Trading Academics for Amenities: Move Over Faculty, Make Way for the Hot Tubs

Note: This was originally published on Raging Chicken Press earlier today. An excerpt is included below. To read the full post, click the “Continue Reading” link at the end of the excerpt or go there NOW.

I did my PhD work at Miami University. No, not in Florida – Miami University in Oxford, OH. There was a t-shirt in the bookstore that always provided a snarky retort to those who made the assumption that I was writing my dissertation in Florida: “Miami was a university, before Florida was a state.” Nope, I was far from Florida – a bike ride away from the Indiana border and about a half an hour from Cincinnati.

As a Central New York native, I had never heard of Miami University. This was before Ben Rothlesburger would help put Miami on the national map for Division I football and just about the time Wally Szczerbiak would lead the Redhawks  to the Sweet Sixteen in the 1999 NCAA basketball tournament. I found out about Miami because two amazing mentors, Jim Zebroski and Nancy Mack, spent part of a spring break coming up with a list of PhD programs in composition and rhetoric that they thought I should apply to as I was nearing the end of my Masters degree at Syracuse. Miami had one of the top PhD programs in the country in composition and rhetoric and I still think my decision to go to Miami for my PhD was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Many of my fellow doctoral grad students have become leaders in the field – Scott Lyons, Malea Powell, Pegeen Reichert Powell, and Gwendolyn Pough just to name a few.

I loved my time at Miami. My education was stellar and the intellectual commitment of the people I studied with was unparalleled. That doesn’t mean that Miami was some kind of utopia. In 1998, for example, I was one of seven students arrested for protesting a series of racial hate-crimes on campus. I was the one grad student and the only white student arrested in the protest. On the way to jail, we heard police refer to us as the Miami 7. We took the name and used it to fight our arrest and draw further attention to long-standing, institutional racism at the university. We refused a plea bargain and demanded a jury trial. In the year leading up to our trial, the discussion about racism and racial intimidation became intensely complex and complicated, but that did not change our resolve. We fought and we won. We were acquitted of all charges (you can read Pegeen Reichert Powell’s critical reading of the context of the protests and the administration’s handling of the issue here).

Also, like many research universities, Miami relies heavily upon the labor of adjuncts and graduate teaching assistance to teach a significant percentage of their undergraduate, general education courses. Miami University also has two branch campuses in Hamiltion, OH and Middletown, OH – both more urban and working class campuses. Miami’s administrations had a long history of treating their branch campus faculty as second-class citizens in relation to the Oxford Main campus faculty.

Up until 1997, Miami’s mascot was the “Redskins.” Activists had long sought to change the name, which seemed especially important for a university that took its name from the Miami Indian Tribe, in a state that boasted the sambo-esque  “Chief Wahoo” plastered all over Cleveland’s baseball legacy. It was not until leaders of the Miami Tribe made direct appeals to the university to change the name, that Miami adopted the Redhawks as its new mascot.

Miami’s main campus was almost entirely white, suburban, and middle to upper middle class. It has the reputation as a “public ivy” which it cultivates aggressively. In 1996, as I was in the middle of my PhD coursework, the university’s administration through the leadership of the new university president, James Garland, began a process of “transformation” that many of us found deeply troubling. The new plan was to put Miami at the forefront of the corporatization of higher education. Literally. Miami administrators began to refer to Miami as a “corporate university,” a term they still use in their own webpages to describe the period between 1996 and 2009 in the university’s history. Under President Garland’s leadership, Miami went on a building binge, seeking to turn its already manicured lawns into the country-club university in southwest Ohio.

Given Garland’s overt commitment to corporatizing Miami and building lots of beautiful buildings and luxury dorms, it was head-turning to read ProPublica’s interview with Garland published on Monday. The article, “On ‘Country Club’ Campuses: A Public University Ex-President Shares His Second Thoughts,”  is an indictment of the trend in higher education to spend millions of dollars on beautifying the campus in order to attract wealthy students to universities.

Garland’s words could not come at a more opportune time as PA State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) university presidents are moving forward with harsh austerity plans, slashing faculty and gutting academic programs. As I reported last month in “Wall Street on the Susquehanna,” PASSHE university presidents, administrators, and Board of Governors are all crying “budget crisis” and insist that the crisis stems from 1) the 2008 economic crisis; 2) the long-term decline in state appropriations coupled with Governor Corbett’s deep cuts in PASSHE in 2010; 3) declining enrollment; and, 4) “increasing costs” in faculty and staff salaries. The sites of PASSHE’s austerity policies have been aimed squarely at faculty and staff. What PASSHE refuses to even acknowledge is that one of the most significant contributors to the current “crisis” has been a decade long, unfunded spending spree on new buildings and “beautification” of campuses. PASSHE university presidents have bonded-out our futures so they can put their names on buildings.

