Pa. State System of Higher Education Chancellor gets a sympathetic ear in pleas to trim Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed funding cuts | PennLive.com

Harrisburg’s Patriot-News on yesterday’s hearings.

Pa. State System of Higher Education Chancellor gets a sympathetic ear in pleas to trim Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed funding cuts | PennLive.com.

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recent posts on APSCUF’s blog

I wanted to provide a little update for readers of the XChange who may not be following State APSCUF’s blog.  By now you’ve seen that ASPCUF has agreed to a wage freeze in our current contract negotiations provided that PASSHE administration agrees to do the same.

You may also have heard the story that ran on WITF in Harrisburg program “Smart Talk,” which picked up on a story that ran Monday morning on NPR’s nationally syndicated program Morning Edition, “PA Gov. Target’s Education to Close Budget Gap.” A part of the story that I found most interesting was that the Vice President of Millersville was quite vocal in his resistance to Corbett’s cuts.

APSCUF also recently posted two pieces that ran in the Harrisburg Patriot-News:

• Nancy Eshelman: “Pennsylvania plan to cut college funding deserves a failing grade”
• Patriot-News Editorial Board: “The state we’re in: Voters common-sense approach could teach legislators a few things”

One piece that was particularly interesting to me was the statement made by Slippery Rock president, Robert Smith: “We’re not just going to roll over.” A refreshing show of fight from one of our sister universities.  I’ll take that over the “there’s nothing I can do” mantra we’re used to at Kutztown.

Today (Tuesday) is slated to be a state-wide day of action on 13 of the 14 PASSHE campuses.  Kutztown will be the only PASSHE university that will not hold a rally, because we jumped the gun and got out in the streets a few days early.  We got our Irish up for St. Patrick’s day.

I suspect that readers of the XChange will want to keep up on APSCUF’s blog as well.  If you look on the right-hand side bar, you’ll see that we’ve “syndicated” APSCUF’s blog on the XChange.  You can find it directly under the @kuxchange twitter feed box.

Now we look ahead for a major APSCUF & student rally on Monday, March 28th.  At this point, it looks like KU will be sending 4-5 buses.  We hope to see similar numbers from all 14 PASSHE universities.  Stay tuned for updates!

 

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Budget knife cuts deep into State System | PennLive.com

APSCUF President, Steve Hicks responds to Harrisburg Patriot-News editorial about PASSHE taking “necessary steps.”  Kudos to Hicks for beginning his response like this:

In your June 23 editorial on Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education’s “necessary steps,” you begin with a false statement: “Any business has to offer products and services that customers want at the right price or it will not survive.” 

The State System is not a business, our students are not consumers and degrees are not a product. Even if your statement was true, a dozen years of record enrollments indicate that the universities are succeeding.

Here’s Hicks’s full response:

Budget knife cuts deep into State System | PennLive.com.

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Patriot-News article on retrenchment talks

Below is a Patriot-News (Harrisburg) story on retrenchment talks.  It was interesting to see the Patriot-News site this blog as a source.  Check out the full story with readers comments HERE.

Pennsylvania universities’ faculty members, managers to talk about layoffs

By JAN MURPHY, The Patriot-News

February 25, 2010, 5:24PM

Faculty layoffs will be a topic of discussion at a meeting tomorrow between faculty members and managers in the nearly 117,000-student Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education that includes Shippensburg and Millersville universities.

Steve Hicks, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, confirmed system officials advised him it would be discussed. That confirmed a Kutztown University faculty blog that cites an e-mail sent by system Chancellor John Cavanaugh stating, “We will tell APSCUF that we are beginning to plan for retrenchment [layoffs] as a financial issue due to budget pressures.”

System spokesman Kenn Marshall said he could not comment on the meeting or whether layoffs are the next step if the faculty does not agree to a retirement incentive being offered to retirement-eligible faculty members.

The system’s board announced earlier this month it was looking at ways to control future labor costs as it wrestles with the anticipated spike in pension costs and loss of federal stimulus money.

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