How Public Universities Are Governed

How Public Universities are Governed

As we saw from earlier blog posts, Pennsylvania has two (2) major types of four-year public universities: the so-called “state-owned” universities, and the so-called “state-related” universities.  Before getting to the main subject of today’s blog post—the governance of the “state-owned” universities—we note that the governance of the “state-related universities was previously discussed in Blog Posts #2 and #3.   

The “state-owned” universities in Pennsylvania are governed by the PASSHE Board of Governors (BOG), consisting of twenty (20) individuals, all of whom are appointed by elected officials, or are themselves elected officials meaning that, currently, the governance of these ‘public’ universities is totally political.

Now political governance, in principle, does not preclude an honorable fiduciary relationship from emerging and persisting between the “State” on the one hand, and the “Student” on the other.

Of course, the relationship between the “State” and the “Student” in this case is an indirect one that needs to be brokered by the intermediate presence of the Board of Governors, a creation of the State, which is empowered to adopt a fiduciary relationship, if only it had the courage and the will to do so. 

But, unfortunately, nowhere in the current PASSHE governance structure is there any mention whatsoever of fiduciary duties:  No mention of a duty of care; no mention of a duty of loyalty; and certainly no mention of a duty of obedience to the mission, which itself is an enormous violation of the public trust, especially since, under its total (100%) political control, PASSHE is increasingly failing to deliver on its Act 188 purpose: “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.” 

For private universities, mission statements are voluntary and public proclamations of institutional responsibilities—as well as public acceptance of those responsibilities—to all their stakeholders.

But for public universities, specifically the state-owned universities, PASSHE’s statutory purpose, although enshrined in law, hasn’t been publicly proclaimed by PASSHE leadership for the past 20 years.  And the reason for that is obvious:  Why should PASSHE leadership risk talking about PASSHE’s purpose when they already know: a) that they are increasingly failing to deliver on that purpose, and b) that they collectively lack the courage to face the truth, because then they might have to do something about it?

But owing to the very nature of politics facilitated as it often is by various weaknesses of the human species, total political governance, by its very nature, involves unavoidable conflicts of interest in the following sense:  The best interests of the political participants (by which I mean the elected officials and their political appointees), are almost never the same as—and in fact are almost always different from—the best interests of the students and other majority stakeholders of these universities—and vice versa.

If not for the inherent conflicts of interest present in total (100%) political control of PASSHE, the current wording of Act 188 might work perfectly as is, and not need to be changed at all.  But in order for that to happen as that law is now being mis-implemented, the key individuals involved—starting with the Governor—would need to stop perverting the clear intent of the law for their own selfish purposes.

For example, in simple terms Act 188 says—when it comes to funding—that:  a) the Governor and the Legislature get to decide how much State support the Commonwealth can afford to provide to PASSHE in any given year; and b) The Board of Governors then gets to decide how high the tuition rates have to be set in order  “To do and perform generally all of those things necessary and required to accomplish the role and objectives of the System,” as the BOG is required to do by Section 20-2006-A(a)(15) of Act 188.

But although the Board of Governors has the legal authority, from Section 20-2006-A(a)(11) of Act 188, “To fix the levels of tuition fees,” and, despite the fact that the law does not require or even mention any role for the Governor in the tuition-setting process, the Board of Governors has historically waited for the Governor to signal the maximum allowable tuition rate increase each year for the past 20 years!

And this is just one of the numerous conflicts of interest inherent in total (100%) political control of PASSHE that leads directly to the failure by the Board of Governors to deliver on PASSHE’s statutory purpose which is to provide “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.”