A Wake-Up Call to PASSHE Students, Parents and Alumni Donors - Part 3

“We in America do not have government by the majority.

 We have government by the majority who participate.”

       Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

 
Thomas Jefferson’s quote is a warning to those of us who “don’t take an interest in politics,” but may learn later to our horror, that “politics has taken an interest in us” in ways that are detrimental to our best interests.   

PASSHE’s Minority (25%) Financial Stakeholder

PASSHE’s minority financial stakeholder is the State of Pennsylvania in the person of its elected and appointed officials on the PASSHE Board of Governors and the fourteen university Councils of Trustees.
 
The State provides 25% of PASSHE’s annual revenue but controls 100% of the 174 governance seats at the tables where all key decisions affecting all stakeholders get made.  That includes the twenty members of the Board of Governors in Harrisburg plus the eleven-member Councils of Trustees at the fourteen campuses.

PASSHE’s Majority (75%) Financial Stakeholders

PASSHE’s majority financial stakeholders are the PASSHE students, parents and private donors, primarily alumni from the PASSHE universities, who together provide 75% of PASSHE’s annual revenue while controlling zero percent of the seats at the governance tables where all key decisions affecting them are made.  Students and parents provide 70% of PASSHE’s annual revenue while private donors provide 5% of the total.

Jefferson’s Warning to PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders

The connection of Jefferson’s warning to the plight of PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders—the students, parents and alumni donors associated with the fourteen PASSHE universities—may be seen in the fact that Pennsylvania politics, as practiced by both Democrats and Republicans working together over the last three decades, has stealthily created a rigid status quo that is: a) very beneficial to elected officials from both parties; while b) being extremely burdensome and increasingly unfair to PASSHE students, parents and alumni donors. 

 
The 14 PASSHE universities include Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.

A description of that status quo is contained in a recent series of my blog posts entitled “PASSHE Officials versus PASSHE Students,” Parts 1 - 16, which appeared between November 2, 2015 and February 15, 2016.

 
Today’s blog post will focus on the participation level of PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders in the 14 universities for which they now provide 75% of PASSHE’s annual revenue, three times the State’s 25% share.

Participation

 
The synonyms for “participation” include “contribution,” “input,” “sharing,” “involvement” and “membership.”

The participation level of PASSHE’s majority financial stakeholders may be seen in terms of these synonyms:

 
Contribution: Under the current status quo, the only contribution the majority financial stakeholders are permitted to make is their financial resources, amounting to $1.2 billion (75%) out of PASSHE’s $1.6 billion annual revenue.  With their zero percent control of PASSHE’s 174 governance seats, they have no say in the decision-making processes affecting them, including the extremely critical decision of how the $1.2 billion that comes from their private checkbooks will be spent. In other words, “Thanks for your money and crushing student-loan debt, but we elected officials together with our political appointees are more than happy to make those decisions.”     
 
Input:  Under the current status quo, the only input that PASSHE’s majority financial stakeholders are permitted to provide is their financial resources.  In other words, “The views and opinions of the people providing 75% of PASSHE’s annual revenue are really unnecessary.  We elected officials and our political appointees know what’s best for you.”
 
Having established that the participation of PASSHE’s majority financial stakeholders is currently limited to their money and crushing student-loan debt, we will dispense with the other three synonyms for “participation” and move on to an even more critical question and answer:    

Question: Why don’t PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders Participate in the Governance of the 14 Universities?

Answer: They have never been permitted to do so.

Act 188 of 1982

Act 188 is the enabling legislation that created the PASSHE system of fourteen universities.¹ A careful reading reveals that the two most important tenets of that law that have been in conflict with each other since 2002.

Tenet I:  Act 188 gave the PASSHE system of 14 “public” universities a noble statutory purpose, which is:  “To provide high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.”  
 
Tenet II:  Act 188 created a governance structure for the PASSHE system of 14 universities based totally on “political patronage.” 

“The Source of the Conflict”

Tenet I is—or at least should be—a source of great satisfaction to PASSHE’s Majority Financial Stakeholders.  Based solely on the meaning of the words used, that statutory purpose may be thought of as “The Pennsylvania Promise” of high quality education at the lowest possible cost to PASSHE’s students.

 
When that promise was first made with the passage of Act 188, the State provided a majority (63%) share of PASSHE’s annual revenue, while today’s majority financial stakeholders then provided 37%.
 
But The Pennsylvania Promise became a broken promise in the years since 2002—as the State share of PASSHE’s annual revenue fell to 49% while the share provided by the majority stakeholders grew to 51%.     
 
 It is a fact that The Pennsylvania Promise has been sacrificed on the altar of Political Patronage.
 

The Definition of “Political Patronage”

 
Webster’s College Dictionary defines “political patronage” as “The power of public officials to make appointments to government jobs or grant other favors to their political supporters.” (Emphasis added.)
 
The first part of this definition is familiar and rarely questioned because it typically happens in public with Senate confirmation and/or intense media coverage.
 
The second part of this definition is less familiar and even more rarely questioned because it operates totally below the radar, that is, in secret.  And it is this secrecy aspect of political patronage—together with the total absence of representatives chosen by the majority financial stakeholders on PASSHE’s governance bodies—that allows “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students” to be sacrificed to the political expediency of elected and appointed officials from both political parties.
 
To be continued.
 
¹ https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6772880/act188-pdf-405k.