The Power of Words
We concluded last
week’s blog post with a reference to the word “gentrification” as it applies to
the fourteen PASSHE universities in Pennsylvania. They include Bloomsburg,
California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown,
Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West
Chester universities.
As suggested last time, the
pleasant-sounding word “gentrification” masks both a cruel and ugly reality.
The cruel side of that reality
may be seen in the devastating outcomes which the policy choice known as
“gentrification” imposes upon students from Pennsylvania’s least-affluent
families.
The ugly side of that reality is seen
in the self-serving motives and lawless actions by the elected and appointed
officials—both Democrat and Republican—who have continued to impose their gentrification
policy choice on PASSHE students since 2002.
These two sides of the
“gentrification reality” are inextricably linked by means of the following heading
and text, paraphrased from my 2013 book entitled Privatization Without a Plan:¹
Malfeasance with Personal and Tragic Consequences
Privatization
Without a Plan is a story about public
malfeasance leading to personal and tragic consequences. To be clear malfeasance, from Dictionary.com,
is “the
performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified,
harmful, or contrary to law.”
Also to be clear, the public officials in question include Pennsylvania
elected officials, appointed officials, and senior policy executives, arranged
in a hierarchy in which elected officials select the appointed officials, and
the appointed officials select and direct the senior policy executives.
The malfeasance cited in Privatization
Without a Plan was easy to document because the flawed actions by the
public officials in question violated not just the spirit but the letter of
the law.
The personal consequences, however, are difficult to document because
they involve things that did not happen
as a result of the malfeasance of Pennsylvania public officials: e.g., the
deserving students who did not
graduate; the worthy alumni who could not
afford to start a business; and the other students and alumni who could not afford to support a family. Although personal and tragic, these kinds of
stories can’t be easily documented or summarized.
Privatization Without a Plan documents
succinctly that the Act 188 statutory purpose of the PASSHE state-owned
universities “High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the
students,” has not been provided to
Pennsylvania’s students since 2002, reducing the promise of Act 188 to empty
words for those students and alumni.
This is not a failure of
law, but rather a failure of Pennsylvania public officials to obey the law.
The evidence for a failure to obey the law is seen in the fact that since
2002, the public officials with authority over the PASSHE system of 14
“state-owned” universities have been totally fixated on maintaining the lowest
possible tuition, i.e., sticker
price, when the law, Act 188, explicitly requires a focus on the lowest
possible cost to the students, i.e.,
bottom line.
Recall Mark Twain’s dictum: “The difference between the right word and
the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the
lightning bug.” And so it is in this
case as well.
That one egregious and misguided failure alone, substituting “tuition”
for “cost to the students”—which makes the cost of attendance too high, and the
burden of crushing student-loan debt too unbearable—leads directly to deserving
students who don’t graduate, worthy alumni who can’t afford to start a
business, and other students and alumni who can’t afford to support a family.
The Cruel Side of Gentrification
Stripped of all disguise, the
gentrification policy imposed on Pennsylvania students by the PASSHE Board of
Governors since 2002 has had the following consequences:
·
Students
from Pennsylvania’s least-affluent families are condemned to one of two
terrible fates: 1) years of crushing
student-loan debt for students lucky enough to gain admission despite substantial
financial obstacles; or worse 2) the inability to even attend a PASSHE
university because the BOG’s gentrification policy creates financial obstacles for
them that are simply too enormous to overcome.
·
Students
in group 1) will have their lives and future prospects diminished, or at least
postponed, by their student-loan debt, though in time they may be able to
overcome such setbacks and achieve their dreams. But the college-prepared students in group 2)
who are being denied access to a college education—not because of academic
deficiencies but rather because of insurmountable financial obstacles—will find
their lifetime opportunities few, and their future prospects bleak.
The Ugly Side of Gentrification
The ugly side of the gentrification
policy being imposed on students by the PASSHE Board of Governors involves not
just the lawless actions taken by the BOG to enforce its policy, but also the obvious
banality of the motives of the elected and appointed officials—both Democrat
and Republican—who have relentlessly continued to impose this gentrification
policy choice on PASSHE students since 2002.
As to why elected and appointed
officials on the PASSHE Board of Governors would defy Act 188 by ignoring the
mandates of Act 188, only one answer seems clear: They must clearly be benefitting from their
defiance of the law because for sure, the kinds of students for whom public
higher education was created—students from less-affluent families—are clearly not
benefitting from this law-defying policy.
Tragically, the only students
benefitting from the PASSHE BOG’s gentrification policy are students from
Pennsylvania’s more-affluent families.
And these are families receiving a totally unneeded State subsidy when
in fact they can afford to pay a much higher sticker price, but are not being
asked to do so by this gentrification-promoting Board of Governors.
If denying admission to qualified
students from less-affluent families is one perverse consequence of the BOG’s
gentrification policy, then giving State subsidies to wealthier students as
they increasingly replace those less-affluent students in PASSHE classrooms is
clearly an even more perverse consequence.
To be continued.
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