A Look Back in Time
As we continue to look at the tragic gentrification of the fourteen PASSHE universities—the
displacement of less-affluent students by more-affluent students in PASSHE
classrooms—it is both helpful and instructive to take a look back at how the
PASSHE universities got to this particular point.
The 14 PASSHE
universities are Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney,
Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield,
Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
Today’s
gentrification is the result of Act 188-defying policy decisions made by the
PASSHE Board of Governors; some were made years ago, and others just “double-down”
on earlier bad decisions, right up to the present time. Those policy decisions have produced an
alignment of the PASSHE universities that guarantees that the gentrification now
being seen is in fact the result intended by those in charge.
A Famous Organizing Principle
“Organizations
are perfectly aligned to produce the results that they get.”
This organizing
principle has a compelling and equally famous corollary:
“A
good definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different
result.”
Question:
Why are the PASSHE universities being increasingly gentrified?
Answer: Because the PASSHE universities are
now perfectly aligned to be increasingly gentrified!
That is, current
Board of Governors’ policies encourage attendance at PASSHE universities by
students from more-affluent families while discouraging attendance by students
from less-affluent families—the very students for whom public higher education
was first created in the mid nineteenth century!
More specifically,
the BOG’s Act 188-defying “low-tuition-for-all” policy is the primary reason
for the large increase in PASSHE attendance by more affluent students and the
corresponding decrease in PASSHE attendance by less-affluent students.
Below is an op-ed that
was published by The Chronicle of Higher
Education in 2008. This article was
the first to mention that the fourteen PASSHE universities were being
“privatized without a plan.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 31, 2008
Lacking
Enough State Support
By ANGELO ARMENTI JR.
The global economic crisis promises to aggravate the
already troubled financial situations of public universities across the
country. My institution, California University of Pennsylvania, is among those
that have had to cope with fiscal challenges for a long time. Having watched
the decline in public financial support over the 16 years since I arrived as
president, in 1992, I can state without fear of contradiction that we are being
privatized without a plan.
Indeed, if the trend in appropriations over the past 25 years continues
— and it will now probably worsen significantly — zero percent of our budgets
will come from our state government. Much sooner than later, we will become, de
facto, private institutions.
My university is one of the 14 "state-owned"
universities and former state teachers colleges that make up the Pennsylvania
State System of Higher Education. In 2008, Pennsylvania State University, one
of four "state-related" universities — which, while not state-owned
and -operated, have the characteristics of public institutions and receive
significant state appropriations — received 22 percent of its budget for
education and general expenses from the state. We and the other state-owned
universities received about 37 percent, similar to what Penn State received 13
years earlier. An extrapolation of the data shows that Penn State can expect
its budget share to fall to zero by 2033 — just 25 years from now. Similarly,
we can expect to see our budget share from state support drop to zero in 2041,
only eight years later.
While that extrapolation focused on the percentage of educational
and general budgets supported by the state, an analysis of the actual
purchasing power of the appropriated dollars, taking inflation into account,
confirms a significant decline over the past 25 years. In terms of constant
2007 dollars, state appropriations fell by 16.5 percent. When coupled with a
35-percent increase in full-time enrollments, that led to a 30-percent drop in
inflation-adjusted appropriation dollars per student during that time.
The decline in the share of our budget that comes from state
support has occurred independently of the political affiliation of the governor
or the majority in control of the House or Senate in Pennsylvania over the past
several decades. It has proceeded under both Democrats and Republicans.
An explanation of the nonpartisan nature of the decline may be
seen in America's rapidly changing demographics. In the 1950s and 60s, the
majority of households in America included at least one person 18 years of age
or younger — that is, someone who could benefit directly from public higher
education; today only one of three households includes someone 18 or younger.
It would seem logical that support of public colleges and universities might
become less of a priority as soon as elected officials of both parties realized
that the majority of voting households could no longer benefit directly from
public higher education and cared more about health care and crime.
Thus presidents in our state system of public institutions must
act schizophrenically. Like private-university presidents, they must raise
revenue from private sources. Simultaneously, like the leaders of public
institutions that they are, they must operate under onerous government
regulations and employ archaic business practices that are no longer relevant
in today's environment. Twenty-five years ago, most public-university
presidents did not need to be concerned with private fund raising. Today
virtually all do. Back then the procurement of needed goods and services at
public universities was complicated, bureaucratic, and slow. Today it still is.
For example, current state regulations require that any purchase
in excess of $10,000 (one-hundredth of 1 percent of our university's
$100-million educational and general budget) be handled through a lengthy
competitive-bidding process. Similarly, the hiring regulations that apply to
our 800-member staff require searches typically lasting three to six months.
The most onerous regulations, however, follow from the lack of
independent counsel for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. (The
general counsel to the governor appoints the legal counsel for the system.)
That lack has resulted in conservative interpretations of various applicable
laws and, more specifically, in the key legal opinion that tuition received
from the personal checkbooks of students and parents must be regarded as
"state dollars," thereby limiting the uses to which those funds can
be put — so the state system itself, for example, offers no need-based
scholarships for low-income students.
Since my institution and other public universities in the system
are operating at the same percentage of state financial support today that Penn
State, a state-related university, did just 13 years ago, one can logically
ask, "At what level of state support does a 'state-owned' university
become 'state-related' in terms of a release from those state regulations from
which state-related universities are currently exempt?"
The state should work with the Pennsylvania State System of Higher
Education to develop a multiyear plan for converting, in an orderly fashion,
those state universities into private institutions, rather than allowing the
current unplanned disinvestment in public higher education — privatization
without a plan — to continue as it has for many years.
Universities like ours, created by and subject to law as well as a
plethora of other policy directives, confront many obstacles to excellence. As
we become increasingly privatized over the next 20 or 30 years, those of us in
public institutions must work with state policy makers to develop a new
operating paradigm that will enable us to preserve our mission — providing
high-quality education at the lowest possible cost to students — even as our state
support continues to erode.
The only stable paradigm that I can see emerging is what I would
call "privatization with a plan." I doubt that we will see a reversal
of the downward trend in public support for public higher education, although
we may see a leveling off at around 10 percent. For that reason, it is
important that we focus on trying to remove, as part of the "plan,"
the restrictions that keep us from operating as well as we could as eventually
private institutions.
What we have witnessed in the past 25 years is simply democracy at
work — majority rule in a time of shifting demographics. It's just unfortunate
that the majority of voting households have different priorities than those of
us who continue to believe in the crucial importance of public higher education
to the future of our country. We can only hope that, before we reach zero state
support, restrictions will be lifted, giving us the flexibility that we
desperately need.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Commentary Volume 55, Issue 10, Page A51
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