it’s not just computer science courses,” Wald said. “We’ve got higher level math, psychology and philosophy courses, specifically on ethics. So it’s going to help us have more well-rounded individuals.”

Wald said the approval process took months and the proposal had to demonstrate workforce demand to the Regents as part of the proposal process.

Over 19,000 jobs in Oklahoma currently require AI skills, officials said. This number is expected to increase by 21% in the next decade.

“AI is rapidly emerging as a vital employment sector,” said State Regents for Higher Education Chair Jack Sherry in a statement. “New career opportunities in areas like machine learning, data science, robotics and AI ethics are driving demand for AI expertise, and Oklahoma’s state system colleges and universities are answering the call.”

Gov. Kevin Stitt said the new degree programs will allow Oklahoma’s students to be at the forefront of the AI industry.

“These degree programs are a great leap forward in our commitment to innovation in education and will position Oklahoma to be a leader in AI,” said Gov. Kevin Stitt in a statement. “AI is reshaping every aspect of our lives, especially academics. I’m proud of the Board of Regents for ensuring Oklahoma’s higher ed students do more than just keep pace, they’ll lead the AI revolution.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

A controversial report on the “return on investment” of a UNC System education is on its way to the North Carolina General Assembly, which required the system to study the issue two years ago.

Key findings from the , discussed Wednesday by the UNC System Board of Governors:

North Carolinians who receive bachelor’s degrees through the UNC system were found to earn a median of $572,000 more than those without, a “return on investment” for students of about $500,000. Those with bachelor’s degrees earned a median of about $1.2 million over their lifetimes.Those who earn graduate-level degrees saw a median “return on investment” of $938,000 compared those with bachelor’s degrees, earning a median of about $2.1 million over their lifetimes.

To come to those numbers, the private research firm worked with the consulting firm Ěý˛ą˛Ô»ĺ to study more than 700 undergraduate and 575 graduate programs in the 16-campus university system along with decades of earnings data for graduates still living in the state.

Using that data, the researchers compared “the expected lifetime earnings of UNC graduates against the expected lifetime earnings of those without a college degree for undergraduate programs or with a bachelor’s degree for graduate programs, as measured by the American Community Survey, in the state,” according to the report.

“The way to essentially interpret it is, the instant you graduate from that program, it’s like I wrote you a check for $500,000,” said , in a committee meeting with members of the UNC System Board of Governors Wednesday.

Of course, Fritz said, some degrees are more lucrative than others.

The report found 94 percent of the system’s undergraduate programs and 91 percent of its graduate programs resulted in a positive return on student investment.

The highest return was in science, technology, engineering and mathematic (STEM) fields, the report found. Degrees in Biotechnology were found to be the most lucrative, with a median lifetime return of more than $3.2 million.

Among graduate students, the study found medical science programs provided the highest return on investment, with a median lifetime return of over $5.2 million.

The study found graduates of 42 of 235 undergraduate programs and 83 of 244 graduate programs earned a median lifetime return on investment of more than $1 million. Many of these high-return programs are aligned to critical workforce needs in the state.

But the study doesn’t just emphasize which programs lead to the highest earnings for students or concentrate on creating “the next wave of millionaires,” Fritz said.

Upward economic mobility for graduates across programs and disciplines is significant, he said, with 89.6% of graduates whose families were in the lowest income group at the time of enrollment moving up at least one “income band” as their careers progress.

“For low-income students (defined here as students with an income of less than $17,900 at time of enrollment), 89.6% experienced some economic mobility — meaning they moved up at least one income band from where they started over a 20-year period,” the report reads “[Forty-two percent] of all low-income students rose four income bands leading to a yearly income of $91,300 or greater after 20 years while 65.4% of low income students rose at least 3 bands to an income of more than $51,800 per year.”

“This data demonstrates that by removing barriers to access, the State of North Carolina and the UNC System have ensured that students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds have a high likelihood of upward economic mobility if they complete a degree,” the report reads.

Limitations and political friction

While important in demonstrating the value of higher education at a period when more American are skeptical about it, the study’s authors acknowledge it has limitations.

An important blind spot in the study: students who earn degrees in the UNC System but move to other states to pursue their careers, making their wage data unavailable through the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

“One of my early questions was about the school of the arts,” said UNC System President Peter Hans Wednesday. “Most of their graduates immediately go to New York and Los Angeles and such.”

Graduates in journalism and media related fields often leave for major media markets outside the state as well and high performing graduates in political science and the social sciences may also decamp to Washington D.C. or to political careers in other states.

In Wednesday’s committee discussion of the return-on-investment report, members of the board of governors and UNC System President Peter Hans suggested it took as long as it did to produce — more than 18 months — because of resistance from the state Department of Commerce.

