“Privatization Without a Plan” – Part 5

Privatization Without a Plan: A Failure of Leadership in Pennsylvania Public Higher Education*

Last week, I posted two PASSHE Highlights in the form of news releases promoting my book.  Listed below is another surprising revelation that describes what has been happening quietly to the 14 PASSHE Universities in recent years.  If you are a student, parent, alumna or alumnus of one of the PASSHE universities, this information is for you.  Please share it with your friends at all 14 universities.

PASSHE Highlight #3

Armenti’s New Book Alleges Broken Promise from Act 188 to PASSHE Students is Not a Failure of Law, but a Failure by Pennsylvania Public Officials to Obey the Law

The 14 PASSHE universities in Pennsylvania include:  Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.

Angelo Armenti, Jr., the former Villanova University Dean and 20-year President of California University (Cal U), recently announced the release of his new book, Privatization Without a Plan: A Failure of Leadership in Pennsylvania Public Higher Education.

“Privatization Without a Plan is a story about public malfeasance leading to personal and tragic consequences,” Armenti said.  “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 actions by the public officials in question appear to have violated not just the spirit but the letter of the law.”

“The personal and tragic consequences are difficult to document, however, because they are mostly things that did not happen as a result of the malfeasance,” Armenti said, “including the deserving PASSHE students who did not graduate, the worthy PASSHE alumni who could not afford to start a business, and the other PASSHE students and alumni who could not afford to support a family.”

“My book provides evidence 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 PASSHE students since 2002, reducing the promise of Act 188 to empty words for those students and alumni.”

“This is not a failure of law,” Armenti asserts, “but rather a failure of Pennsylvania public officials to obey the law.”

 
“That failure may be seen in the fact that the public officials with authority over the PASSHE universities have for years been focused on offering the lowest possible tuition, i.e., lowest sticker price, when the law, Act 188, requires a focus on the lowest possible cost to the students, i.e., lowest 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 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,” Armenti said.
 
“And because Privatization Without a Plan could only infer but not fully document the personal and tragic consequences of the malfeasance in this case, I call upon all PASSHE students and alumni to document, via social media, their own stories in their own words.  A few of those stories may carry a happy ending, but too many more may not.  And until that situation is rectified, the work of preserving the statutory purpose of public higher education in Pennsylvania will remain unfinished.”  

*Privatization Without a Plan: A Failure of Leadership in Pennsylvania Public Higher Education is available from Amazon.com in paperback and e-book.  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=angelo%20armenti.
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Angelo Armenti Jr. served as President of California University of Pennsylvania (Cal U) from 1992 to 2012.  Before that, he was a Dean at Villanova University, a professor of physics, and author of The Physics of Sports (American Institute of Physics, 1992).  During his Cal U career, Armenti is credited with establishing numerous funding sources for student scholarships and for campus revitalization projects, efforts made to address problems he describes in Privatization Without a Plan.  In June 2012, Armenti founded The Pennsylvania Association of State Colleges and Universities (PASCU) whose mission it is to preserve the statutory purpose of public higher education in Pennsylvania: High quality education at the lowest possible cost to the students.