PASSHE Officials versus PASSHE Students - Part 2

The Early Origins of the Fourteen PASSHE Universities

Although this blog began three years ago under the title “Thoughts on the Future of Higher Education,” my weekly posts have focused almost entirely on the future of Pennsylvania’s fourteen PASSHE  universities, which include Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester universities.
 
These institutions began in the 19^th Century as the only public institutions of higher education in the State, and did so as part of a national trend to provide free, or nearly free, higher education to qualified citizens.  At that time, the word public in public higher education referenced a single fact: These institutions would be funded either totally, or primarily, from taxpayer funds, rather than from student tuition and fees.
 
The original idea behind “public higher education” was that it should be provided largely at taxpayer expense for the benefit of those academically qualified students coming from families that could not otherwise afford to pay for higher education from the only other providers then available—the more expensive private universities in the State which tended to be located almost exclusively in the large cities.
 
The critical State need to be filled by these public institutions was the need to train the teachers required to staff the newly created public schools mandated by the Common School Act of 1837. Since the State’s only other universities capable of training teachers at that time were private institutions located in the big cities, these new public “teacher-education” institutions (which would eventually become the 14 PASSHE universities) needed to be situated in the rural parts of the State so that the public schools in those areas would be able to attract and employ the large number of teacher graduates that their schools required.       
 
While some observers today continue to refer to the 14 PASSHE universities as public universities, these institutions stopped meeting the original definition of the term “public” more than two decades ago.
 
In the sixty- five year period between 1950 and 2015, the actual levels of State funding to these so-called “public” institutions steadily evaporated, as the following figures clearly show:
 
The State share of annual revenue to the 14 PASSHE universities fell from 90% in 1950, to 75% in 1968, to 63% in 1983, to 49% in 1993, and to 25% today.   At the same time, the annual funding provided to the PASSHE universities by students, parents and alumni donors grew from 10% in 1950, to 25% in 1968, to 37% in 1983, to 51% in 1993, and to 75% today.
 

The Funding/Governance Disparity: a.k.a., Privatization Without Representation

But through the years as the State share of PASSHE’s funding plummeted from 90% to 25%, and the share provided by PASSHE’s majority financial stakeholders skyrocketed from 10% to 75%, the State stubbornly clung to its 100% control of all decisions through its rigid political control of PASSHE’s 174 governance board seats, thereby creating an enormous Funding/Governance Disparity as shown below.     

 
The State’s Funding/Governance Ratio is (25%/100%); while that of the Majority Stakeholders is (75%/0%).
 
And the huge disparity between the funding/governance ratios of the State on the one hand, and PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders on the other, is a powerful example of “Privatization Without Representation” and is just another form of tyranny that must be thrown off by the Majority Stakeholders. That is because the State, in the person of its elected and appointed officials, will never voluntarily give up the large perks received under the current status quo.  Rather, they will fight very hard to retain them.
 

Follow the Money

At its most basic level, the funding/governance disparity just described involves two very different things:  1) Money—e.g., Who Pays?  And 2) Governance—e.g., Who Decides?
 
Normally, the majority financial stakeholder controls the majority of the governance seats, while the minority financial stakeholder controls a minority of the governance seats.  In this way, each stakeholder retains a proportionate voice in the decision-making process that affects all stakeholders.  However, when stakeholders inevitably disagree and votes must be taken, the majority stakeholders usually win the day.  
 
In business or government, minority stakeholders who become tired of being outvoted when it comes to policy decisions can work to move from minority to majority status by either buying more stock shares in the case of a company, or by winning more elections in the case of a Senate or House of Representatives.  
 
But in the case of PASSHE, where 75% of its annual revenue now comes from the private checkbooks of students, parents and private donors, primarily alumni—and only 25% comes from  State Appropriation—there exists a totally un-American travesty of justice in which the majority (75%) financial stakeholders receive a 0% voice and vote, and the minority (25%) financial stakeholders cling to a 100% voice and vote.
 
There is no doubt that any effort to secure a voice and vote for PASSHE’s majority financial stakeholders will be seen as a mortal threat to the existing status quo and, in particular, to Pennsylvania’s elected and appointed officials from both parties who have a vested interest in continuing to operate these fourteen PASSHE universities as they have in the past—as lucrative patronage opportunities to advance the best interests of the elected officials and their political appointees—to the detriment of PASSHE students.  
 
Act 188 of 1982 created PASSHE as a “public corporation” and an “instrumentality of the State.”  Those descriptors made sense back then because at that time, the State was PASSHE’s majority (63%) financial stakeholder and the students, parents and alumni donors were the minority (37%) financial stakeholders.
 
Much has changed since 1982. And any justification for PASSHE to be seen as a legitimate “instrumentality of the State” started to evaporate in 1993 when the State first became the minority financial stakeholder (49%), and commands even less  justification now that the State funding share has fallen to 25%.
 
To be continued.