The system and its outside firms needed to partner with the department to get wage data. The system would also like the department to approve a partnership that would help them access wage data at the federal level, board members said Wednesday.

Those criticisms came as a surprise to the Department of Commerce.

“Having worked closely with UNC to deliver (in August 2022, 15 months ago) 26 years of confidential wage data – dating back to 1996 and representing more than 47.5 million data records and more than $543 Billion in wages, we’re surprised by today’s comments,” said David Rhodes, communications director for the department.

“No one from the UNC System has raised such concerns with us directly since we’ve been working with them,” Rhodes said.

“The wage data is derived from information submitted by employers as part of their unemployment insurance tax accounts,” Rhodes said. “As such, the data set contains highly sensitive personal identifiable information, so called PII, so as you can appreciate the upmost care must be taken to ensure all parties entrusted with such data have the equipment and procedures in place to keep it secure, a process that is complex and can take some time.”

“Even so, our team produced the requested data in a timely manner,” Rhodes said.

Commerce Secretary Machelle Baker Sanders is a Democrat appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper while members of the UNC System Board of Governors are political appointees of the General Assembly’s Republican majority.

Political tensions over the return-on-investment report have been apparent since before the legislature mandated and funded it two years ago in the state budget. Questions about how it may be used and whether those decisions will be made with politically have only grown louder.

A controversial undertaking

Members of the board of governors emphasized Wednesday that the study is just the beginning. More information is needed, they said, before decisions are made about investing in some programs more than others or, as administrators, faculty and students across the system fear, eliminating some programs entirely because they are found to provide a lower return on investment.

But tensions are high across the system, as illustrated by UNC-Greensboro, where the UNC Board of Governors met Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

As , thousands of faculty, students and alumni at the school have signed a petition opposing a review of academic programs at the university that could result in the elimination of some programs.

Protests were held on campus last month and again this week, as the board of governors met on campus.

An independent audit of the university’s finances, funded by the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, found that though UNCG has struggled with enrollment and funding challenges in the last few years, it is on firm financial footing and doesn’t need to cut programs.

Chancellor Frank Gilliam has criticized that audit and its conclusions, saying the university has to align its programs with student and workforce demands.

More business focused language regarding academia – discussions of students as customers, of “return on investment” and upper level administrators as “CEOs” – has gone from conservative think-tank literature to Republican-led legislatures down to the campus level.

One of the firms used to produce  the system level return on investment report and in the academic program review now underway at UNCG is rpk GROUP. That firm was involved in a similar study at West Virginia University, where earlier this year university leaders .

Gilliam has waved off comparisons between West Virginia and what’s happening at UNCG, but in a board of governors committee meeting Wednesday he spoke to the philosophical tie between the return-on-investment report, his own university’s academic program review, and the pushback to both.

“We have made the argument, and we are coming under some fire for it, that we really need this data to do an analysis of how much it costs us to produce a student credit hour,” Gilliam said. “And does that line up strategically with where we’re trying to take the institution. Does it line up, let me say it more bluntly, with student demand? Student demands are high in certain areas. They’ve changed over time. And they’re less high in other areas.”

Gilliam said he was worried public perception will be that if the return-on-investment study shows almost all UNC system programs provide a good return on investment, there is no need for program reviews like the one now underway at UNCG.

“We’re doing well in North Carolina but there are going to be headwinds,” Gilliam said. “I’ve been doing this almost 40 years. The environment is changing at a sea change level. It’s not just little changes. And they’re not going anywhere. So I’ve argued we need to sharpen our focus. It’s not about cutting programs. It’s about meeting student demands and labor market demands.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com. Follow NC Newsline on and .

For the first time in Arizona, Indigenous undergraduate students will get the opportunity to take classes at a major public university without worrying about how to cover tuition.

The University of Arizona announced that it is launching a first-of-its-kind program that will cover tuition and mandatory fees for full-time Indigenous undergraduate students who are from any of Arizona’s 22 federally recognized tribes.

“Serving Arizona’s Native American tribes and tribal students is a crucial part of the University of Arizona’s land-grant mission, and the Arizona Native Scholars Grant program is another important step among many to do that,” University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins said in a press release announcing the program.

The ANS grant is geared toward full-time undergraduate students studying on the University of Arizona’s main campus in Tucson.

The grant will make up any difference between a student’s tuition, mandatory fees, and all other financial aid the student receives, such as a Pell Grant or merit scholarships, according to the University of Arizona’s. The grant can be awarded for up to four years.

“I am so proud that this university has found a way to help hundreds of students more easily access and complete a college education, and I look forward to finding ways to take these efforts even further,” Robbins said.

The program will be funded through a reallocation of financial aid dollars and will be administered by the University of Arizona’s Enrollment Management, according to the university.

