A Documented Assertion
“All 20 members of the PASSHE Board of Governors, and
all 154 members spread across the 14 PASSHE Councils of Trustees, have taken a
public oath of office that requires them to obey the law.”
A Serious Allegation
“The PASSHE Board of Governors has since 2002 openly
and shamelessly failed to live up to that oath.”
Malfeasance
Dictionary.com
defines “malfeasance” as “the performance by a public official of an act that
is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law.”
Merriam-Webster’s definition of ‘malfeasance,’ on the other hand, is much harsher: “malfeasance is illegal or dishonest activity especially by a public official or a corporation.”
Both definitions however agree on the following notion: “Public officials engage in ‘malfeasance’ when they do something illegal, unlawful, or contrary to law.”
Evidence of Malfeasance
The malfeasance of the PASSHE Board of Governors in
this case is easy to document because the flawed actions by the members of the
Board of Governors violate not just the spirit
but the letter of the law.
The details of that violation of the letter of the law (Act 188) involve, among other things, PASSHE leaders publicly acting as if the law requires the Board of Governors to maintain “the lowest possible tuition,” i.e., sticker price, when in fact Act 188 explicitly requires them to maintain “the lowest possible cost to the students,” i.e., “the lowest possible bottom line!”
Anyone who knows anything about how American colleges and universities operate knows: 1) that for most students sticker price and bottom line are two totally different things; and 2) that all colleges and universities typically compete for students on the basis of bottom line = tuition minus grants & scholarships.
Most students and parents facing the prospect of paying for a college education care very little about the published “tuition,” i.e., sticker price, for the best of all possible reasons: Most students and parents don’t pay the sticker price—they pay the bottom line, which is lower than, and often much lower than, the tuition/sticker price.
When Act 188 states (as it does) that the purpose of the 14 PASSHE universities is “to provide high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students, it is stating that the Board of Governors should be focusing on providing that high quality education at the “lowest possible bottom line.”
The Disconnect
As shown in Privatization
Without a Plan¹ as well as in previous blog posts,² there is a huge,
shocking and almost inexplicable disconnect between what Act 188 mandates and what
the members of the PASSHE Board of Governors have been delivering to PASSHE
students and parents since 2002.
·
Act 188 mandates that the PASSHE Board of
Governors deliver high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the
students, i.e., at the lowest possible “bottom line.”
·
But the PASSHE Board of Governors has been, and
is today, delivering dubious quality education at the lowest politically
acceptable tuition, i.e., a “sticker price” that is totally divorced from economic
reality.
This is not a failure of law, but rather a failure of the PASSHE Board of Governors to obey the law.
Divided Loyalty and
the Structure of the PASSHE Board of Governors
Whenever elected or appointed
officials fail to perform sworn duties, it inevitably raises a question of
divided loyalty, otherwise known as conflict of interest, which Merriam-Webster defines as “A conflict
between the private interests and the official responsibilities of a person in
a position of trust.”
Quite aside from the particular
individuals serving at any given time, it is obvious from its very structure
that the PASSHE Board of Governors is predisposed to “divided loyalty,” a.k.a.,
conflict of interest.
Five of the twenty members on
the Board of Governors are elected State officials (the sitting Governor, plus
a State Senator from each political caucus, plus a State Representative from
each political caucus. To be reappointed
to the Board of Governors, the Senators and Representatives must be reelected
by their respective caucuses, meaning that to retain their seats, they must
satisfy not the PASSHE students and parents (who now pay 70% of the cost), but
the members of their respective political caucuses.
The Secretary of Education also
sits on the Board of Governors after being appointed by the Governor and
confirmed by the State Senate. The
remaining 14 members of the Board of Governors are appointed by the Governor
and confirmed by the State Senate.
To be reappointed, those final
14 members of the Board of Governors must be reappointed by the Governor and
confirmed by the State Senate, meaning that to retain their seats, they must
satisfy not the PASSHE students and parents, but the Governor and the
leadership of the State Senate.
Recall that: “It is important to
note that a conflict of interest exists whether or not decisions are affected
by a personal interest; a conflict of interest implies only the potential for
bias, not a likelihood.” ³
PASSHE’s
Current Tuition-Setting Process
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 awaits
the official word from the Governor’s office as to the maximum allowable
tuition rate increase each year!
Question: Why would the Board of
Governors ignore the clear language of the law and allow the Governor to
determine the maximum politically acceptable tuition rate increase for any
given year?
Answer: Divided Loyalty, both on the
part of the Governor, and on the part of the members of the Board of Governors, who desperately want to be
reappointed by the Governor—and hence pay their loyalty to those with
the power to reappoint them, i.e., not the students or parents who pay most
of the cost of education, but the Governor and the leadership of the State Senate. To be continued.
² See my Blog Post dated January 12, 2015.
³ http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/rcr/rcr_conflicts/foundation/#1_1.
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