The move comes after an internal system task force raised concerns earlier this year that the mandate, as written, did little to account for the need for booster shots meant to combat the Omicron variant. 

The Board of Regents is set to vote on the appointment of former State Superintendent Dale Erquiaga as acting chancellor next week, according to an agenda posted online Wednesday. 

With just nine weeks left before the end of the fiscal year, Officer in Charge Crystal Abba told regents that there was “absolutely no way” to balance the budget before the end of the fiscal year in June. 

Implementation of the corequisite model this fall follows in the wake of an internal NSHE report that found traditional methods did not work for many of the thousands of incoming college students in remediation every year. 

The money spent by Nevada colleges and universities on contract buyouts and settlements ballooned to more than $1.1 million last year, up from roughly $713,000 in 2019 or an increase of more than 54 percent, according to a report presented Thursday during the Board of Regents quarterly meeting.

NSHE deputy chancellor Crystal Abba told lawmakers via video conference that the system expected the bill to benefit about 12 percent of scholarship recipients from the spring 2020 semester whose grade point average fell below normal GPA requirements. While NSHE has not done a complete look at individual cases, Abba said the higher education system did not want to punish students who faced massive social and financial disruption during the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In a state with university graduation rates 11 percentage points behind the national average — and community college graduation rates 9 percentage points behind — Nevada administrators have been coming to terms with the fact that some of the ways they’re doing things now don’t support their goals of persisting from one semester to the next and graduating.