James Garland seems to now be questioning the choices he made to lead the country club trend while president at Miami. As Garland put it,

As I think back, I didn’t realize it at the time, but in hindsight I worry about whether we did the right thing. As president, you to try to make campus attractive. You do things primarily to maintain financial stability.

I just think there’s a movement these days among universities that are able to do this, to turn themselves into country clubs. But inevitably that comes at expense of academic rigor and the quality of the academic program.

In my tenure we certainly contributed to this trend. And there’s a price you pay for that. For every dollar you put into building a student sports facility –- workout rooms and exercise rooms and squash courts and things of that sort — every dollar you put into that is a dollar you’re not spending on improving classrooms or paying your professors a high enough wage that you can recruit from higher up in job pool.

CONTINUE READING on Raging Chicken Press

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Kevin Mahoney on the Rick Smith Show: PASSHE’s Beautiful Buildings, Bond Schemes, and Corporatization of Higher Ed

In case you missed it over on Raging Chicken Press,  I was talking about my recent article, “Wall Street on the Susquehanna: PASSHE Bond Scheme Bleeds Education Budget for Beautiful Buildings,” on the Rick Smith Show this past Tuesday night.

Click on the image below or CLICK HERE to listen to the interview:

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Wall Street on the Susquehanna: PASSHE Bond Scheme Bleeds Education Budget for Beautiful Buildings (Abbreviated)

This originally appeared in Raging Chicken Press on October 21, 2013. It is a fairly long article detailing changes in PASSHE policies regarding new buildings and capital projects. I am including Part 1 of the article here with brief excerpts from other parts. To read the complete article, click “READ THE FULL ARTICLE” at the bottom of the post or go to the original right now by CLICKING HERE. 

This past July, eight of the fourteen PA State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) universities sent letters to their faculty and staff warning of the possibility of deep cuts, layoffs, and program elimination (what they like to call “retrenchment”). University presidents at California, Cheney, Clarion, Edinboro, East Stroudsburg, Kutztown, Mansfield, and Slippery Rock all shouted “crisis” and warned that unless they resorted to strict austerity measures, the end, would indeed, be near.

Clarion University led the PASSHE austerity train, announcing on August 15th that it would slash over 40 jobs – including 22 faculty jobs – and eliminate a number of academic programs. On September 10th, Edinboro University joined the party announcing it would cut 40 faculty, 9 staff members, six managers and a host of academic programs. Two weeks later, on September 25th, Mansfield University announced it intended to eliminate nearly 20% of their 170 faculty members. That same day, East Stroudburg University indicated that it was slowly marching toward retrenchment. Two PASSHE universities, California and Kutztown, were spared a similar fate this academic year. California University miraculously found that it did not, after all, have an $11.8 million dollar budget deficit as it had reported in the spring. Instead, Cal U is looking at a $5.8 million surplus. Ooops! Kutztown University’s president, Javier Cevallos, announced that Kutztown would be putting off the most painful cuts until next year: “Current estimates project a $10.3 million deficit for 2014-15, which will be addressed through a combination of base budget cuts and one-time funds,” he wrote in an October 2nd “Presidential Update.” And, as I reported last week, Slippery Rock’s provost is seeking a “third way” austerity plan – and if faculty do not agree to departmental transfers by Thursday, October 24, the ax may fall there too. The fate of the remaining PASSHE universities is still unclear. However, university presidents are rapidly approaching an October 30 deadline for reporting their intentions to eliminate any tenured faculty members.

To say it’s been an “interesting” start of the academic year for the 100,000+ students and 6,000+ faculty and coaches at PASSHE universities is an understatement. Left hanging in the balance are people’s current and future livelihoods. As I recently wrote on Raging Chicken, PASSHE’s mantra is that faculty and staff salaries and, more recently, a decline in enrollment are the reasons for the deep budget shortfalls. However, despite their continued proclamations, the numbers have never added up. My most recent post on PASSHE’s budget deceptions, “PASSHE’s Austerity Magic: Save Your Despair for Better Days,” highlighted the significant increases in spending on capital projects – buildings – at Kutztown University. As I suggested in that article, the pattern at Kutztown is not limited to that PASSHE university. In fact, it points to a much more widespread practice that has gone virtually unnoticed until the recent ouster of California University of Pennsylvania president, Angelo Armenti, Jr. (more on that in a little bit).

The budget “crisis” at PASSHE universities has its roots in a long-term defunding of public higher education in PA, Wall-Street-esque risky investment schemes, and a virtual lack of oversight.

