It’s good to have goals.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln issued a report card on itself this week based on its progress toward several self-imposed goals. What a great way to show the public a university is working to improve its performance.

At the top of Nebraska’s list were two enrollment goals that the university had hoped to meet by fall 2005: a minority enrollment of 7.5 percent and an average ACT score for incoming freshmen of 24.7. The school’s minority enrollment hit 7.6 percent in fall 2003 and freshmen ACT scores reached 24.8 earlier this year.

Among other reported outcomes was an increase of more than 5 percent in the number of students completing degrees within six years. (Six years? Can’t anyone get a degree in four years anymore? It would seem like a good goal for any university to try to make that possible, especially considering the rising cost of tuition.) The university also increased the number of nationally competitive awards won by undergraduates by 11 percent.

Nebraska’s “Indicators of Institutional Quality Annual Report” is a way for the university to show the people of the state what kind of job it is doing. Publicly setting such goals lets state residents and legislators give university officials feedback on whether their goals reflect the needs and priorities of the state. Publicly releasing statistics on their progress toward those goals makes officials accountable to the people whose tax dollars are helping support the university.

It’s a strategy that Kansas University might consider to brush up its image. KU has done plenty of studies about how the university is viewed by Kansans. How about turning some of those studies into public goals against which Kansas residents can measure the university’s progress toward better serving the state? Wouldn’t that kind of data be useful to convincing residents and legislators of the university’s value to the state?

Shortly after he arrived on campus in 1995, Chancellor Robert Hemenway listed a number of goals for the university. One of the most prominent was to increase the number of National Merit Scholars in the freshman class to 100 by 2000. That goal was met in the fall of 1999. The goal was set, then met, and it brought good recognition and feedback to the university. Some of that feedback may have been a factor in the university’s decision to slightly revise its goal to try to reach more Kansas students who excelled in academics, but weren’t necessarily Merit scholars.

Nebraska’s “report card” may seem a bit hokey, but it puts goals and progress in a context that the public can understand and assess. Kansas universities might consider giving it a try.