The University System of Georgia will ensure affordability for students through the wise stewardship of resources and optimizing efficiency across the system.

Initiatives

• SHARED SERVICES OPTIMIZATION

  The Shared Services Center currently provides financial aid verification services for 11 institutions with three more being added in October 2023 along with expanded financial aid services for two institutions. Shared Services is studying the feasibility of services in accounts payable, contract review, student lawful presence processing, vendor management, faculty credentialing, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) use. Efforts are underway to expand the support offered to other functional areas to create efficiencies and standardize best practices.

• UNIFIED ERP

  The system office will transition USG human resources, financials, and student information (SIS) systems to a unified Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud-hosted solution. This transition will transform business processes through adoption of best practices and improve reporting, transparency, accountability, and audit history. USG system office and institutional resources will work collaboratively to implement a solution with assistance from project planning and implementation consulting resources.

• INCLUSIVE ACCESS TEXTBOOKS

  The system office has adopted a policy enabling inclusive access textbooks and the Affordable Learning Georgia division is working with publishers to obtain preferred pricing for system institutions. The system will leverage systemwide pricing with textbook vendors to reduce costs to students. This type of volume enables vendors to reduce the cost of textbooks and will result in a larger number of e-textbooks being available to students at a low-cost level (under $40). The USG is looking to ensure students have access to all their textbooks at the lowest cost on day one of classes by including e-textbook costs on their student bill by course.

• DATA DASHBOARDS

  USG Leadership is evaluating how the system office can best support the maintenance of existing dashboards and the creation of new ones to cover all operational areas. The goal is to create a comprehensive set of system office dashboards that track USG progress toward strategic key performance indicators and monitor operations across the system office and all 26 institutions. Dashboards are to be used by system office personnel to identify problem areas for intervention and successes to be emulated.

• PRIVATE FUNDRAISING

  Institutions will focus on raising private dollars to assist in reducing the cost of attendance for more students. A focus of scholarships will be to support students who have completed a significant portion of their degree program and need additional funds for completion. USG Foundation personnel will work with campus advancement leaders on best practices and innovative approaches. The goal will be to increase the amount of private funds raised by institutions in general and for scholarships to reduce net cost of attendance for students and limit the amount of loans needed to finance education.

• GEORGIA DEGREES PAY DEVELOPMENT

  The Georgia Degrees Pay website is a centralized location for prospective students and their families to learn about the value of earning a USG credential and inform selection of their institution and academic program. The site provides tools that allow students to compare institutions on cost of attendance, student success, and earnings and debt outcomes of USG graduates by academic program. Future work on Georgia Degrees Pay includes creation of a system-wide academic program search tool to make research on USG degree and certificate programs more efficient and user friendly and collaboration with USG institutions and other Georgia agencies to integrate use of the site into college and career planning resources and counseling.