Graham Ain't a Fan of Tenure, We All Knew That

Via the Tax Prof Blog  comes the  news that, Graham is amongst is amongst   a group of  college presidents that sent a letter to  to the American Bar Association  asking that the organization eliminate tenure requirements from its accreditation standards. 

What do you folks over at DSL think about that?
Technorati Tags: Penn State, Dickinson School of Law, tenure, Spanier, ABA

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Here's Another Idea

Sue 'em.

Tired of years of public urination, assaults and vandalism, residents near UC Berkeley's southern edge on Tuesday sued dozens of the university's fraternities.

The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court against more than 70 groups and property owners, contends that the fraternities make life miserable for neighbors by encouraging underage drinking, littering sidewalks and streets, partying all night and shooting pellet guns at residents. The suit asks for unspecified monetary damages and an end to the noise and destruction.

Technorati Tags: alcohol abuse, fraternaties, Berkeley, lawsuit

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Could This Be at Play Here

I mentioned in my last post that the University of Iowa is also dealing with an alcohol abuse problem amongst their students. Here is one person's explanation for that problem.

...Tom Mortenson, an Iowa resident and a higher-education policy analyst who writes the newsletter Postsecondary Education Opportunity, told me that Iowa City has changed as the University of Iowa looks beyond state lines for a larger share of its student body. (Iowa enrolls the highest proportion of out-of-state students, 48 percent, of any large public university.[Ed. This is the percentage of freshman. The percentage of all undergraduates is 37% XLS file.])

"Students from Illinois brought truckloads of money. Suddenly, the streets were full of cars that were newer than those of the faculty. We brought in a bunch of rich kids, who partied and drank and got into trouble with the police," Mortenson said. "This isn't what public higher education is supposed to be about."

Penn State, which has come to depend  on out-of-state students for their higher tuition dollars,  doesn't have nearly the same percentage of out-of-state students as Iowa. This year non-residents make up 25% of the University Park student body and 34% of the freshman class.  These numbers have been fairly constant over the past few years.

Could  out-of-state student be the primary factor in the Penn State's alcohol culture? I haven't the slightest idea, but it would be interesting to see  the percentage of students who have alcohol related problems who are from out-of-state. It would also be interesting to compare the family income distribution of students that have had alcohol related problems to the overall income distribution undergraduate families.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, University of Iowa, alcohol abuse

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Elsewhere in Alcohol Abuse

This American Life's coverage of Penn State's alcohol abuse problem has stirred up a lot of discussion in the blogsphere about Penn State's problem in particular, but also more generally about these problems in other university towns. There's a very good discussion going on in the comments over at the Historiann blog which I recommend to those of you, e.g.. MoralHazard,  with an interest in the topic.  In addition, the drinking culture at the University of Iowa is discussed here.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, This American Life, alcohol abuse, Higher Education, University of Iowa

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A Good Read

Time has a Q&A with Educations Sector's Kevin Carey on transparency and accountability at our nation's colleges and universities.  While I don't always agree with Carey, I find it hard do disagree with anything he says in this interview. Go take a look.

Technorati Tags: Higher Education, Kevin Carey, transparency, accountability

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A "Fee"-ture Story

I wrote a few days ago that Allegheny County was having second thoughts about imposing a fee on tax-exempt organizations. The Allegheny County Council made it official today.

Nonprofits will not have to pay new fees after Allegheny County Council backed off its essential services fee proposal Tuesday.

Council voted unanimously not to override County Executive Dan Onorato's veto of the plan, despite the fact members had passed it without opposition Nov. 4. Citing anger over UPMC's decision to close its Braddock hospital, they had agreed to collect about $13 million annually from large nonprofit property owners for the public safety and works services they receive.

The bill is essentially a tax and therefore illegal by state law to levy on nonprofits, council solicitor Jack Cambest told council before its vote....

But

...[s]everal council members said they plan to keep searching, possibly with Pittsburgh officials, for a legal way to get money from the region's growing nonprofit community.

So it a good idea for the folks in here in Centre County to keep an eye things down there around the 'Burgh.

One particular thing that bears watching is a proposal by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to tax college tuition, which appears to have support of the City Council.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, in-lieu-of-taxes, tax-exempt, Pittsburgh

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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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Why Yes, Eva Pell Did Have Her Head in the Sand

It was reported last December that graduate student applications were down at Penn State despite the bad economy and the fact that grad school enrollment has historically tended to be counter cyclical. At the time, Dean of the Graduate School Eva Pell pooh-poohed the notion that anything was amiss and guessed that

...a better test of the hypothesis will come when we see what applications look like this January when the bulk of applications arrive for 2009-10[.]

And sure enough come January the application numbers looked pretty damn good. Here's what Graham told the Board of Trustees that month.

Graduate applications are up 6.4 percent compared to last year. International graduate applications are up 13 percent...

