Someone Needs to Explain the Concept of Transparency to These Guys

A few years ago the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) teamed up to put together the Voluntary System of Accountability which is provides a uniform template for colleges and universities to report information for prospective students and their families. The template is called the College Portrait.

Two years ago, when the program was in its infancy, Provost Rodney Erickson told the University Faculty Senate that

The point for us is that this will be a considerable amount of work; it’s not something that the faculty, at this point, need to worry about. Most of this, I would say probably between 90 and 95 percent of the information that’s on the Voluntary System of Accountability, is already on our public accountability page, or elsewhere on our Web site in some form. It deals with student characteristics; progress to graduation and graduation rates cost; and attendance of financial aid, admission, degrees, area of study, student housing, campus safety, future plans of baccalaureate graduates, and things like that.

We’re already well equipped to respond. I think the larger issue, however, is that the system will require in three to four years evidence documented, evidence of learning outcomes. While we are using

He didn't seem too enthusiastic about the whole thing.  And shortly thereafter, the Collegian reported  that Penn State wouldn't participate in the program.

Though Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities announced their participation in the VSA last week, Penn State, like the state's three other state-related universities, has not signed on to the project.

So I was rather surprised when I discovered that Penn State had quietly signed on the the VSA. That's where the Pell Grant data in my last post came from. There was no announcement on The Penn State Propaganda Portal. The only mention of VSA there, which came this past January, was rather oblique.

Dowhower presented examples of available data for University Park students as compared with four other Big Ten institutions, as derived from USA Today, one of two public accountability vehicles. Data included scores for active and collaborative learning as well as for enriching educational experiences. In addition, she offered examples from the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), a voluntary initiative for four-year public colleges and universities to communicate common information on the undergraduate student experience.

You really have to dig to find any acknowledgment by Old Main that Penn State is participating in the program. It comes  on page 9 (pdf page 15) of the most recent University-wide strategic plan

In 2008, Penn State agreed to participate in the Voluntary System of Accountability.This is a compact among most of the nation’s public  universities to provide additional Web site information about graduation rates, costs of attendance, descriptors of the educational services available, and assessment of student engagement and learning outcomes.

The only other mention is on the University's Assessment of Student Learning Web site which links to the VSA home page, but not to Penn State's College Portrait. 

What is it with Old Main and transparency? They do their damnedest to hide things even as they make them public.   And there is nothing earth shattering in the Penn State's current College Portrait. The truth is the the bulk of the information in the current report can be found if you dig around the Penn State Web site just as Erickson told the UFS. However, the  assessment of learning outcomes bit isn't in the current portrait, that comes latter, for all schools not just Penn State, after the data is collected. When it does arrive,  it may very well be a bombshell and perhaps Penn State is preparing for that day by not drawing any attention to their participation in VSA now.




Technorati Tags: Penn State, Voluntary System of Accountablity, College Portrait, Transparency

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Live by the Market, Die by.....

The take away from Graham's open letter to the Penn State community earlier this week is that Old Main is operating in an uncertain and treacherous economic environment. This despite his effort to portray the University's finances as strong. The biggest uncertainty for the school,as I've noted in the past, is enrollment.

Provost Rodney Erickson touched on this in an email to the Centre Daily Times,

The university is also seeing more students looking for financial aid. Executive Vice President and Provost Rodney Erickson said some may not be able to access loans.

“It’s too early to tell what the magnitude might be, but there will be some number of students who will not return for the spring semester (or next year) because of difficulties accessing loans from the private credit markets or adverse changes in their personal or family economic circumstances,” Erickson said [wrote] in an e-mail.

I think Rod is not being fully forthcoming here. While the full magnitude of the of the enrollment decline this semester is not yet known, Old Main, I'm sure, has some indication of what's going on.