Part I: How (Not) to Fund the College Experience

Pennsylvania vies for the top spot when it comes to the size and cost of its state legislature. PA also has the lowest percentage of public workers in the United States. In the best of times, that scenario might lead to excellent representation and efficient government. More recently, however, it has meant a right-wing Republican Party intent on destroying the public sector and a shrinking number of public employees to handle the work of cleaning up their messes. Anyone paying attention to what’s happened in PA since the 2010 mid-term elections, knows the story all too well. Newly elected governor, Tom Corbett, put public education – K-12 and higher ed – on the chopping block from day one. In his first year as Governor, K-12 schools were cut by $1 billion; PASSHE universities were cut by 20%. The trend has continued. There is no doubt that Corbett’s shock doctrine policies for public education have hit PASSHE universities hard. However, Corbett’s cuts were really a more extreme version of what had been happening for decades. In 1983-84 State appropriations accounted for almost 65% of PASSHE’s budget, while tuition and fees amounted to just over 35%. In 2011-12, State appropriations amounted to just over 25% of PASSHE’s budget, with tuition and fees reaching nearly 75%.

For more than three decades, the “free market” mantra of right-wing think tanks and policy makers, have eroded investment in all things public. However, as Dina Ransor made clear in a 2011 article for Truthout, their claims don’t match their outcomes:

This belief that the “free market” will always do better than the government at any task has increased over the years until each president since Reagan has taken it as a given.

Even Bill Clinton pushed to shrink the federal employee workforce by “outsourcing” the work to supposedly cheaper contract workers to save money during his “reinventing government” effort. This craze to outsource as much of the federal government as possible hit its height during the second Bush administration. Saving money was always the reason given, but there was very little actual proof that this was true.

The situation in Pennsylvania was no different. Over the past three decades, Pennsylvania state legislators of both political parties slowly abandoned investments in public higher education as a public good. Instead, higher education became a “service” or a “commodity” that students – now “customers” – bought. Politicians and policy makers from both political parties gradually, but decidedly, drank the free market Kool-Aid instead of reenergizing efforts to invest in Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education.

While the steady decline in State appropriations significantly contributed to the current “budget crises” at several PASSHE universities, several under-the-radar policy changes at the top-levels of PASSHE’s administration during the last decade have continued to drain the universities’ already diminished “Education and General Fund,” or “E&G” budgets. One of the most devastating came during the tenure of former PA Governor, Ed Rendell. Yes, the Democrat.

Part II: Of Bonds and Balance Sheets (Down the Rabbit Hole)

Until 2000, PASSHE had a fairly centralized process for initiating new building projects on any of its 14 universities and the official guidelines were pretty murky. The one Board of Governor’s policy that addresses planning for new buildings (Policy 1995-01-A), “Facilities Projects Contract Compliance Program” had more to do with ensuring compliance with Act 188’s Nondiscrimination Policy (Section 20-2014-A) with respect to the awarding of state contracts, than it did with laying out a process for making decisions about where to build and why. Under Section E, “Program Administration Responsibilities,” Policy 1995-01-A stated:

The Chancellor of his/her designee shall serve at the program authority to administer a System-wide uniform Contract Compliance Program. Each university president shall be responsible to the Chancellor for implementation of the Nondiscrimination and Equal Employment Opportunity Program at his/her institution. The president may designate and delegate responsibility to a qualified contract compliance officer and other staff as necessary to implement the program.

There is not a single mention of how the Chancellor, Board of Governors, or anyone else for that matter, decides when new buildings need to be built. The one thing this old policy does establish is a centralized process of communication and compliance. That is, it is clear that the Chancellor’s office is where the authority initiates. Administrators at each PASSHE university comply with “orders” issued by the Chancellor’s office.

Policy 1995-01-A was “repealed by the action of Board of Governors on July 13, 2000 and replaced with Board Policy 2000-02, “Capital Facilities, Planning, Programming, and Funding,” on that same date. Board Policy 2000-02 is much more extensive; it lays out the process for making decisions about new buildings. Three parts of the new policy are significant for my purposes here.

1. Decentralize New Building Planning …

2. Privatize Funding for New Buildings and Capital Projects Incrementally …

3. Finance New Building from University Education and General Funds …

***

Part III: Talking to the Taxman about Poetry above the Sounds of Ideologies Clashing so We Can Help Save the Youth of America

Keep in mind that under the current PASSHE Board of Governor’s policy 50% of the funds for new building projects have to come from “alternative funds,” primarily funds raised from external sources. In the post-collapse environment, those “alternative funds” were hard to come by, but the bills were still coming in and universities had to find ways to pay “bond expenses including fees, debt service, and principal” that they had agreed to pay at the beginning of the process. So, universities are forced to dip into their financial reserves and E&G funds to make their bond payments – funds that should have been used for educational purposes.

