She's On Fire

With the Penn State Board of Trustees meeting today, I think this video of Eva von Dassow, professor of Classics and Near East Studies at the University of Minnesota and critic of the University of Minnesota's central administration's budget and academic  priorities, speaking at an open forum before that schools Regents is worth a view for a few reasons.

First is her dramatic flare.

Second is the reasoning  behind her on fire presentation. That reasoning can be found in more detail at the second link above. Readers may want to bookmark that link to refer to when Old Main starts making cuts at Penn State.

Third is the novelty, to  Penn Staters, of the idea of an open forum at a Regents meeting. Could you imagine the control freak Graham allowing such a thing at a Board of Trustees meeting? Me neither.

(h/t Bill Gleason, aka Bonzo, a friend of this blog and another critic of UMN's central administration who blogs at Periodic Table and Periodic Table Too.)

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Spanier, Eva von Dassow, University of Minnesota

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WTF?

At the end of this piece at StateCollege.com, on the 2% merit raises that Graham, who recently received a 12.9% raise, is promising Penn State's nonunion employees, is this

Now, with the news that state funding will be level for 2010-2011, it's not clear exactly how tuition rates may shake out.

"Right now, the (university) budget office is crunching numbers," [Old Main Bullshit Artist Lisa] Powers said. " ... I can't say for sure where the tuition increase will end up, but they're working diligently to keep it in the (three- to four-percent) range."

Is that true, is the budget office still crunching numbers on this years budget?  Penn State's appropriations for this year are exactly what the Governor originally proposed way back in January. There were no last minute surprises. Old Main should have had the numbers crunched on this scenario months ago. Consider that Old Main didn't even wait for its appropriations to pass the General Assembly when it announced back in early June that it was cutting Ag extension jobs based on Rendell's proposed budget. Something's odd here. What gives?

Well, it's possible that the options are all so bad that Graham's paralyzed and  can't decide what to do.  But that's not my guess as to what's going on.  I think that Old Main Bullshit Artist Lisa Powers is doing what comes naturally;she's reflexively lying.

What do you guys think?

Technorati Tags: Penn State, tution, Spanier, Rendell,

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What Are Graham's Plans if the Bottom Falls Out?

Last week senate Republicans blocked a jobs bill which also contained enhanced financing  to the states  for Medicaid. Because the states are barred from changing eligibility standards on Medicaid, cuts will have to come from elsewhere in the budget if  Congress doesn't act soon. Our own Ed Rendell told the New York Times,

“It’s a bloodletting.”
[...]

In Pennsylvania, which is confronting a $1.6 billion revenue shortfall, the elimination of the additional Medicaid financing would mean having to come up with $850 million, Mr. Rendell said.
Because the state has already made more than $2.5 billion in cuts since the fall of 2008, when the economy went into a freefall, Mr. Rendell said layoffs were inevitable, not just at the state level but the local level.
“It’s going to be huge teacher layoffs, money to our universities, money to the counties and cities, municipal workers, firemen,” he said. “It would be enormously destructive.”
Mr. Rendell fretted that the resulting fallout from the loss of federal money would bring a halt to three straight months of job gains for the state.
“I know everyone cares about the deficit, and so do I,” he said. “But they care about the deficit until the cuts hit home.”

So Graham, what are your contingency plans should these cuts come about?

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Medicaid cuts, Rendell, Spanier, Pennsylvania,

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The 2010 Penn State Stairs Report

Every February the General Assmebly publishes financial data for the four state-related universities, known  as a Stairs Report,  in a PDF format. I have been converting the data for Penn State to Google Docs spreadsheet format in order to facilatate the analysis of the data and posting the links over to the right. Typically, I do this within a week of the publication of the data. This year I was slow off the mark.  It's finally up today. 

Technorati Tags: Penn State Stairs Report

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Refining the Pitch on Ag Extension Job Cuts

Last week I wrote about Old Main's strategy of placing blame for the cuts in Ag Extension jobs at Rendell's feet, although Rendell had given Old Main  the flexibility to shift money around in the budget which could have been used to prevent these cuts.

On Monday, Adam at StateCollege.com devoted his column to this  topic. He got the following pushback from Penn State Bullshit Artist Lisa Power.

This all begged the question: Can't Penn State just move some state money around to prevent the job cuts in agricultural research and Cooperative Extension, at least this year?

I asked Lisa Powers, the university's chief spokeswoman.

Simple answer: No, it won't happen, she said.