Why the turn around? My guess is that a front page story in the New York Times on November 20, 2008 about cloning a woolly mammoth might have had something to do with it. Penn State professors Web Miller and Stephen Schuster had just published a paper in Nature about their efforts to sequence woolly mammoth DNA and they were ready to speculate to the times about bringing one of the hairy beasts back to life.

Did The Old Main Propaganda Shop help to plant this story in the Times in the hopes of boosting interest in Penn State amongst potential grad students? That's my suspicion. Did the story actually help to increase grad school enrollment? Well, not so much.

Yesterday the Collegian reported that Eva Pell did indeed have her head in the sand last December.

Enrollment data shows graduate student enrollment has dropped by 1,795 students since 2003, Senior Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School Eva Pell said in a presentation. This year, 9,088 students are enrolled in the graduate school.

"It will not be healthy if it drops too much more," Pell said.

Pell explained that the decrease can be attributed to the instability of the economy and faculty insecurity about funding for doctoral students.

She said many people expected graduate school enrollment to increase once the economy took a turn for the worse a few years ago, but that has not proven true in Penn State's case.

See added cryptically,

"Graduate education is not top-down, it's bottom-up," Pell said. "Some of these are trends that will turn around in time."

I'm not sure what she means about it not being top-down, but my guess is that that is code for don't blame me.  She attributed the decline to

...the instability of the economy and faculty insecurity about funding for doctoral students.

Insecurity about funding?  The Penn State Propaganda Portal announced today that external funding at the University was up this year by $30.5 million over last year.

Oh well, I wonder if the decline in grad enrollment had anything to do with her decision to take a job at the Smithsonian starting next year.


Technorati Tags: Penn State, Graduate Student Enrollment, Eva Pell

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A Couple of Items on the Labor Front

First, Fritz Fitz, a longtime reader of this blog and sometime commenter, sent along word this morning that the United Students Against Sweatshops will be holding at teaching-in on the Employee Free Choice Act this upcoming Thursday, October 15, at 7pm in 160 Willard on the Penn State University Park campus. Speakers will include a representative of the AFL-CIO and  Paul Whitehead  a Penn State Labor Law professor.

Also, there was news today about the AAUP pushing back against complaints lodged by the right wing Landmark Legal Foundation against  academic labor centers around the country which conduct research about and offer programs for unions .

Technorati Tags: Employee Free Choice Act, Penn State, USAS, AAUP, Landmark Legal Foundation

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Place Your Bets Ladies and Gentleman

The Pennsylvania General Assembly sent a budget bill to Governor Rendell today which he is expected to sign tonight, but it is too soon for the folks in Old Main to jump for joy.

That will leave table games and funding for Penn State, Pitt, Temple, Lincoln and other universities, health institutions and museums as the only budget-related bills on the to-do list.

The House and Senate have yet to reach an agreement on the legislation that will allow the state's casinos to have table games. Until that agreement is reached, no action is expected to occur on funding those institutions.

What do the cards hold?

Technorati Tags: Pennsylvania budget, table games, state-related universities, Penn State

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More On Higher Ed Reform

The chancellor and vice chancellor at Berkeley, Robert Birgeneau and Frank Yeary, have an intriguing  proposal for higher ed reform in the Washington Post. Here is the meat of it.

Given the precarious condition of state finances, we propose that President Obama emulate President Lincoln by creating a 21st-century version of the Morrill Act.

Specifically, the federal government should create a hybrid model in which a limited number of our great public research and teaching universities receive basic operating support from the federal government and their respective state governments. Washington might initially choose a representative set of schools, perhaps based on their research achievements, their success in graduating students, commitment to public service and their record in having a student body that is broadly representative of society.

Washington would provide sufficient additional funding for operations and student support to ensure broad access and continued excellence at these universities. A portion of these resources would ensure that out-of-state and in-state students pay the same tuition and have access to the same financial aid packages. The combined federal-state funding must be sufficient for these universities to maintain their preeminence as well as charge moderate fees to all U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Philanthropy must continue to be an important resource. To ensure stability, the federal government should agree to match, at a rate of 2-to-1, and the state government at 1-to-1, private endowment funds raised by these public universities for 10 years. If such a public-private partnership raised private philanthropy of $150 million per year, the university would have $6 billion contributed toward a new endowment at the end of 10 years. The payout from this new federal-state endowment would provide operating and other support such as need-based scholarships and would essentially secure excellence and access for a generation.

As with any daring scheme, the devil is in the details. This proposal for a national federal-state university system may require new models of financial governance that include federal and state oversight. This proposal would require these universities to accept a more diverse geographic mix of students, with perhaps fewer students from their own state. Yet such problems are solvable, if there is a will. The great benefit to all states, particularly those that do not yet have internationally acclaimed public universities, would be the opportunity for residents to attend other flagship state universities without paying out-of-state fees.

