The Ups and Downs of Higher Education in NevadaGrowth and Stability

 

Nevada’s higher education system had a rollercoaster year. From the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)’s president Keith Whitfield’s departure and millions in budget shortfalls at University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) to climbing enrollment and course expansion, the state of higher education is tumultuous.

Leaders across Nevada, from the state’s public institutions to government leaders, have felt the ups and downs, too. The year of lessons has only solidified resolutions to grow, stabilize and better support students.

Making Education Nevada’s Priority

“Nevada has a strong focus on tourism and mining, those are our biggest industries, and I understand, if, when these sectors come to mind, the first thing you think of might not be college education – people can build lifelong careers in those areas without going to school,” said Amy Carvalho, chair of the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE).

Removing education from the equation – or even just knocking it off the list of the state’s priorities, is the wrong move, she said.

“I’ve heard the opinion that pursuing higher education isn’t as relevant for Nevadans, and I have to disagree – it’s clear our students find it important,” she said.

In fact, students are looking into Nevada’s higher education more than ever before. “We emphasized FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) completion this year,” Carvalho said. “We’re up 34 percent across the state.”

The FAFSA form is a final step in a long list of educational milestones. Before a student is ever visiting the website, they first must have access to education.

That’s why one of NSHE’s biggest priorities is partnerships with industry and K-12 partners; the goal is to make both young and career-established adults not only excited about school, but see it as a real possibility.

For K-12, Carvalho said UNR is leading the pack. “UNR has taken some really bold initiatives,” Carvalho said. “We want more institutions to be elite in the way they serve our high school students.”

The university’s dual credit program allows qualified high school teachers to teach the UNR curriculum to select high school students.

“We started with about 300 students three years ago,” said Brian Sandoval, president of UNR. “Now, we’ve hit 7,000 students.”

On the flip side, NSHE’s adoption of the Credit for Prior Learning Program targets non-traditional students.

“I am a product of the NSHE,” Carvalho said. She graduated with an associate degree from the College of Southern Nevada and went on to earn her bachelor’s from UNLV. Carvalho said she’s proud to serve all of Nevada, but particularly those students who don’t fit the typical higher education stereotype.

“I myself was a non-traditional student,” she said. “I was a parent, and it took me 10 years to graduate with my bachelor’s.”

While K-12 can participate through advanced placement and international baccalaureate courses, the program is more widely accessible: work experience, military service, and other “real-world settings” can earn college credit. This year, Nevada was one of two states to receive a national grant dedicated to expanding program access.

“We have so many residents here who have that life experience, and realized that now, they want something different – to get promoted at their current jobs, or move into different sectors,” she said. “For this, education is so important.”

Dr. Chris Heavey, interim president of UNLV also emphasized the benefit of graduating from a college or university. “Students come to UNLV because they want to learn the skills that will help them get a better job and thereby build a better future for themselves and their families – [and] by and large it works,” he said. “The evidence is overwhelming that a college degree does help people advance in their careers.”

Carvalho points to the instability that comes with tourism and mining – instability (potentially) alleviated by college degrees.

“As we saw with the Great Recession in 2008, and more recently with the COVID pandemic, these sectors, particularly tourism, are vulnerable,” she said. “We want to be sure that we’re here for when our residents need to go back to or start school, to train for new skills.”

STEM’s Growing Popularity

Many of those new skills are in the healthcare sector. “We need more nurses and doctors, as well as counselors and social workers,” Carvalho said. “We’ve put a lot more focus on healthcare, and we’ve seen growth in Nevada.”

Nevada’s public universities are also investing more in healthcare. “We’re seeking funding [this legislative cycle] for more residences for our medical students, as well as continued funding to expand our nursing programs,” Sandoval said.

UNLV’s leadership is on the same page. “We’re supporting some of the policies proposed by Governor Lombardo and legislative leadership,” said Heavey. “Specifically, we’re hoping to see support for Graduate Medical Education for in-state residencies to boost retention of the doctors we’re educating, as well as investment in mental health.”

Institutions like UNLV are partnering with community and local colleges to make healthcare degrees – and jobs – easier to secure.

“The different institutions have different roles to play, each being critical to meeting all the needs of our state,” Heavey said. “We work hard to create well-aligned 2+2 programs with our community college partners for those who ultimately want to earn a four-year degree or even a graduate degree. We need to educate and train more nurses and doctors, but we also need many different types of healthcare workers who earn two-year applied degrees.”

It’s not just healthcare workers Nevada schools are looking to train, but academics. Research in all fields – but particularly STEM – has also been a major priority at Nevada higher education institutions. Both UNR and UNLV kept their Research 1 (R1) distinction this year as schools with high research and publication activity.

“Our research expenditures are the highest they’ve ever been in the history of the state,” Sandoval said. “It’s a credit to the work and effort invested by our faculty.”
UNLV remains the largest research institution in the state, a distinction that Heavey said motivates the school to keep growing.

