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Committee backs bill directing regional alignment for Utah higher education, unanimously
Summary
Lawmakers advanced HB 352 after the sponsor and Commissioner Jeff Lambert described a regional, system-focused approach to reduce program duplication and improve student mobility; faculty and union witnesses asked for funded transition steps and faculty-led implementation oversight.
The House committee on Feb. 3 voted unanimously to favorably recommend HB 352, a bill directing the Utah System of Higher Education to pursue regional horizontal and vertical alignment after an Office of the Legislative Auditor General (OLAG) audit flagged program duplication and weak program-level oversight.
Sponsor Representative Peterson said the legislation is a first step requiring the system to build an organizational architecture for regional alignment and report back to the Legislature on progress. "This bill is just kind of the first step of, requiring that they do that and then come back to us," the sponsor said.
Jeff Lambert, Commissioner of Higher Education, told the committee the state is well-suited to build regional partnerships and emphasized the need for faculty, staff and students to be engaged in the process. "We cannot do this without faculty and without staff and without students on board," Lambert said. He described horizontal integration (cooperation among like-mission institutions) and vertical integration (pathways across technical colleges, community colleges and universities) as the bill’s focus.
Public commenters — including faculty, union representatives and higher-education staff — supported alignment goals but urged safeguards: add transition funding, require faculty-led discipline councils to preserve accreditation and protect local programming, and measure success by student outcomes such as credit loss in transfers and time-to-degree. Sydney O’Shea, president of an American Federation of Teachers local chapter at Utah State University, asked the committee to add explicit transition funding in the bill to avoid unpaid implementation costs.
The sponsor and commissioner responded that a fiscal note exists and that the bill is intended to start the process and require the system to return with concrete plans for the Legislature to review.
What comes next: HB 352 will move to the House floor. The committee expects the Utah System of Higher Education to coordinate stakeholder engagement, safeguard accreditation and report progress as required in the bill.
Sources: Committee testimony by Representative Peterson and Commissioner Jeff Lambert; public comments by faculty and AFT Utah representatives.
