University of North Texas President Harrison Keller joked that he's starting his sophomore year at the helm of the Denton university.
In his first academic year, though, Keller overhauled UNT’s budgeting process and strategy and surveyed students' needs and struggles. He's also steered the school through a period of political turmoil — on both the national and state levels — that has targeted higher education, as well as confirmed legislative interest in funding university programs that will ultimately fuel economic innovation and growth.
Keller sat down with the Denton Record-Chronicle and KERA News to discuss his first year at UNT, and how it will inform the university's future.
Student retention tops the priority list
Much of Keller's career has been spent in higher education budget and policy, which means he's no stranger to the climbing cost of a college degree. At his investiture ceremony in November 2024, Keller said he wants to prevent students from falling through the cracks. He made it plain: College is far too expensive and is a driver of debt for most students, and when they take on debt without finishing a degree, it's a reflection on UNT.
"We have a fundamental responsibility to our students and, I think, to every student we enroll, to hold them to high standards, to have high expectations for them, but also to provide them with high levels of support so that they can unlock their full potential so they can not just stay enrolled, but that they can be on a trajectory to be able to land a good job, to have momentum into their early careers," Keller said. "So that's a little broader conception of student success than a lot of colleges and universities have right now."
Keller said the university has to support students where they need it, and at UNT, about 40% of the student body comes from low-income backgrounds and is eligible for Pell Grants. But what does it look like to support students? Keller said the university has to start using the data it has before students move into into their freshman dorms.
One way, Keller said, is the university is deploying new AI-powered, state-of the-art analytics to get a clearer picture of what kind of support students need.
"And that we're not just generically providing support to students, so we're going to continue to lean into that," he said.
Most students who leave UNT without a Mean Green degree have at least one thing in common.
"Almost always those students are not connected to other students and to activities, so we tell all the students you need to find at least one activity that you're going get deeply engaged with," Keller said.
"That could be the marching band. That could be Greek life. That can be a club. But you need at least one activity that you can plug into. So we're now actually starting to track to make sure every student is connected to something."
Keller also said the university can keep students enrolled by yoking academic advising to career advising.
"When I went to college, academic advising was more about just ... how do you get through your academic program? And then you could go over to the career center and you could get career advising," Keller said. "Well, we've got to break down that barrier. So we're integrating the kind of advice that we provide to students about how they navigate their academic programs so it also aligns with their long-term career goals."
Keller said it also means studying the job market in real time, and loading degree programs with value so that students will see salary gains.
"One of the striking things that came out of that is, for an average UNT program, your total investment, all-in, you're going to break even between four and five years after graduation," he said. "Well that's pretty impressive for an undergraduate degree, that you'd break even in between four to five years. With some programs it's between two and three years on that total investment."
Keller said there are also degree programs that don't hit a break-even mark for a decade, and that the university will have to evaluate the programs and find ways to hasten the payoff.
Changing the approach to budgeting
One of the most high-profile changes Keller has made has been shifting UNT's budget philosophy and progress from an incremental one — which would typically increase departmental budgets over time — to a strategic budget. Today, the UNT budget is a 60-month project that looks at outcomes, value and market trends.
"If you want to understand what an organization really values, you take a look at their budget," Keller said. "And do you see the strategies that organizations say they are committed to? Do you see those goals reflected in the budget? Well, if you're just adjusting around the margins each year, it's hard to be able to get the big things done over time. It's also hard to adjust when you see financial shocks come in, when there's sort of a business cycle that will go up and down."
Keller said Texas universities have taken notice of community college funding, and how it's tied to outcomes. On the community college level, the more students who complete courses and earn certifications, the more funding the college system can get through state funding.
When Keller was working on the policy side of higher education at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, he said the financial system for community colleges was modernized, and as a result, it's easier for students to transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges.
UNT is borrowing some of those ideas.
"We developed and have already put into implementation a performance-based component of that budget for our academic units," Keller said. "So for the academic units to drive a significant portion of their budget based on the courses that they're teaching, based on students that they are serving, and also graduation. They get more funding if students graduate in four years than if they graduate in six years. ... We'll continue to iterate on that model over this; I think it'll take us a couple more cycles before we feel like we've really got that dialed in."
Since Keller's start, UNT has also seen national politics affect some of its budget. Across the country and on UNT's campus, international students saw the federal government revoke their student visas, especially students from countries that political leaders see as hostile to the United States.
The university has seen a decline in enrollment from international students, who have to be able to pay their tuition to be eligible for a student visa. The drop in master's program enrollment has reportedly cost the university tens of millions. Undergraduate enrollment has been mostly flat with a slight increase.
"All of this is to say, that doesn't mean we're going to move away from having international students at UNT," Keller said. "International students are terrific students. They add a lot to our student experience, and to our Texas residents [who] get to interact with excellent students from around the world. And that has an impact on our students. For those international students, we're going to have to be even more attuned to what kinds of programs are in demand, and how we should serve those students."
Threats to Hispanic-Serving Institutions
Like his colleagues, Keller was guarded in his answer about the U.S. Department of Justice's decision to no longer defend the constitutionality of a portion of the Higher Education Act of 1965, a portion that laid the foundation to allocate federal grants to colleges with a Hispanic enrollment of 25% or more.
UNT is among them, and is also a co-founder of the Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Research Institutions, a move that committed considerable resources and expertise to attract more Hispanic graduate students and faculty to its research programs. Ranking members of the Senate and House Hispanic-Serving Institutions caucuses condemned the Justice Department, saying it will effectively end the $350 million annual grant program.
The Justice Department also sued Texas in June to block the Texas Dream Act, a law passed in 2001 that allowed students who grew up and graduated from high school in the state without citizenship documents to attend public colleges at in-state tuition rates. The Texas attorney general's office agreed with the DOJ.
Keller said the decision affected "less than 300 students" at UNT and that the university worked with them.
"We have a rapidly growing Hispanic population, and also a rapidly growing Indian population, and a rapidly growing population that's drawn to Texas from across the country and around the world," Keller said. "For me, the simplest thing is just to maintain that we have a fundamental responsibility to every student.
"We've got to be committed to the success of every student we enroll, and we've got to do that in a much more personalized and individualized way, again, to make sure we get the right support to the right student at the right time."