Governors Say It Again: Higher Ed Needs Accountability

Without going as far as Texas has gone, I think that some general guidelines to protect taxpayer interests and keep some of the more egregious practices to a minimum could certainly be implemented. Here are a few areas that need scrutiny.

Curriculum creep.

Students pay full-time tuition for a range of semester credits (e.g. 13 – 16, 12 – 18). In cases where the credits per semester are less than the MAX, there should be rules established that you cannot add on an additional semester without first maxing out the FT credits in the regular semesters. In other words, before a program could insist on adding 4 – 8 credits in a Summer session, they would need to show that the Fall and Spring semesters, where students are already paying FT tuition, cannot accommodate the additional classes, content or credits. Too many programs see Summer as a convenient way to add on tuition, but the constant uptick in tuition costs has made this more than an inconvenience, and is causing a lot of our families to take on private debt in an economy that is tough already. In addition, many students need the Summer session to work in order to afford the tuition and fees for the next Fall/Spring semesters. We should NOT be making our students lives harder when it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Class content

In this day of internet streaming videos and YouTube, I see no place for “seminar” courses where full 3-4 credit course tuition is paid for the instructor to line up 10 or more guest speakers to fill the semester. This is just lazy academics and should not be tolerated. The number of guest speakers brought in should be capped if full tuition is charged for the class. Keep in mind that a class like this also counts toward faculty “workload” which is the other side of this travesty. 

Territorialism

I’ve worked in several higher ed environments, and too often I’ve seen the same course created in multiple areas to serve niche markets because they couldn’t (wouldn’t!) share the workload or students and heaven forbid, one of the departments pay a professor who is teaching a student or 2 from another academic area, and whose tuition dollars don’t come directly into the departmental coffers. This territorial behavior is best left to the neighborhood dog packs and does not belong in higher education. This would require not only a change in thinking (or a tidy mandate from the state) but some financial re-working of how tuition is allocated as revenue among separate cost centers.

Workload

This is an oft-cited issue, but is worth repeating. While I oppose the Wild-West version of faculty productivity hunting that is occuring in Texas, there does need to be some accountability so that tenured faculty cannot hide behind accomplishments from 20 – 30 years ago and teach 1 class a year while advising no students, performing no research (but sometimes getting their names added to projects so they LOOK productive) and basically using their position to sashay about the nation and world pretending to be an academic and advancing their personal agendas on the university (and taxpayer’s) dime.  There is no earthly reason that someone who makes over $100,000 a year should have a workload that is this light, and as a taxpayer and a former student struggling to pay tuition, I object to this kind of fraud (and this is fraud, plain and simple).

Until these and other untenable practices are reigned in, the publics have little to say about the for-profit sector and governors who are trying to balance state budgets should have SOME input on those institutions whose hands are out for funding.

I am torn between the very laudable impulse to be accountable and the revulsion at having a bunch of  baboons do it.  Who is the arbiter of “efficient” or “effective”?  An enlightened society has allowed its scholars to study and write, assuming that their scholarship was a public good.  Sadly, that public trust has probably been abused, and now politicians are taking up the banner of accountability–politicians, for heck’s sake!  The irony of politicians holding anyone accountable for anything is tragic, in the least.  Anyway, an ideal seems to dictate that society allow scholars to be scholars, and then they take the good with the bad–the discoveries with the non-discoveries.  I can understand why, in an era of tightened fiscal belts, this model is being challenged, but I also hope that our society, however enlightened it might be, is ready for a slowdown of sorts in the progress of knowledge.  I’m sure some business zealot will gladly tout the private sector’s advances in science and technology, and I’m certainly glad that has happened, but there is something to be said for discovery that happens without a profit motive (though modern universities certainly have introduced that fly into the academic ointment).  Ideally, the scholar discovers, researches, studies, writes, and shares his or her knowledge for the sake of knowledge, not for remuneration or the emoluments of his or her institution, and that particularly noble part of scholarship either is dying or being killed, I can’t tell which.  I don’t mean to turn my post into a lament for scholarship, but it seems like a veritable Good that a society can put up with the misfires of its scholars because it loves knowledge and values it above efficiency.

This item makes me think of an idea.  The government should designate one institution (or maybe a few) in each state focused intently on providing education and conducting research that is directly beneficial to each state’s economy.  Maybe the government would even provide some financial support for such institutions.  Does this sound like a good idea to anyone else? 

As noted in the article “[T]he message to higher education from the bipartisan group is:
accountability. A new report from the National Governors Association restates interest in …
increasing the ‘efficiency and effectiveness’ of higher education to meet states’
economic needs.”