To give you a feel for what the impact of an enrollment drop might be, here are some numbers from the Penn State's Common Data Set. As of Fall 2009, there were 36,749 full time undergraduates enrolled at University Park. Of these student, 25% are from out-of-state and pay tuition and mandatory fees of $24,940. The other 75% of students pay in-state-tuition and mandatory fees of $13,706. A one percent drop in out-of-state student enrollment, i.e. a decline of 92 students, would result in a revenue fall of $2,294,480. The same percentage drop in in-state enrollment, a decline of 276 students, would result in a revenue decrease of $3,782,856.

A few percent drop in enrollment could have a serious negative impact on cash flow for the university. And this doesn't take into account the Commonwealth campuses where many of the University's more economically vulnerable lower income students matriculate. Old Main knows this and there very likely is a lot of nail bitting going on there these days.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, financial crisis, enrollment

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Pennsylvania Needs More Sunshine. DSL a Case Study.

On Sunday the Carlisle Sentinel published an editorial in favor of liberalizing Pennsylvania's sunshine laws.

Pennsylvania's laws governing open meetings and open records leave a lot to be desired. For one thing, if you ask for information and an official body refuses to cooperate, the burden is on the citizen to prove he or she has a right to the information.

That's completely the opposite of the law in most other states. Resolving such a dispute usually requires a trip to court in the company of attorneys experienced in this area of law. That's an expensive and unlikely proposition for an individual citizen - and that situation encourages some officials to brush off all such requests.

I am in full agreement with this and I also think that this example offered by the Sentinel perfectly illustrates the need.

As Sentinel readers are aware, the fate of a local Dickinson School of Law campus hung in the balance as the Penn State University Board of Trustees, meeting as quietly as it could, attempted to move the entire school to University Park in violation of a purchase agreement requiring the university to keep the law school in Carlisle “in perpetuity.”

It was a combination of judicious leaks from inside the institution and a series of court actions that headed off what might have been an institutional sneak-away of a kind not seen since the Baltimore Colts tiptoed off to Indianapolis two decades ago.

What I found most interesting about this passage is that the editorial board pulled its punch. Rather than singling out Spanier as the thief that tried to steal DSL, it shifts the blame to a faceless Board of Trustees. If you followed the Sentinel's coverage of the fight to keep DSL in Carlisle you know that it didn't hesitate at the time to single out Spanier. See this op-ed for example.

What has changed is that Penn State has agreed to keep an "equal" campus of DSL in Carlisle in exchange for one in University Park. While plans move ahead on the construction of the University Park campus using borrowed money, fund raising for the Carlisle renovations have stalled. Hence Carlisle is at this point still somewhat uncertain that Spanier will keep his word. Spanier has a notoriously thin skin and has, in the past, signaled one thing about DSL and turned around and done something else. I think the Sentinel pulled its punch because they feared retribution from Spanier if he was named as the thief.

By the way, I highly recommend the Sentinel's coverage of the DSL death match to anyone who wants insight into the ways of Spanier, Erikson, and Courtney. You can search their archives here. The story broke in 2003 and was resolved in 2005.

They're Just Envious!

Today Penn State announced the appointment of Kevin M. Morooney as vice provost for information technology. While I really have nothing to say about the appointment per se, the following comment by Provost Rod Erickson did catch my eye.

"We're delighted that Kevin will be taking on an even greater role in providing leadership for Penn State's vast, complex information systems," said Rodney A. Erickson, executive vice president and provost. "The information technology organization at Penn State is the envy of our peers across the nation, and Kevin's vision and plans for enhancing Penn State's strengths in teaching, research and service through technology will serve the University well."

Frankly, Penn State's boastfulness makes it the laughing stock of its peers across the nation. It also belies a deep rooted insecurity.

For the record, here is the definition of envy.

1 : painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage
2 obsolete : MALICE
3 : an object of envious notice or feeling of envy

As you can see, it is not a positive attribute. I wonder if Erickson is even aware that this comment is an insult to Penn State's peers.

The crassness of Erickson's remark is best seen by comparison to this one: My Ferragamo purse is the envy of all the girls in my sorority. Get the picture?