Powers explained it this way:

Overall state funding for Penn State isn't climbing. So if the university were to move some extra state dollars into agricultural research and Cooperative Extension, it would have to take those dollars away from general-education uses -- that is, undergraduate education.

And that, Powers said, would force an even heavier tuition expense onto students' shoulders. Penn Staters already pay among the highest -- if not the highest -- tuition rates among public universities in the U.S.

Powers said the situation presents "a direct trade-off."

"It's a decision that we decided a long time ago that we're not going to make," she said. Plowing more state money into agricultural research and Cooperative Extension, and taking it away from undergraduates, would be "like having students pay a tuition increase to pay for mushroom research in Chester County.

"Our greater obligation is to the students," Powers said.

Beyond that, she explained, "it's been a longstanding, obvious agreement that we rely on state, federal and county-partnership resources" to finance agricultural research and Cooperative Extension in Pennsylvania.

Lisa has effectively said, "Our spin about it being the governor's fault is bullshit. We are the ones who have decided not to save those jobs."  Good, for Lisa.

She also said the the choice for Old Main is between undergraduate education and extension. This is a false choice. There aren't just two categories in the internal Penn State budget: Ag Extension and Undergraduate Education. There are other areas in the budget where money might be taken for Ag Extension. My guess is that Old Main presents this false dichotomy because it knows that the constituency for Undergraduate Education is much larger than the Ag Extension constituency.  The framing of this as a choice between undergrads and farmers allows Old Main to appear to stand up for one large constituency while pissing off a much smaller constituency. Bad for Lisa.

But there is something even more disingenuous about this loud proclamation,"Plowing more state money into agricultural research and Cooperative Extension, and taking it away from undergraduates, would be "like having students pay a tuition increase to pay for mushroom research in Chester County."  It's not as if Old Main would shift money from the General Funds Budget, which is made up primarily of tuition money and state appropriations, to anything other than Undergraduate Education. Yeah, right.

For example, Old Main has been using General Funds money to support Outreach. This is from the Penn State Strategic Plan for the next five years. (PDF page 57).

Penn State, as the Commonwealth’s land-grant university, has long fulfilled a role as the major provider of outreach services to the people of Pennsylvania. This  long-standing commitment has continued despite decades of falling state support  as a share of the University’s General Funds budget. As state and federal funding  for Cooperative Extension has largely stagnated over the past decade and more, reductions in programming have had to occur in order to cover the increased costs of faculty and staff compensation including fringe benefits. Increasing  contributions from county governments have not been able to offset these declines. University funds have also had to cover more of the increasing overhead costs.

Similarly, the wide range of other University-sponsored outreach programs have grown over the past decades to the point at which, overall, Penn State operates the  largest unified outreach program in the nation, reaching one out of every two  households in the Commonwealth. This has meant growing costs for faculty and  staff salaries and benefits of those employed in Outreach, and for growing costs of  University overhead on operations, despite the considerable successes that  Outreach has had in securing extramural funding for many of its programs.

Given the increasing costs of tuition and living expenses for Penn State students and the associated difficulties of funding their education, along with the declining  share of state funding for outreach programming, the University can no longer rely  on student tuition to support the internally funded Outreach programs to the extent  it has previously. Accordingly, all other Outreach programs centrally supported by  E&G funds will be placed on the same financial model as Cooperative Extension,  with the University’s contribution to programming capped at the 2009-10 level  going forward from that date. That is, increased Outreach salaries and fringe  benefits must come from extramural sources, or be taken from the base funding the University will continue to provide, until such time as public funding for the University increases beyond inflationary levels in higher education.

Now the new strategic plan calls for Old Main to cap the amount of tuition dollars going to Outreach , but still Old Main has been using and will continue to use tuition dollars to support Outreach.

So Lisa is bullshiting  people when she ask them  to believe that  Old Main would never divert undergrad tuition dollars away from undergrad education. It has been doing exactly that and it will continue to do exactly that.  Worse for Lisa.

Why does Old Main think it can get away with this bullshit? It might be because the information needed to get at the truth,when it is available at all,  is  fragmented and I'm the only one paying close enough attention to piece things together.


Technorati Tags: Penn State, job cuts, Pennsylvania Proposed Budget 2010-2011, Rendell, Agricultural extension

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Placing the Blame

On Monday, The Penn State Propaganda Portal announced that

Ten people are losing their jobs and dozens of additional positions are being eliminated through attrition as a result of budget shortfalls in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences caused by state appropriations that have not kept pace with rising costs.