Lying is a harsh term, but politicians in Mississippi know about and have no interest in “efficiency and effectiveness of [university administrators in] higher education.” Politicians in the state have received a series of reports recounting information received in open records requests that speak to their and university administrators’ failures of “accountability.” Here’s merely one of dozens of reports to our politicians. (My apology for the length of this report. That, however, is the nature of proving one’s representations.):

Usmnews.net is revisiting our report of [University of Southern Mississippi President Martha Saunders’] trip to Gainesville, FL. Since the initial publication, usmnews.net received
additional information that should have been included as part of our original Mississippi Open Records request. Although the original response to the Mississippi Open Records request was represented to be complete, usmnews.net reporters and investigators were able to identify significant gaps and inconsistencies in the information. A follow-up request for “the rest of the story” produced additional documents, including pilots’ logs. Based on this additional
information, produced by the University several weeks later, we are now supplementing these reports.

For those of you commencing your readership of the series with this report, you may wish to read the introductory materials in the report A Brief History of Saunders’ “Lease” of airplane N777AQ During a Recession, part 1. That report provides background information concerning the actual costs for the past 17 months of an airplane N777AQ leased by President Saunders for 60 months.

USM has identified a total actual cost of $591,231.71 for 17 months of operations. The actual cost per flight hour = $591,231.71 total actual cost / 95.55 actual flight hours = $6,187.67. (Remember, usmnews.net’s computation of cost does not include or amortize the $907,053.85 balloon payment due on the 60th month. If that amount is included, the cost per flight hour is substantially higher than $6,187.67.) In any event, the cost per flight hour of $800 was the rate President Saunders and Provost Lyman pitched to the Faculty Senate in their dubious claim that the airplane was an efficient and effective use of taxpayer and student money.

On June 6-7, 2009, a trip to Gainesville, FL was reported in an Interdepartmental Invoice. The trip was confirmed in the Pilot’s Trip Log as 3.3 flight hours. Therefore the trip cost
taxpayers and students $20,419.31 ($6,187.67 per flight hour x 3.3 hours). However,
the additional information contained in the Pilot’s Trip Log was surprising.

To Gainesville, FL And Back to Hattiesburg, MS: The Interdepartmental Invoice shows two passengers: Martha Saunders and Richard Giannini. However, the Pilots’ Trip Log (a document that was withheld until legal counsel followed up with a second demand for complete records) shows five additional passengers. According to the Pilots’ Trip Log, the passengers were Martha Saunders, Joe Bailey, Richard Giannini, Gayle Giannini, Doug Rouse, Pam Rouse and Dianne Stark. Martha Saunders is President of USM. Joe Bailey is her spouse. Richard Giannini is the Athletic Director for USM. Gayle Giannini is Mr.
Giannini’s spouse. Doug Rouse is a member of the Institutions of Higher Learning. Pam Rouse is his spouse. Dianne Stark is Senior Associate AD/Internal Affairs.

There is no reason to believe that any of these passengers are prospective donors being courted for funding, nor is there any indication they are entitled to a state funded flight
on Dr. Saunders’ (USM’s) plane to the ball game. In fact, the careful omission of the
names from the Interdepartmental Invoice and the University’s original efforts to withhold the information suggests that Dr. Saunders knew that identifying the additional passengers was likely to raise questions – the questions usmnews.net is raising now.

The passengers concealed by withholding the documents in the original Mississippi Open Records request were high administration personnel and spouses and an IHL member and his spouse – the very people who are charged with the obligation to correct misuse and
mismanagement of taxpayer and student resources entrusted to administrators like President Saunders.

The Interdepartmental Invoice shows the flight charged to the “President’s Office”—that’s your money, taxpayers and students. The stated purpose was to attend the Baseball Super Regional game. It seems as though the airplane was not used to reduce travel costs or improve the efficiency of administrative time — as represented by Drs. Saunders and Lyman — but was, first and foremost, to enhance the entertainment of USM administrators and their spouses and an IHL Member and his spouse.

Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., DBA, Professor, School of Accountancy, College of Business, University of Southern Mississippi, m.depree@usm.edu

This sounds like the same idea that created large holding companies with unrelated businesses. Does not work well in the business world and it is unlikely to save anything when applied to higher education. Large research U’s have little in common with CCs. Yes they all educate but they usually are working with far different students with different goals. Also the idea that just getting larger saves money is funny to anyone who has ever worked for a very large organization. Often it ends up meaning just the opposite.  Resources can be pooled in areas of real common interest such as some materials purchasing but those areas are more limited than most think. 
Do you really want one provost making academic policy for all levels? As long as each segment is large enough there is no sound reason to combine apples, oranges and grapes.