So, naturally, PASSHE’s Board of Governors stopped approving new building projects in the post-collapse environment, right? I mean it would be irresponsible to issue additional debt for universities who were now struggling to make their existing bond payments, right? Wrong.

Check out this table compiled by the faculty union, APSCUF, based on PASSHE’s 2008-2012 audited financial statements. The top part of the table shows new capital purchases – that is, new buildings and the like – for each of the 14 PASSHE universities over those years. The bottom part of the table shows the interest and/or principle payments toward each of the universities’ debt for those same years.

***

Part IV: Smoke and Mirrors Budgeting: There’s More than One Way to Sink a Ship

Do you remember Enron? Here’s a little refresher from Wikipedia:

Enron Corporation … was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,000 staff and was one of the world’s major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000.^[1]Fortune named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years.

At the end of 2001, it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has since become a well-known example of willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States and was a factor in the creation of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also affected the greater business world by causing the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting company.^[2]

Enron’s finance people used a whole slew of “off-balance sheet” accounting practices that allowed the corporation to omit significant liabilities – debts – from their official books and filings. Enron, for sure, went far beyond these legal, if not quite ethical, accounting practices and committed numerous acts of fraud. And, the fact is that “off-balance sheet” financing schemes were all the rage when Enron went down in flames.

“Off-balance sheet” financing schemes were especially popular U.S. colleges and universities as a way to finance new building projects in the absence of significant endowments. It was part of the “public-private partnership” (PPPs) craze of the early 2000s that I discussed above. In a 2010 National Association of College and University Business Officers article assessing the impact of the financial crisis on “off-balance sheet” building projects at colleges and universities, Roger Bruszewski, Sam Jung and Jeffrey Turner note that many colleges and universities entered into PPPs “through the university’s existing foundation, a newly developed university-affiliated foundation, or a collaboration with an unaffiliated national foundation that partners with institutions.”  One of “benefits” of this model was that these projects were treated as “off-credit, off-balance sheet transaction[s] that preserved institutional borrowing capacity and balance sheet integrity.” That is, bond rating companies did not consider debt from “off-balance sheet” projects as part of a school’s liabilities. As the authors note, “many of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) schools have continued to utilize this approach.” However good these schemes looked initially, the authors warn:

Over the past several years, however, the off-credit, off-balance sheet transactions have come under considerable scrutiny from lenders, rating agencies, and accounting standards boards because of the direct or indirect ties between the project and institution. Over time developers and universities learned that a project can meet the qualifications to be off-balance sheet and still be included in an institution’s debt profile. These initial on-campus project financings were completed without any developer equity and as 100 percent “project-based” debt. Typically, a not-for-profit entity owned the improvements (subject to a ground lease) and the developer was paid a fee to complete the project. The capital markets determined that because of the absence of equity, the high loan-to-value ratio, the project-based nature of the debt, and the lack of any meaningful developer commitment to the project, an institution was the only logical backstop in the event of trouble. “This ‘moral obligation’ resulted in potentially negative implications for an institution’s debt capacity,” states Bill Bayless, president and chief executive officer at American Campus Communities.

And, it turned out, these warnings bore fruit. In 2012, the bond rating agency Moody’s downgraded PASSHE’s credit rating from Aa2 to Aa3 (click here for explanation of Moody’s ratings) in part because of increasing debt and off-balance sheet projects. Under “Challenges” for PASSHE, Moody’s listed:

• High balance sheet leverage from substantial increase in debt since FY 2004, with total pro-forma debt rising to nearly $2.36 billion, driven largely by privatized student housing debt issued for replacement student residences on State System’s university campuses.
• Debt structure of member university foundations to fund replacement student housing includes variable rate debt requiring bank support or direct bank placement adding risk of liquidity demands of the foundations’ own modest resources and expectations of PASSHE to step in to fund or assume management or ownership of the housing facility

***

Remember the backdrop we’re all working with here. PASSHE university presidents across the state are screaming about budget shortfalls and the need to make deep cuts to faculty, staff and academic programs – and not just at the universities that are most immediately under the budget ax. The new PASSHE Chancellor, Frank Brogan, had made it clear that the cuts will continue, remarking In October 10 during a media briefing, “Make no doubt about it, retrenchment is here.” And the story from PASSHE’s administration continues to be that the “problem” comes from “rising costs” from faculty and staff salaries – no matter how clear the data is disproving that claim.