As I wrote in my previous post, I'll soon have some thoughts here on what I think should be done with Higher Ed in Pennsylvania. But any Federal intervention in public higher ed along the line proposed by Birgeneau and Yeary which would require a new model of financial governance,  would also, almost certainly, require a reorganization of Pennsylvania's mishmash of state-related and state-own schools. So the reforms that I'm thinking about would likely dovetail nicely with this type Federal intervention.

More from me latter. 


Technorati Tags: Higher Education Reform, New Morrill Act, Birgeneau and Yeary

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The Big Dog on Higher Ed

I've been thinking a lot lately about what should be done to reform Higher Ed in Pennsylvania. I hope to post something in the not too distant future when time allows. In the meantime, consider Bill Clinton's take on the situation nationally.

One of the main thrusts of this year’s CGI conference is discussing ways to build up human capital through public and private investments. This is particularly important here in America, as our educational attainment has stagnated, and we have lost the competitive academic edge that we used to hold over the rest of the world. Clinton touched on this, lamenting our falling academic standing:

In the last eight years, we went from first to tenth in terms of the percentage of 25-34 year olds holding a bachelor’s degree. That’s the most important unknown statistic out there…We are headed into long-term economic decline if we don’t do something about it.

He added that prohibitive tuition at college is contributing toward this problem, as “higher education institutions are pricing themselves into America’s decline.” Indeed, this is a real problem. As Michael Mandel at Economics Unbound pointed out, “college costs are up by 23 percent since 2000. But real pay for young college grads is down 11% over the same period.” Meanwhile, two-thirds of today’s college students borrow to pay for tuition, and their average debt load is $23,186.

Technorati Tags: Bill Clinton, Higher Education Reform, Pennsylvania, Penn State

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A Fallen Angel?

Hey kids, keep an eye on this story; it may impact you in the near future. Blackboard has bought Angel and there is some trepidation, to say the least, amongst the users of the latter.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Angel, Blackboard

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Penn State, Inc.

Davis at Onward State attended a meeting over the Kleer-Cut Campaign between members of Eco-Action, a longtime Penn State student environmental group, and Paul Ruskin of the Penn State Office of Physical Plant. He contrasted the stonewalling and, more recently disingenuous gestures, that United Students Against Sweatshops has faced from Old Main over the Designated Supplier Program with the openness of OPP toward Kleer-Cut.

We were expecting a frustrating meeting of passion on one side and corporate doublespeak on the other. Instead, what we saw was a genuine collaboration between two groups with slightly different missions, but similar ideals. We won’t get into specifics here– the conversation got pretty wonky, including one nice discussion about how best to test the different toilet paper options– but it was cool to see. Paul Ruskin, the Communications Coordinator for OPP, even brought tea for the group.

What is to be made of the difference in the response of the University to these two groups? Not much, both responses are consistent with the current dominant corporate culture.

When it comes to labor issues such as sweatshops or unions, Penn State  stands with  Wal-Mart and the US Chamber of Commerce.

When it comes to Going Green   , Penn State stands with Wal-Mart, which

... has reduced annual shipping container use by 500 units, preventing the consumption of 1,000 barrels of oil and 3,800 trees while netting $2.4 million in cost savings,

and the US Chamber of Commerce, whose Web site  is chock-full of positive stories about Going Green.

Penn State  is  to be commended for  its commitment to Going Green, as are Wal-Mart and the US Chamber of Commerce, but  this commitement should not be mistaken as an indication that the University is somehow becoming less corporate. In fact, it is an indication of just how corporate Penn State is.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Going Green, corporate university, anti-labor,

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A Stimulating Read

Inside Higher Ed has the rundown on the spending on higher education in the compromise stimulus bill. The compromise eliminates  many of the draconian cuts made to the  House bill  by the Senate. Research funding, in particular,  looks very good. We dodged a bullet.

Technorati Tags: compromise stimulus bill, higher education

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Hobgoblin: I'm Guessing That This Isn't What Emerson Had in Mind

Way back in January campus right wing loudmouth Tom Shakely was all for the Commonwealth going into debt to pay for his half-cooked idea of re-instituting Tuition Challenge Grants for Penn State students.

Despite the deficit, Shakely is confident the program could still work.

"The bottom line is that the government has proved it doesn't have a problem with deficit spending," Shakely said.

Of course, Tom was a bit confused about the difference between the Federal government, which can run a deficit, and Pennsylvania state government, which can't, but nonetheless he was fine with deficit spending.

Today the Federal government is on the verge of borrowing some money to, in part, fund higher education and Tom is all for the idea. No,No... I'm just kidding. Here he is this week. (H/T Onward State)

Congress very well may sentence our young people to a two-fold punishment with this bill: first, to suffer institutions of higher education less affordable, and second, to bear the responsibility of footing the bill for this borrowed, $1 trillion “stimulus.”

You have to admire that he can do this without his head exploding while he types.

Technorati Tags: Financial Crisis, Higher Education

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