Political Patronage versus The
Pennsylvania Promise
As cited last time RE the fourteen PASSHE universities, “The Pennsylvania Promise (High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students) has been sacrificed on the altar of Political Patronage.”
The 14 PASSHE universities include Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
To be fair, the breaking of The Pennsylvania Promise—i.e., the failure of the PASSHE Board of Governors to deliver high quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students—didn’t become a serious problem until 2002. That is a very interesting fact of PASSHE history.
Recall that the members of PASSHE’s governance boards prior to 2002 were selected by the same political patronage system that’s been in effect continuously and without change since PASSHE’s creation in 1983.
Clearly then it can’t be political patronage alone causing the failure to deliver The Pennsylvania Promise. Rather, the true cause is the poor tuition-rate decisions made by PASSHE’s Board of Governors since 2002. And these were decisions that placed political expediency ahead of PASSHE’s financial and academic viability.
The conflict cited last week between Tenets I and II from Act 188, i.e., between “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students” on the one hand, and political patronage in the selection of PASSHE governance board members on the other, was neither intended nor preordained by Act 188.
That conflict, although very real, was the result of the many tuition-rate decisions made by the PASSHE Board of Governors after 2002, that were the opposite of the PASSHE Board decisions made before 2002.
The tragic consequences of the Board decisions after 2002 are depicted in official records¹ of PASSHE Appropriation, versus Tuition vs. Total E&G Revenue, between FY 1984 and FY 2013 (Ch. 9).
Before 2002, as per Chart 9, the Board of Governors increased tuition sufficiently to make up for the sharp decline in State funding—and to generate an increase in the quality of PASSHE’s educational experience.
After 2002, the Board of Governors has kept tuition rates low and caused educational quality to decline.
Act 188 Speaks on the Subject
of “Sticker Price” vs. “Bottom Line”
In simple terms Act 188² says—when it comes to funding—that: 1) the Governor and the Legislature get to decide how much State support the Commonwealth can afford to provide to PASSHE in any given year; and 2) The Board of Governors then gets to decide how high the tuition rates must be set in order “To do and perform generally all of those things necessary and required to accomplish the role and objectives of the System,” as the BOG is legally required to do by Section 20-2006-A(a)(15) of Act 188.
One might think accomplishing the Act 188 statutory purpose of the PASSHE universities: “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students,” would be one of the first “things necessary and required to accomplish the role and objectives of the System.” But after 2002, the BOG apparently decided otherwise.
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.” In addition to that, the
law does not require or even mention any role for the Governor of the Commonwealth in the PASSHE
tuition-setting process.
Yet despite these facts, the Board of
Governors during my 20 years as a PASSHE university president, anxiously awaited—along
with the 14 PASSHE university presidents—the Governor’s word as to the maximum
allowable PASSHE tuition-rate increase for that year!
And a related dynamic defined PASSHE’s
annual “tuition-rate” process during each of my 20 years: At a public Board meeting in the presence of
the media, one or two individual members of the Board of Governors, usually one
of the three student members, might make the case for a higher tuition rates to
support a high quality educational experience.
But after some polite discussion, and without exception, the Board of Governors
would simply vote to approve the Governor’s very low tuition rate increase.
Divided
Loyalty
When elected or appointed officials fail to perform sworn duties, it 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.”
I regularly observed conflicts
of interest during my twenty years as a PASSHE president and noted that the
leadership of the Board of Governors and most, if not all, members of the Board
appeared to see their role very simply as carrying out wishes of the
Governor—the person with the authority to re-nominate them to their positions of power.
Pennsylvania Politics vs.
PASSHE Economics
Act 188 sets a clear and measurable limit on student costs. By law, PASSHE is mandated to provide a high quality education “at the lowest possible cost to the students!” (Emphasis added.) Note that Act 188 imposes no limitation on “tuition rates” or “tuition and fees,” but only on the “cost to the students.”
This
then brings us back to the difference between “sticker price” and “bottom line,”
a difference critical to thousands of PASSHE students but one to which the Board
of Governors appears totally indifferent.
The
nonpartisan nature of this indifference is shown by the eight years of Gov. Rendell
(2002-2010), four years of Gov. Corbett (2010-2014), and one year so far of
Gov. Wolf (2015).
Despite
the specific language of Act 188, the Board of Governors since 2002 has ignored
the clear intent of the law and focused on the “lowest possible tuition”
(sticker price) rather than on the “lowest possible cost to the students”
(bottom line), as called for in the law.
As we will see, those tuition-rate decisions by the Board of Governors since 2002 have caused irreparable damage to the students for whom “public” (i.e., highly State-subsidized) higher education was ostensibly created—namely students from Pennsylvania’s less affluent families.
To be continued.
² https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/6772880/act188-pdf-405k.
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