In reality, the costs of more than a decade of irresponsible building projects and sketchy oversight will be borne by faculty, staff and students. And, like the Wall Street fraud that led to the Great Recession of 2009, the people who gambled with our money – with the money that we expected to be responsibly invested in our future and the future of our children – will walk away, pointing their fingers at all of us.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE on Raging Chicken Press

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Advice from Florida on New PA State University System Chancellor: “Keep Your Back to the Wall and Stay Vigilant”

Note: This is the second article in a series on the incoming PASSHE Chancellor Frank Brogan I am writing for Raging Chicken Press. The first article, “New Chancellor for PA State Universities Comes Complete with Right-WIng Baggage,” focused on Brogan’s times as Florida’s Commissioner of Education and as Lieutenant Governor under Jeb Bush. I’ve included an excerpt below. To read the full piece, click “CONTINUE READING” at the bottom of this post, or go to the full article now. 

Last month, the Board of Governors of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) lifted the veil of secrecy and announced that they had chosen Frank Brogan to help write the next chapter of the 14 state-owned universities. Brogan comes to PASSHE fresh off his gig as chancellor of Florida’s State University System. PASSHE Board of Governors chair, Guido Pichini, sang the praises of Brogan in a public relations piece released following the announcement:

He has had an impressive record of success throughout his career. He understands the many complexities and challenges facing public higher education and the vital role public universities play both in preparing students for a lifetime of their own success and in ensuring the economic vitality of the state.

However, as I reported in my first article on the in-coming chancellor, Pichini’s words could not be judged on their merit. He and PASSHE’s Board of Governors forced search committee members to sign confidentiality agreements to not disclose any information about the search process – including the names of the candidates. Given that PASSHE and public education in general has been under assault by Governor Tom Corbett’s administration, we at Raging Chicken Press thought we should get up to speed on who this guy is.

My first article in this series focused on Brogan’s background as a right-wing education “reformer,” who served on George W. Bush’s education transition team in 2000 (helping to usher in No Child Left Behind and high-stakes testing); his close ties with anti-union and anti-public education organizations such as the far-right Center for Education Reform;  his time as Florida’s Lieutenant Governor under Jeb Bush in which he pushed for the rapid expansion of vouchers and charter schools; and his advocacy for using high-stakes testing to shut down “failing” public schools.

In this article, we’ll take a look at Brogan’s time as the President of Florida Atlantic University. If you’re looking for some good news, you might want to stop reading now.

CONTINUE READING at Raging Chicken Press

 

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Kutztown Facing Next Round of Retrenchment?

 

 

As the news of deeps cuts at Clarion University spreads across the Commonwealth, for many faculty and staff across PASSHE, “back to school” now comes with an asterisk. As the Patriot-News reported last week, several PASSHE universities received letters about the possibility of retrenchment: California University, Cheney University, Clarion University,  East Stroudsburg University, Edinboro University, Kutztown University, and Slippery Rock University. State APSCUF has also confirmed that Mansfield University also received a letter.

I’ve received a number of inquiries concerning letter that was sent to Kutztown. The meat of the letter reads:

As a result of budgetary shortfalls, consideration is being given to the elimination of programs and courses, as well as the elimination of duties or services performed by faculty outside of the classroom. As the impact of such actions may lead to the retrenchment of faculty, this letter serves as notice to APSCUF of the possibility for faculty retrenchments to be effective at the end of the 2013-2014 year.

According to APSCUF, the letter is virtually the same letter that was sent to all 8 PASSHE universities facing retrenchment.

You can read the entire letter here: Kutztown Retrenchment Letter

I am writing a series of articles on PASSHE retrenchment over on Raging Chicken Press using the tag #slasshe (thanks to Rick Smith and Brett Banditelli for that one). You can also follow that same hashtag on Twitter for updates.  I will post excerpts and links to the full articles here.

 

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PA State System of Higher Ed Begins Academic Year Taking Ax to Jobs and Programs

Note: This article was published earlier today on Raging Chicken Press. An excerpt appears below. You can read the full article by clicking the link at the end, or you can go to the original article now by clicking here. 

Last week, Clarion University announced what it called a “bold, ambitious workforce plan” that will result in the elimination of over 40 jobs, including 22 faculty. This is only the latest blow to a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) university in a state that seems hell bent on gutting public higher education. This past May, Raging Chicken Press reported on plans to retrench – that is, fire – faculty members at East Stroudsburg University and the long battles with austerity-minded administrators at Kutztown University is a familiar story to our readers.

