Introducing PASCU - Part 8

The Pennsylvania Association of State Colleges and Universities (PASCU)

 
In previous blog posts, I have criticized PASSHE’s 100% political leadership for what I think of as its “cavalier failure to plan.” In particular, my blog post of December 9, 2013 included these words:
 

               In October 2010 the Board of Governors approved an 8-paragraph document¹ entitled 

               “PASSHE Strategic Initiatives.” From Paragraph 1: “PASSHE’s most recent strategic plan,

               Leading the Way, expired in 2009.”

“Note,” Armenti said, “that four years have passed since PASSHE’s previous strategic plan expired and yet, PASSHE continues to operate a $1.5 billion enterprise without the benefit of a strategic plan to reaffirm its fundamental purpose and to lay out the major goals, objectives, activities and success measures needed to guide eleven-thousand employees in serving well PASSHE’s 112,000 students.”

Armenti notes that “This three-year old document makes no mention of Act 188² or PASSHE’s purpose by law: ‘Its purpose shall be to provide high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.’ According to Merriam-Webster the word ‘shall,’ when used in laws, means a directive ‘to express what is mandatory.’ Regrettably, the Board of Governors did not include this legal mandate from Act 188 into its PASSHE Strategic Initiatives document.”

In January of 2014 PASSHE unveiled its new strategic planᶟ entitled “Strategic Plan 2020: Rising to the Challenge.” And, incredibly, the PASSHE Board of Governors once again failed to include any mention of Act 188’s legal mandate: “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.”

 

“If a man doesn’t know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” Seneca

 
If you are a student, parent or graduate of one of the PASSHE universities, you may find what’s written below to be critically important to you.  Please share this with your friends at all 14 PASSHE universities.  
 
Angelo Armenti, Jr., the former Villanova University Dean and 20-year president of California University (Cal U), recently announced the release of his new book, Privatization Without a Plan: A Failure of Leadership in Pennsylvania Public Higher Education.⁴  In it he describes powerful demographic and economic forces sweeping the country as primary reasons for the ongoing three-decade privatization—i.e., rapid defunding by the State—of “public” higher education in Pennsylvania; but, he argues, “The greatest problem is not privatization itself, but the lack of a viable plan for dealing with it.”

Privatization and the Role of PASCU

“Privatization Without a Plan” Author Angelo Armenti, Jr. Claims PASSHE’s New Strategic Plan Makes no Mention of PASSHE’s Act 188 Statutory Purpose
 
“While PASSHE’s new strategic plan includes a goal that references ‘academic program excellence and relevance,’” Armenti said, “it totally ignores the Act 188 directive of high quality education ‘at the lowest possible cost to the students.’” PASSHE’s failure to plan is documented at great length in Armenti’s book.  
 
The book describes what a lack of planning has been doing to students and the 14 PASSHE universities in Pennsylvania, which include Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
 
According to the book, PASSHE’s failure to deliver on Act 188’s promise to the students, parents and alumni donors—who now pay 75% of the operating budgets at the 14 schools—was inevitable for the following reason:  PASSHE has not committed itself publicly to a viable plan for preserving that purpose.  Rather, according to Armenti, PASSHE leaders continue to avoid mentioning that purpose, whether it is on the PASSHE website, in public pronouncements by leaders, or now in PASSHE’s latest strategic plan.ᶟ
 
“After failing to commit publicly to PASSHE’s statutory purpose, is anyone surprised at PASSHE’s ongoing failure to deliver it,” Armenti asked?  
 
According to Armenti, compelling evidence for PASSHE’s failure to plan may be seen in the following facts which are documented on the PASSHE Board of Governors’ website and in the book: 1) PASSHE operated without a strategic plan between 2009 (when its previous plan expired) and January 2014, when its new strategic plan was announced;  2) PASSHE has not promulgated a Factbook⁵ on which planning efforts might be based since 2011; and 3) PASSHE leaders have not acted to preserve or deliver PASSHE’s statutory purpose as enrollments grew by 58% and State funding/FTE student fell by 50%.⁶
 
Avoiding any public mention of that half of PASSHE’s statutory purpose—“at the lowest possible cost to the students”—clearly suggests that the current 100% political leadership of the PASSHE Board of Governors has no intention of even trying to achieve it, an abdication of responsibility with staggering negative implications for 112,000 current and future PASSHE students.”  
 
Privatization Without a Plan documents a 58% increase in student enrollment (from 71,091 to 112,180 students) combined with a 50% decrease in State appropriation per student (from $7,386 to $3,679 in constant dollars).  According to Armenti, these conflicting 30-year trends illustrate the dilemma faced by the PASSHE universities (more and more students to educate and fewer and fewer State dollars with which to educate them), and the PASSHE students (higher and higher levels of student loan debt as State funding keeps eroding, and the directive “at the lowest possible cost to the students” is ignored).
 
“As more and more students seek the promise of public higher education in Pennsylvania—high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students—the State is seen shifting more and more of the cost of education to the students and parents themselves, negating the very concept of ‘public’ in the term ‘public higher education,’” Armenti said.
 
¹ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6726962/passhe-strategic-initiatives-october-13-2010-35k.
² https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6772880/act188-pdf-405k.
ᶟhttp://www.passhe.edu/inside/bog/Documents/Strategic%20Plan%202020%20Rising%20to%20the%20Challenge_dh.pdf.
⁴ Privatization Without a Plan: A Failure of Leadership in Pennsylvania Public Higher Education is on sale now, available from Amazon.com in paperback and e-book.  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=angelo%20armenti.
⁵ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6726961/passhe-factbook-for-fy-2010-11-2-5-meg.
⁶ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6726973/privatization-without-a-plan-chart-8-december-3-2013-382k.