The Relationship Between PASSHE and PASCU - Part 3

As we saw previously, PASSHE’s statutory purpose, i.e., its purpose by law—from Act 188¹ of 1982—is “To provide high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.”

 
Earlier, we defined the “Pennsylvania Promise” to be “The promise freely given—by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the students of Pennsylvania—upon the passage of Act 188 with PASSHE’s very explicit  statutory purpose: ‘High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.’”
 
Sad to say, the Pennsylvania Promise to PASSHE students has become a broken promise since 2002, as the following compelling evidence will confirm:
 

PASSHE’s Failure to Deliver High Quality Education

In higher education circles—including the “Rating Magazines” that provide “Rankings” of America’s colleges and universities—the term “high-quality education” is given meaning primarily through a number of proxy measures where, generally speaking, a proxy measure approximates or represents a phenomenon in the absence of a direct measure of that phenomenon.

E.g., average faculty compensation has been widely used as a predictive proxy measure for academic quality. Similarly, E&G (Educational and General) revenue/FTE student has been used as a predictive proxy measure for the quality of the educational experience—which includes academic quality—but goes on to include other educationally enhancing amenities such as technology, travel, internships, facilities and equipment, all of which—just as with faculty compensation—require financial resources.

The best evidence for the failure of the PASSHE Board of Governors to deliver high quality education to PASSHE students since 2002 is seen in Chart 9 on Page 35 of the book Privatization Without a Plan.²
 
That chart depicts the trend in Total E&G Revenue/FTE student over the past 30 years, where the revenue is expressed in (constant) 2013 dollars, thereby eliminating inflationary effects over time. 
 
Note from Chart 9 that Total E&G revenue is the sum of two parts: State appropriation/FTE student, plus Tuition + Fees + Other (TFO) Revenue/FTE student.   Tuition and Fees are the monies paid directly by students, while “Other” Revenue includes private scholarship dollars often provided by alumni donors.
 
As a proxy measure for the quality of the total educational experience—including both in-class and out-of-class aspects—changes in the Total E&G Revenue/FTE Student also reveal how the quality of that experience has varied over the past 30 years, as the relative shares of State appropriation/FTE student on the one hand, and TFO revenue/FTE student on the other, rose or fell.
 
Note that appropriation/FTE student fell steadily (from $7,386 to 3,679), while TFO revenue/FTE student increased steadily (from $4,347 to $9,864).  For the first 19 years of PASSHE’s history, increases in TFO revenue/FTE student more than overcame the decline in purchasing power caused as appropriation/FTE student fell.

But in the next 11 years, the annual increases in TFO revenue/FTE student were not large enough to overcome the precipitous drop in State appropriation/FTE student.  And as a result, the proxy measure for the quality of PASSHE’s total educational experience has fallen sharply.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The highpoint in Total E&G Revenue/FTE Student—and inferred educational quality—occurred in 2002 and came to $15,115/FTE student, a figure that was 30% higher than the $11,734 figure recorded on day one of the PASSHE system on July 1, 1983.  By 2013, that statistic had fallen to $13,544, a figure that is only 16% higher than the 1983 figure, meaning that the funding and policy trends of those last 11 years have undone half the quality gains of the previous 19 years!

Chart 9 and its caption make it clear that, for the first 19 years of PASSHE’s existence, tuition revenue per FTE student increased sufficiently to more than make up for the decline in State appropriation per FTE student, thereby increasing the total E&G revenue/FTE Student from $11,734 to $15,115.

It is equally clear that in the subsequent 11 years, TFO revenue per FTE student did not increase fast enough to overcome the much steeper decline in State appropriation/FTE student, thereby allowing the 19-year gains in the quality of the educational experience to be eroded by half. 

PASSHE’s Failure to Deliver Education at the Lowest Possible Cost to the Students

While measuring “high quality education” requires a dependence on “proxy measures,” establishing the “lowest possible cost to the students” is directly measurable in terms of comparisons with national data.

Evidence” for PASSHE’s failure to deliver education at the lowest possible cost to the students is best seen in Chart 20 on page 66 of the book Privatization Without a Plan.³

 
As seen in Chart 20, direct comparisons of student costs may be obtained from organizations such as The College Board which collects data from each institution in America and computes averages for “All Institutions.” Chart 20 provides a direct comparison over a six-year period between the average financial aid packages provided by one PASSHE university, California University of Pennsylvania, and those provided by “All Institutions”—where 75% of all college students in America attend public universities.
 
To be continued.

¹ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6772880/act188-pdf-405k.
² https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6794551/privatization-without-a-plan-chart-9-and-caption-january-23-2014-pdf-387k.
³ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6802256/privatization-without-a-plan-chart-20-and-caption-january-29-2014-pdf-390k.