Two Unpleasant Choices Define the Dilemma
As we saw last time, the “undesirable or unpleasant” choices in the dilemma facing PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders are these: 1) to permit the status quo of ‘privatization without representation’ to continue; or 2) to fight the status quo with the goal of achieving freedom from political domination.
The first choice—to accept the status quo of ‘privatization without representation’—is certain to be both undesirable and unpleasant for all time to come. The second choice, to fight the status quo, will be unpleasant in the short term but most desirable in the long term—provided that fight leads to victory.
The Boiling Frog Allegory
It has been said that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it
will jump out immediately; but if you put it in a pot of water and turn up the
heat gradually until the water boils, it will stay and “get cooked.” The idea is that it is the sudden pain in the
first instance that leads to immediate action, and that if the pain increases
gradually enough, the victim will remain in place and accept the future
consequences.
This allegory may have relevance to the fact that the State of Pennsylvania has gradually reduced funding to the fourteen PASSHE institutions by one percent per year for sixty-five years and that the students, parents and alumni donors have never revolted as their share of the funding increased from 10% to 75%.
A conjecture would be that if the State had cut its funding more abruptly, the sudden pain to PASSHE’s majority financial stakeholders might well have led them to revolt to gain independence a long time ago.
The good news, for both frogs and for PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders, is that modern research has shown that frogs jump out of gradually heated water long before it boils. This suggests that the time is near for the Majority Financial Stakeholders to engage in a revolt to gain their deserved independence. More on this subject later.
“Thoughts on the Future of Higher
Education”
This blog first went public, under the above title, almost three years ago on December 3, 2012. And since that day, I have posted an essay each week without fail for the past 148 weeks.
It has not always been easy to maintain the discipline of writing and posting a 900-word essay each week. And were it not for the fidelity of my readers and the encouragement implicit in that fidelity, I might have taken a week off every now and then, or perhaps even lost interest entirely in continuing with the blog.
Speaking of my readers, thanks to Google “Blogger” which has hosted my blog since the beginning, I saw that as of the day this post is being written, October 3, 2015, there have been 20,245 page views of my blog. That is a large number of page views representing a fairly large number of different individuals but Google keeps the identities of those readers secret, except for those who post a question or comment in response to a particular blog post.
As to taking a week off or losing interest entirely, I resisted that temptation the few times it arose because I was strongly motivated by my own fidelity to those for whom my blog was always intended—the students, parents and private donors, primarily alumni—at the fourteen taxpayer-supported PASSHE universities including Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester Universities.
I often refer to those students, parents and alumni donors as “PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders” since they currently provide 75% of the annual revenue at the 14 universities, while the State share has fallen from 90% in 1950 to 25% today.
My fidelity to those students, parents and alumni donors grew in the course of my 20-year tenure as president of one of the PASSHE universities, California University of Pennsylvania (Cal U). In addition to getting to know many of the students, parents and alumni donors at Cal U between 1992 and 2002, I also visited the other thirteen PASSHE universities on numerous occasions during that period. And in so doing, I soon developed a fondness for PASSHE students, parents and alumni donors at all fourteen schools.
And while my feelings toward them have not diminished in the slightest, I want my readers to know that I intend to conclude my weekly blog posts under the title of “Thoughts on the Future of Higher Education” on Monday, November 23, 2015 with weekly blog post #156 (Recall 3 years x 52 weeks = 156 posts.)
A Time to Fight
Of the two choices in the dilemma facing PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders, only one choice—to fight to escape the onerous status quo represented by PASSHE’s politically-suffocating embrace—offers any hope for the future of the students at the fourteen PASSHE universities.
Our weekly blog posts over the past three years have provided compelling evidence showing that political interference by governors of both parties since 2002, together with the subservient acquiescence of their politically-appointed Boards of Governors, have combined to violate both the spirit and letter of the law, Act 188 of 1982, which created and legally governs the PASSHE system of fourteen universities.
According to Act 188, the statutory purpose of PASSHE is “To provide high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.” The evidence shows that since 2002, the Board of Governors has failed to deliver either end of that statutory purpose to the students. Educational quality has been eroded, and students aren’t getting their education at anything like the lowest possible cost to them.
Not only is the PASSHE Board of Governors failing to deliver either end of Act 188’s statutory purpose, it is apparently not even trying to do so. As evidence for this assertion, note that none of PASSHE’s current leaders have ever been heard to publicly utter the words “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.” Nor will one find those words in any of PASSHE’s numerous press releases. Most damning is the fact that PASSHE’s new 16-page Strategic Plan¹ also pointedly fails to include those words.
To be continued.
¹ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/7490741/strategic-plan-2020-rising-to-the-challenge-10-14-pdf-2-1-meg.
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