“The Tohono O’odham Nation is proud to partner with UArizona in its ongoing efforts to honor Native heritage and support Indigenous students,” Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris, Jr. said in a statement to the Mirror. “This program will help ensure that students from the Nation and other tribes have the opportunity to access the world-class education opportunity available close to home at the University of Arizona.”

Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Roe Lewis applauded the University of Arizona’s “landmark decision” on providing free tuition to Indigenous students.

“Quality education will continue to lift our Tribes and our people and help create the next generation of Arizona tribal leaders,” Lewis said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror. “This important acknowledgment of UA’s responsibility to the sovereign tribal nations of Arizona should be emulated across the state and nationally.”

The program begins in the fall for new and continuing full-time, degree-seeking undergraduates who will be eligible for the Arizona Native Scholars Grant program.

Education Director of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Serina Preciado said the University of Arizona announcement is important to the tribe because Indigenous students do not enroll at the rate that other subgroups do within colleges and universities,

“The experience of Pascua Yaqui students is that they live in multi-generational households and they are contributing to the household income,” she said.

This means that a lot of young Indigenous students are faced with the choice of either helping out the family by working or making the personal choice to thrive in a higher education setting.

“That’s not a choice that they have to make anymore, at least not if they attend the university,” Preciado said. “We hope that that (this) becomes something that gets alleviated across the state and in the country.”

Preciado said the new program also contributes to the intergovernmental agreement the Pascua Yaqui Tribe entered into with the University of Arizona in 2021, where the university committed to helping the Pascua Yaqui tribal members reach their higher education goals.

“The state and the country have a huge obligation to Native American communities,” Preciado said. “If you look at the rates of poverty and the kind of social conditions that are happening on reservations and in tribal communities across the state and the country, we know that education is a solution to a lot of these issues, but there has not been a significant, tangible significant investment in Native American education at a higher education level.”

According to the university, serving Arizona’s Tribal Nations and students is a key part of the university’s strategic plan, and is central to the plan’s Arizona Advantage pillar, which highlights the university’s role as a land-grant institution.

“The University of Arizona is committed to recognizing and acknowledging the history endured by Native American communities,” said Kasey Urquídez, University of Arizona’s vice president of enrollment management and dean of undergraduate admissions, in a press release.

“We are committed to promoting access and success for Indigenous students,” she added. “This program is part of our continual commitment to serve our Indigenous Wildcats.”

Preciado said that by the university offering free tuition to Indigenous students in Arizona, they stand up and begin to repair the legacy of universities as land grabbing institutions.

The University of Arizona is a land-grant university, meaning it’s one of many institutions across the country to receive land grants from the Morrill Act, that sought to provide a “liberal, practical education” for the working class.

Fifty two modern land-grant universities received land grants traceable to the Morrill Act, according to .

“The United States took the land that supplied the grants from nearly 250 tribal nations, through 162 treaties or seizures,” the investigation reported. “Land-grant universities were built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land.”

The University of Arizona’s main campus is based in Tucson, which is the original homelands of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Tohono O’odham Nation.

“It’s a significant step to take to move beyond land acknowledgments,” Preciado said, and the university is showing that it values Indigenous communities and people.

This move can be seen as more restorative rather than performative, she added because more often than not, Indigenous communities have to experience performative land acknowledgments.

“This is a really big step, big movement from the university,” Preciado said, because Indigenous students need access to these types of resources everywhere.

“When we talk about valuing tribal communities, we mean it, and they’re putting their money where their mouth is,” she said. “We implore universities across the country to make this commitment to Native students.”

For students to be eligible for the ANS grant, they must complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and provide tribal identification.

Native American tribes’ federal legal status allows universities to administer scholarships and grants to tribal members, the university said. More than 400 students enrolled at the University of Arizona last year that meet the criteria for the new program.

But the program does leave out non-traditional students, such as Indigenous undergrad students taking courses online or taking courses at the main campus on a part-time or less than part-time basis.

Levi Esquerra, the University of Arizona’s senior vice president for Native American advancement and tribal engagement, said the ANS program may later expand to graduate students, University of Arizona Online students, and students at other campuses. The university will also look to potential donor support to help fund the program.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez applauded the new program, saying that it will open doors for more Indigenous students.

“This is a wonderful initiative for our young people and the University of Arizona. It not only opens doors for Native Americans to pursue higher education, but it will also add to the cultural and academic diversity of the university,” Nez said in a statement to the Mirror. “We have many bright and intelligent Navajo people who are eager to earn a degree but often lack the financial resources to do so.”

Nez said that Ribbons recently visited Window Rock, the Navajo Nation capital, and they had the chance to have a conversation about different ways they could support Navajo students.

“I’m proud of the University of Arizona for taking this big step forward and I hope to see other universities follow suit,” he added.

For a full breakdown of the application process, visit the .

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on and .