Recruiting Efforts

“Las Vegas has grown tremendously and, as a result, we have long been trying to catch up to the educational needs of our community and our state,” Heavey said. “UNLV must play a central role in meeting those needs. To do that, we need to continue to grow at least as fast as Las Vegas grows and ideally even faster to help fill our current deficit of professionals in many areas.”

In the last year, Sandoval said UNR, too, has placed special emphasis on recruiting efforts, particularly marketing.

“We started investing much more into social media,” he said. “Historically, that’s something we haven’t done – we’ve just been okay – but now, we’re more sophisticated about how we go about finding students and bringing them to campus.”

It’s been very successful. “We had a lot more applications this cycle,” he said. “And more students who have been accepted. I’m really happy with how it’s gone.”

UNR has also opened housing near the campus, owned by the university. Faculty and graduate students can rent space in the complex for under market price. The project is known as University Village.

By the end of 2025, Sandoval said the enrollment goal was 23,000. They hope to see 25,000 by 2030.

“If you include our dual credit students, we’ve exceeded that first goal,” he said. “Either way, we’re well on our way to the second.”

For UNLV, the 2024-2025 school year was the best yet. “We are seeing our highest-ever enrollment,” Heavey said. “We graduated more than 3,500 students in May, and we are seeing signs of continuing strong demand for our incoming class this coming fall.”

Staying Virtual

Increased enrollment is partially due to the boost in remote learning opportunities.

“[During the COVID pandemic], we learned we could do more online, a lesson that has continued to drive the rapid growth of our online courses and degree programs,” Heavey said.
This spring, UNLV launched a fully remote online Master of Business Administration program.

UNR has also expanded its already broad remote learning opportunities with a record number of new undergraduate majors beginning in the fall, including general business, sociology, communication, and nursing.

“Not all prospective students live near or on our campus,” Sandoval said. “We want to be able to reach people in rural Nevada, as well as internationally.”

This is all through Nevada Online, a program launched in late 2023. A new vice provost of online learning was also appointed around the same time.

“We saw other universities with very robust online offerings, like Arizona State and BYU, and we knew it was a space we needed to be,” Sandoval said.

Virtual learning is an expectation all the way up to the NSHE level. “Our higher education system and institutions focus heavily on better ways to teach online, including online and remote presence of classrooms generally,” Carvalho said. “Nearly every class has some aspect of virtual learning embedded, whether that’s a canvas piece or tech-enabled facilities on campus.”

While the cost of virtual learning was big upfront – both mentally and out-of-pocket – Carvalho said that now, schools can’t afford not to implement it.

“Costs have gone down tremendously as the nation realizes how big of a benefit virtual learning can prove,” she said.

The Search for Funding

Despite the ease of virtual learning, with Nevada’s need for higher education and ever-growing student populations, colleges and universities are seeing new stress on their bottom lines.
NSHE, UNR, and UNLV are all hoping for the same thing out of the legislative session: funding.

“I call these ‘problatunities,’” Sandoval said. “Investing money into student recruitment is increasing our enrollment, but then we need to grow our campus as well.”

UNLV credits higher enrollment for helping to fund some of its projects. “[It’s] allowed us to maintain a pretty solid financial position even with declines in other revenue sources,” Heavey said. But higher enrollment hasn’t been enough.

Money is needed for a variety of issues: at UNR, Sandoval hopes to fund a new life sciences building and make campus ADA compliant; at UNLV, its support for the medical school and students.
UNR, UNLV, and NSHE are all looking for a greater investment in public safety, still reeling from the shooting on UNLV’s campus in 2023.

“We’ve already invested several million in cameras on campus, doors that lock from the inside of the classroom,” Sandoval said. “But there’s always more we can do.”

Cost of living adjustments are also a major concern. Two years ago, state employees received an over 10 percent adjustment, which was then matched or exceeded by the system and institutions.

“We’re asking to be made whole with those increases in line with other state agencies,” Carvalho said. “We’re not asking for anything additional at this time.”

At UNR, Sandoval has higher expectations. As the former governor of Nevada, he reflected on investment in education during his public service.

“When I was governor, we always funded any cost-of-living adjustments at 80 percent,” he said. “This last time around, the [government] funded at 60 percent. We’re hoping, going forward, they could [increase] back to 80 percent.”

With that 20 percent reimbursement, Sandoval says UNR – and all the institutions – could do a lot more.

“That would be about $11 million a year,” he said. “It’s a big issue for us.”

Looking Ahead

Additional funding could go to a whole host of efforts, but scholarships and financial aid is high on the list.

“While we’re one of the lowest-priced systems in the United States, I know that for many people, financing higher education can be a real struggle,” Carvalho said. “State, federal, and private programs help provide support for students, and that’s important for us going into this new year.”

Finding footing is also a big goal – if not the main focus – for NSHE.

“We have new presidents of universities, a new chancellor, it’s a lot,” Carvalho said. “For sure, stability is something we’re working hard on, making sure our institutions have what they need to serve students.”