What sets the move at Clarion apart from previous PASSHE cuts is that it may be the lead example of “transformation” at state universities championed by the system’s Board of Governors. PASSHE’s last Chancellor, John Cavanaugh, released a new vision for PASSHE in November 2010 called simply enough, “PASSHE Transformation.” That document laid out in general terms PASSHE’s intention to take the 14 university system in a different direction:

The vision includes four major components, all grounded in the need for transformation: (a) how, when, and where learning occurs; (b) how the resources necessary to ensure learning are pursued, retained, and sustained; (c) how our universities relate to their various communities; and (d) how we partner with the Commonwealth to create and deliver a shared vision for the future. Only through transformation, grounded in a thoughtful reexamination of our historic emphasis on high quality student learning opportunities, will our success be assured during these very difficult economic times [bold in original].

In my review of Cavanaugh’s tenure as PASSHE Chancellor after he announced he was headed out the door for greener pastures in Washington, DC, I note that Cavanaugh’s vision of “transformation” was lock-in-step with what’s happening to public education at all levels across the nation:

Anyone paying attention to what was and is going on in higher education policy, especially in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, saw the coded language consistent with those seeking to privatize and profitize education at all levels. Take, for example, language from the Broad Foundation, founded by Eli Broad – #157 on the Forbes Billionaire list with a personal net worth of $6.3 billion. Broad is a major contributor to Democratic Party candidates with close associations with Democrats favoring anti-labor, Michelle Rhee-type “reforms” to public education. At the center of the Broad Foundation agenda is, you guessed it, “transformation” of public education. Cavanaugh’s “PASSHE Transformation” memo seemed to signal the austerity to come, squeezing PAASHE’s limited resources and striking a blow to our 6,000+ member union.

While Cavanaugh’s memo was short on specifics, what it meant was not lost on the faculty union. In a scathing piece of satire, “The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of PASSHE,” president Steve Hicks and vice president Ken Mash of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) wrote:

Perhaps you’ve seen the Chancellor’s latest on “PASSHE Transformation?”  It’s amazing how a document so short on details can still manage to rankle.  The very notion that students and faculty will be transformed is enough to disturb, but its implicit anti-intellectual message really vexes.  It’s hard to ignore the presumptuousness that could lead some to conclude that “transformation” is necessary or, even worse, that they somehow single-handedly possess the knowledge of what that transformation ought to be and that it should be imposed from above.

Clarion University’s new “workforce plan” reads more like an accounting ledger than it does a document that helps guide the university to best serve students of the Commonwealth. Clarion’s plan is clearly situated within the growing right-wing, “market-based” proposals to “reform” everything public. Rather than putting forth a strategic plan based on an academically sound rationale, we are treated to a consumer vision of higher education: “eliminating academic programs which no longer hold the interest, based on enrollment trends, of our students.”

• Read the rest of this article on Raging Chicken Press

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Board of Governors, Here We Come!

It’s about 3:30 am and I am up preparing for today’s PASSHE Board of Governors meeting in Harrisburg. I am printing out the last faculty letters to the Chancellor that I received late last night, reviewing my notes for my 90 seconds before the Board of Governors, rechecking Google maps directions to ensure I can return to KU in time for my office hours and afternoon class, and hoping that enough faculty members from our 14 university system will make the trip to Harrisburg today to pack the Board of Governor’s meeting. As an academic – especially one that teaches writing and advocacy rhetorics, I am compelled to accept the persuasive power of rational discourse and I hope that the words of my colleagues and I will have some degree of impact on the Chancellor and the Board of Governors. I want to believe that we can help convince PASSHE administrators to bargain in good faith and help us secure a good and lasting contract.

However, the activist in me, the labor unionist in me, is also compelled to recognize that the persuasive power of words – yes, even in an academic context – have power only insofar as they are backed by people willing to act up on those words. Words, by themselves, are constrained by context – e.g. if there is no one listening, or a decision has already been made, or there are no institutional rules that require those in power to listen. If words are not empowered to be meaningful in any given institutional context, then their source of power must come from outside that institutional context. As Frederick Douglass memorably put it:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

For sure, Douglass was no slouch when it came to a commitment to the persuasive power of words. However, he was also no fool. His direct experience with slavery and racism taught him otherwise.

Late yesterday we found out that the Chancellor’s Office has limited the public comments section of today’s meeting to three speakers. Each speaker will be limited to three minutes. Then, that’s it, comments are cut off. The Chancellor’s Office limited public comments to three speakers at least once before – when cafeteria workers from IUP, represented by SEIU, were protesting the Board of Governor’s meeting because of Sodexo. The take away? When workers in the PASSHE system – from cafeteria workers to academic workers – seek to make their concerns part of the official discussion, the Chancellor’s Office turns off the mic after providing just enough time for comments so they can claim to have been “open” to public concerns, but not enough time for any substantive discussion. It’s not about discussion after all. It’s about control.

