No Representation

State-Owned Universities

If unequal representation by majority stakeholders at the state-related universities is less than ideal, the total lack of representation by the majority stakeholders at the state-owned universities is much worse.

The governing board of the state-owned universities is called the PASSHE Board of Governors (BOG), and consists of twenty (20) individuals, all of whom are either appointed by elected officials, or are themselves elected officials.

Fourteen (14) individuals, three of whom must be PASSHE students, and five of whom must be trustees of PASSHE universities, are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate.  Four legislators are selected by the majority and minority leaders of the PA State Senate and House of Representatives.  The sitting Governor and Secretary of Education are also members of the BOG.

This governance arrangement was created by Act 188 of 1982, at a time when the State was providing 63% of the operating revenues for the state-owned universities, and was clearly a majority stakeholder in terms of both funding and governance.  Today, the State share of the PASSHE budget is less than 30%, but the original governance arrangement has not yet been changed to reflect the drop in State funding.

Elected officials, despite now providing less than 30% of the operating budgets of the fourteen (14) “state-owned” universities, nevertheless continue to fill 100% of the governing board seats.

At the same time, students, parents and private donors, primarily alumni, who provide more than 70% of the operating revenues at the “state-owned” universities, get to appoint none of the members who serve on the governing board.   

In 1914, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania first acquired formerly private/independent institutions of higher education that would subsequently be said to be “state-owned.”  Initially, these institutions were referred to as “Normal Schools,” the name given at that time to two-year colleges that prepared public school teachers.  Later, with the curriculum expanded to four years, they became known as “State Teachers’ Colleges,” and still later, after the addition of liberal arts and graduate level curricula, they became known as “State Colleges.”

And since July 1, 1983, these fourteen (14) institutions have been known as the “PASSHE,” or “state-owned universities.”

In terms of funding, the State was the majority stakeholder in the “state-owned” institutions from 1914 until the fall of 1992, when the State’s funding share first fell below 50%.  The State has remained a minority stakeholder ever since, with a steadily falling funding share that is now less than 30%.

Nine years earlier in 1983 when Act 188 first took effect, and student tuition and fees accounted for more than one-third (37%) of the operating budgets of the PASSHE schools, the State nevertheless took 100% control of the governance process for itself, while offering no representation to the minority (37%) stakeholders, and then naming all twenty (20) members of the PASSHE governing board ever since.   

And today the State—in the person of the elected officials who either serve on the BOG or who appoint the individuals who serve on the BOG—continues to dominate the governance of the state-owned universities by naming 100% of the BOG seats, even though the State now provides less than 30% of the operating revenues, with the majority stakeholders now providing more than 70%.

But unlike the state-related universities for which the state has always been a minority stakeholder—both in terms of funding and governance, meaning that the majority stakeholders at those universities have always been able to control their institutional destinies, even as state funding continued to erode —the situation at the state-owned universities is both different and much worse. 

The current majority stakeholders at the state-owned universities not only have never had control of their institutional destinies, they have never even had the ability to appoint one single seat (5%) of the membership on the BOG, either back in 1983 when they were providing 37% of the operating revenues, nor today when they are providing more than 70% of the operating revenues!

The State, with its less than 30% funding share, continues to control 100% of the BOG appointments.

This is an example of ‘Privatization without Representation’ and should not be permitted to continue.