Privatization Without a Plan: A Failure of Leadership in Pennsylvania
Public Higher Education*
In the previous blog post we focused on three questions related to my
new book, Privatization Without a Plan: Who was this book written for? Why did I write this book? And, What is this book about? In this blog post we will continue with the third
question:
“What is this book about?”
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,” was not provided to
Pennsylvania’s students for at least the last eleven years, 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, for
the past eleven years, 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.
That I would
write a book with the title of “Privatization Without a Plan” might have been foreseen
by my career history over the past 42 years: 1) I spent nine years (seven as a graduate
student and two as a faculty member) at Temple University—a “state-related” university; 2) I spent 20
years as a faculty member, department chair, dean and director of planning at
Villanova University—a private
university; and 3) I spent 20 years as the president of California University
of Pennsylvania—a public “state-owned”
university.
The fact that I brought many years’
experience in each of the three segments of four-year higher education in
Pennsylvania—meaning three totally different organizational cultures—suggests
that I may have been uniquely qualified to notice and benefit from the
similarities and differences existing between those very different cultures.
At the time of my hiring as Cal U’s president in 1992, the search materials and search process made it clear that the institution was seeking a president who knew how private universities functioned. According to the job posting at the time, the top three skills being sought in Cal U’s new president were: 1) Strategic Planning; 2) private fund raising; and 3) student recruitment and retention.
Previously, Pennsylvania’s public
universities were concerned with none of those things, as the following attests:
Strategic planning is predicated on the idea of competition. The word
“strategic” comes from a Greek word meaning literally: “To prepare for the
defeat of one’s enemies through the effective use of resources!” Prior to Act 188 of 1982 where private fund
raising was first encouraged, public universities had historically served their
local regions largely as “order takers” as far as student recruitment was
concerned. The only competition that arose between institutions involved sports
teams. Recruitment means “marketing,” which is still something of a dirty word in some public higher education circles. Chancellor James McCormick told the fourteen PASSHE presidents in 1992 to be careful about marketing their universities because “Some people in Harrisburg don’t like it,” even though PASSHE on McCormick’s recommendation had just hired me, in part, to grow student numbers as well as quality. Over the next 20 years we grew Cal U enrollments by 50% and average SATs by more than 100 points. And at the same time, we employed sophisticated marketing to increase not only enrollments but student applications and four-year graduation rates.
Not only were Pennsylvania public
universities not expected to raise private
funds prior to Act 188, they were actively discouraged
from doing so by the Secretary of Education to whom they then reported, by
means of a directive that essentially read: “For every private gift received by
one of the “state-owned” universities, a like amount will be deducted from your
state appropriation,” a very effective deterrent to private fund raising.
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