I will be splitting my time with our local APSCUF-KU President, Paul Quinn. Before hearing that the Chancellor’s Office was going to limit debate, each of us had three minutes. But, we’ll take what we can get. I will deliver faculty letters and I will make some brief remarks. But, in the end, what will matter is if the Chancellor and the Board of Governors see that they are not up against three or four faculty members, but hundreds. The power of our words will be measured by the number of faculty members packing the meeting room and manning the picket lines outside the Dixon Center.

I prepare to drive to Harrisburg knowing full well that the Chancellor’s Office has already stacked the deck against us. That the only reason I am  being given time to speak is because the Chancellor’s Office needs to appear to to be open to public comments. I don’t have any illusions about that portion of today’s meeting. I am going to Harrisburg to stand with my colleagues from across the state who, through their physical presence, are saying, “Enough!” I am going to Harrisburg to provide the Chancellor’s Office with a small taste of what a picket line looks like. I am going to Harrisburg to begin a process of demonstrating what gives a union power at the negotiations table  – not simply the negotiation skills of the people at the table, but the collective power of our more than 6,000 members across the Commonwealth. I am going to Harrisburg to begin a process of putting limits on the aspirations of would-be, petty tyrants.

 

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PASSHE brings divide-and-conquer strategy to negotiations

This past Saturday, APSCUF posted the following negotiations update on its blog:

APSCUF and PASSHE negotiators met Friday, September 14, at the Dixon Center in Harrisburg.  The Chancellor’s team passed a proposal on retrenchment language and made suggestions for future bargaining sessions. APSCUF caucused and responded to their proposal in writing. The two sides reconvened and failed to come to agreement on the language, but agreed to session definitions for the next two times: on Oct. 5th APSCUF will present on curriculum, class size, and distance education and on Oct. 22nd the Chancellor’s team will discuss temporary workload and concessions on retiree health care.   There was neither discussion of nor progress made on the Chancellor’s team’s demand for concessions on distance education, active and retiree health care, and temporary faculty workload.

There is so much packed into this statement, but I want to focus on one issue in particular: temporary faculty workload. It seems that PASSHE negotiators have learned their lesson from our last contract fight. During our last round of contract negotiations, temporary faculty issues were front and center. The issue that got the most attention was the raising of the cap on part-time, temporary members from 7% to 25%. Pretty significant, no? I am sure that some members of our negotiating team that worked on that contract would take issue with my characterization. For example, our negotiators argued that our previous contract had NO CAP on the TOTAL number of temporary faculty members. So, for example, as long as a State System university kept the numbers of part-time temporary faculty members below 7%, that university theoretically could have a faculty that was 60% temporary – as long as 53% of that faculty were full-time temporary faculty. I concede the point. It’s true, the 25% would be the first time the total number of temporary faculty would be capped and 25% is still significantly below the national average, which is between 40 and 60% depending on the study and institution. However, by refusing to distinguish between part-time and full-time temporary faculty, a State university could now turn 25% of the faculty into part-time adjuncts – effectively stripping away any pretense to job security and effectively eliminating their health insurance.

When it came time to sign the final agreement, the State System threw in the fact that the one-time cash payment faculty would receive in year one of the contract (instead of a cost-of-living adjustment) would NOT be given to temporary faculty members. There are several versions of how that happened – and, frankly, I don’t know which version is the most accurate. Suffice it to say that, for many temporary faculty members, that felt like the second slap in the face for that contract. First, the university can now turn your job into piece-work. And, just to make sure you don’t think you are a crucial part of the work of the university, we’re not going to give you what your tenure-track or tenured colleagues are getting, no matter how long you’ve been here.

On my campus, temporary faculty were up in arms. Several were so disgusted, they wanted to leave the union. Many more just retreated to their offices feeling they are totally on their own – best to just “shut up and teach” (a phrase that a temporary faculty member expressed to me at the time) and hope they have a job next semester. From the perspective of the State System administration and Chancellor Cavanaugh: Mission Accomplished. Divide-and-Conquer.

Well, we’re now facing round two in Chancellor Cavanaugh’s Divide-and-Conquer strategy. This time around he’s leading his team to cement a two-tiered faculty system by going after temporary faculty workload. PASSHE already requires faculty to teach a 4-4 load – that is, four classes per semester. By any reasonable measure, we already have a heavy teaching load. The Chancellor is proposing that we up the load to 5-5 for temporary faculty members. He is attempting to hold out the carrot that in exchange for a heavier teaching load, temporary faculty will no longer be evaluated on their teaching, service, and scholarship – they will only be evaluated on their teaching. The Chancellor is trying to drive a permanent wedge between temporary faculty and their tenure-track and tenured colleagues. The Chancellor drove the first spike in during the last negotiations and now he is seeking to bring the hammer down once again, turning a crack into a fissure. The move is an attempt to get tenured and tenure-track to be narrowly self-interested and say, “well, at least I don’t have to teach a 5-5 load.” The move seeks to play on the fear that if we don’t accept such a two-tier system, then everyone will suffer. The move holds tenure-track and tenured wages, medical insurance, and workload hostage, threatening to destroy them all if permanent faculty don’t offer up their temporary colleagues up for sacrifice. This is the world we are living in now folks.

