The Privatization of “Public” Universities is Unavoidable

Why Privatization is Unavoidable

 

The privatization of public higher education in Pennsylvania has been ongoing for the past 30 years.

Much time and energy has been invested trying to recapture the high State funding levels of the past. But considerable evidence suggests that most of that time and energy were wasted, for at least two reasons: 1) Those efforts have been totally and demonstrably unsuccessful over the past 30 years; and 2) There are fundamental reasons for why the privatization of public higher education is inevitable.   

The primary cause of the privatization trend may be seen generally in the oft-reported “aging of the American population” since World War II and, specifically, in the precipitous drop between 1950 and 2000—from 57% to 34%—in the percentage of households in America with at least one person 18 years of age or younger living there, i.e., households that could benefit directly from public higher education.

The demographic data show that by the year 2000, fully two-thirds of the households in America could no longer benefit directly from public higher education.  And, it is safe to say, the people living in those voting households didn’t want their taxes raised to send someone else’s son or daughter to college!

Those data also reveal that the shift away from the previously high levels of public financial support for public higher education has not only followed, but respected, the shifting demographics of the country in a way that America’s Founders clearly intended.  Our Republic, based on the principle of majority rule, was designed to reflect the wishes of the majority of its citizens by, for example, forcing members of the House of Representatives to stand for reelection every two years, making it risky for such officials to get too far ahead of their constituents.  Senators, on the other hand, with their longer terms, were given more leeway to “do what’s right for the country” should their action conflict with then majority opinion.

A similar arrangement exists in State legislatures and produces similar results.

History shows, e.g., that the privatization of public higher education in Pennsylvania has been occurring routinely for the past 30 years under both Democratic and Republican rule, meaning that while clearly political—in the way the Founders intended, with respect to demographics—the privatization of public higher education in Pennsylvania is fundamentally a nonpartisan and hence inescapable phenomenon.

But Privatization “Without a Plan” is Avoidable

While demographically-driven privatization itself is largely unavoidable under our current form of government, the lack of a plan regarding that privatization of public higher education in Pennsylvania is clearly not unavoidable.  Rather, the lack of a plan to deal with years of unrelenting privatization reflects failures of leadership by our elected officials and, most especially, by PASSHE’s 100% political leadership.

The Financial Privatization of the PASSHE Universities

The 14 PASSHE universities began operating under the authority of Act 188 on July 1, 1983.  Between 1983 and 2013, the State share of PASSHE operating budgets plummeted from 63% to 27%, while the funding share provided by students, parents and donors, primarily alumni, exploded from 37% to 73%!

The data analysis that describes that 30-year trend quite accurately (with a correlation coefficient of 97.5%) predicts that, if this funding trend were to continue, State funding to PASSHE would reach zero—making the PASSHE universities totally private, financially speaking—in 2038, just 25 years from now.   

However, although financial privatization has been unrelenting and largely unavoidable up to this time, there are reasons why the rate of privatization must slow down and/or cease at some point before zero state funding to these universities—that is, totally private financial status—has actually been achieved.

Sections 14 and 15 of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Constitution read as follows:

“Public School System - Section 14. The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.”

“Public School Money Not Available to Sectarian Schools - Section 15. No money raised for the support of the public schools of the Commonwealth shall be appropriated to or used for the support of any sectarian school.”

Zero State funding to Pennsylvania’s “state-owned,” i.e., PASSHE, universities would seem to be clearly prohibited by Section 14 above.

However, Section 15 allows the Commonwealth to continue to support largely private “state-owned” universities—as long as they are not strictly sectarian, i.e., religious or denominational in nature.

It was this very same legal interpretation of Section 15 above that has allowed Pennsylvania to give millions in taxpayer dollars annually to the four (4) “state-related” universities over the past 40+ years.

That same legal interpretation would allow continued State funding to the currently largely private PASSHE universities, as long as those universities remained “private,” but not “sectarian.”