[...]

In the current fiscal year, the college's state appropriation for agricultural research and extension was flat at 2008-2009 levels.

The governor's proposed budget for 2010-2011 again includes flat funding for the college. However, college administrators say without greater state support, rising operating and pension-related costs will create a budget shortfall of $11 million as of July 1, 2011, requiring a 20 percent reduction in agricultural research and extension programs in the 2011-2012 fiscal year. This would equate to more than 160 positions in the college.

"Unlike Penn State's undergraduate education programs, these programs do not receive tuition dollars," McPheron said

The take-away is that that the workforce reduction is caused by flat appropriations for the college which are expected to remain so this year and that the shortfall caused by rising costs cannot be made up for by hiking tuition.  Hence it is the governor's fault that these people are losing their jobs.

Historically, it has been true that the Commonwealth's budget for the University has line item appropriations and that the appropriations for for agricultural research and extension line item has been flat recently. But this year, the governor has eliminate line items from the proposed appropriations for Penn State (Proposed Budget PDF page 521) in order to give Old Main more flexibility to deal with its flat funding.  Therefore it is not true that, "The governor's proposed budget for 2010-2011 again includes flat funding for the college;" it simply  includes flat funding for the University as a whole.

This means is that Old Main could have shifted money into the College of Agriculture budget  from elsewhere in the budget to support agricultural research and extension, but has chosen not to do it. This may or may not have been a smart thing to do, but this year it was Old Main's call not Rendell's.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, job cuts, Pennsylvania Proposed budget 2010-2011, Rendell, Agricultural extension

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Details, Details, Details!!!

In my post "The Tale of Two Dogs" I noted the distinct styles of UPUA President Jay Chamberlin and UGA President Nick Sathes. When it came to divulging details of the Penn State budget. Jay agreed with Graham that there is no need to change since Penn State is already perfect. He then rolled over onto his back in an attempt to have his stomach scratched by the prexy. Nick simply snarled at Graham that the University's failure to come clean on the budget was costing Penn State support from the state legislature. Clearly, I admire Nick's approach to dealing with Old Main, but I don't agree with either his or Jay's reasoning behind their differing opinions.

First off, Nick said that ,"Legislators have told me it's difficult to allocate more money to Penn State because it's difficult for their constituents to scrutinize the budget." Nick, if that is what you are being told by Legislators then they aren't being straight with you. If the legislators wanted Penn State to completely open their budget, then all they need to do is rewrite the open record laws to cover state-related universities. That is within their power. So Nick the next time someone in Harrisburg tells you that Penn State isn't getting more dough because they don't reveal enough of their budget, ask them why they haven't amended the open record law. As an aside, the legislature has some openness issues of their own to deal with. The latest is the bonus scandal which came to light last week.

Next up is Jay, who seems to think that he already knows enough about the Penn State budget.

Chamberlin agreed, saying the online budget gives a broad impression of the university's finances. "You can get a pretty general idea of what Penn State is spending its money on," he said. Although, he added, "you don't get to see how much a department is spending on pencils."

That comment about pencils was so cute. It gives the impression that people who want to know more about Penn State's budget are only interested in trivial details. Jay, Jay, Jay, haven't you heard that the devil is in the details?

Jay, do you have any idea how much office supplies cost the University? Nope neither do I. What I was able to find out is that in 2001-2002 the University spent 28% of its operating budget on" telecommunications, office supplies, travel expenses, maintenance and equipment." The University operating budget this year is $3.05 billion that means, if we assume that the proportion hasn't changed, that Penn State spent $853 million on these items. Certainly office supplies would not be the largest part of that latter number, but I think that it is fair to say that the amount spent on office supplies would run up into the several million. This is hardly a trivial detail.

Is the University overspending on office supplies? The online budget doesn't give you enough information to answer this question. I was able to find out that Boise Office Solutions has received a competitive contract from the University for office supplies. Generally, competitive bidding is a good way to make sure that one gets the best possible price on something, but this isn't always the case. How many companies bid for the contract and was Boise Office Solutions the lowest bidder? Again, these questions are unanswered in the University budget. The bottomline is you have to trust Old Main that they aren't overspending on office supplies. I frankly don't trust Spanier the bullshit artist.

In my next post I will look at a case where the lack of sunshine in Old Main very likely obscured the co-opting of Cynthia Baldwin the former Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Technorati Tags: sunshine, spanier, budget,

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