But let me open the workload issue up a little more. While it’s true that full-time temporary faculty would see their workload increase by 25% (without any increase in compensation), the consequences of moving to a 5-5 load are much more serious. Take my department, for example. We have a total of 41 faculty members, eight (8) of which are temporary faculty members. Only one of those faculty members are part-time. If you turn those positions into full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions, we have 8.5 faculty positions teaching a total of 30 classes. If the State System turns a 4-4 FTE position into a 5-5 FTE position, our department will not have 6 FTE temporary faculty positions instead of 8.5. And since there is no such thing as a half-person in the real world, you are talking about two people losing their jobs – not exactly a model of job creation in a down economy.

But, it gets worse. Let’s say that a particular university takes a slightly different approach. Let’s say that a university administration – perhaps even at the direction of the Chancellor – tells all departments to keep all faculty schedules as they are and not increase the temporary faculty load to 5-5. Such a university president might even come out and try to sound all benevolent by saying “we don’t want our temporary faculty to be overburdened…we want them to be able to really focus on their classes.” Sound good? Well, guess what? While my department might be able to keep the number of temporary faculty constant (that is, to keep seven temporary faculty on a 4-4 load and one temporary faculty member on a 2-2 load), ALL of those faculty are NOW CONSIDERED PART-TIME. That is, they will lose their FULL-TIME status and with that, they will LOSE THEIR FULL HEALTH CARE BENEFITS. That’s right, instead of just cutting 1.5 FTE faculty positions, a university could cut health insurance for ALL TEMPORARY FACULTY MEMBERS by doing NOTHING. 

So, while Chancellor Cavanaugh may want us all to focus on different workloads for temporary and permanent faculty, his proposal is an attempt to pull the rug out from under ALL temporary faculty members and rip away even the smallest scrap of job security.

Frankly, the only reason we are able to keep the high-quality temporary faculty we have now is because they are paid on scale with tenure-track faculty (well, almost, they do not receive steps as they should) and they receive the same benefits. The temporary faculty members in my department, for example, can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their tenure-track and tenured colleagues. The only reason the vast majority of these highly qualified temporary faculty members do not have tenure-track jobs is because of the job market. And we all know that story. If you constrict the job market, the competition for any single job increases. That’s a pattern that has held steady for the past several decades. Competition for academic jobs is already intense. The Chancellor’s plan not only rips away job security for temporary faculty members, it further constricts the academic job market across the state for ALL higher education faculty. Earlier this year we saw the Chancellor call upon university presidents and faculty to unite and help stave of Governor Corbett’s 20% cut in higher education. He played the role of a PASSHE advocate, a uniter. Well, just a few short months later, we learn that same Chancellor is wielding his Divide-and-Conquer hammer, going after the same people who have helped deliver the high-quality education he touted before the Pennsylvania House and Senate.

The message I have for my APSCUF brothers and sisters comes from a sign that has been carried through the streets of Chicago this past week: “Enough is Enough.” Ya Basta! We have to see the Chancellor’s proposal for what it is: to divide us so he can weaken and conquer us all. We have to begin to think of our current contract fight in the same terms the striking Chicago teachers see theirs: as a fight for the future of public education. If you think of this contract fight only in terms of “getting mine,” we will all lose in the long-term. We cannot afford to lop off limb after limb and think we can be effective for the long haul. I for one will not sell out my temporary faculty colleagues for the same reason I will not sell out my tenured colleagues: we are in this together. This is a fight for the integrity Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education. And it is a fight for our futures and our children’s future.

Enough is enough!

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Returning to the XChange

It’s been a while since I’ve posted exclusively to the XChange and a lot has changed.  A couple of weeks before the beginning of the fall 2011 semester, my daughter Scout was born. In addition to the sheer joy of welcoming her into our family, lack of sleep has been a constant companion. Readers of the XChange also know that I stepped down as Vice President this past year in anticipation of the birth of my daughter.   This fall marks the first time since 2002 – the year I started teaching at Kutztown – that I have not been an elected representative for our local chapter of APSCUF.  It’s a bit odd, I have to say.

While I know I made the right decision to focus on my family this year, I am also keenly aware of how easy it is to fall out of the loop. Doing union work, especially at the Executive Committee level, means that you are intimately involved with micro-battles every single day. The administration’s decision to cut programs and retrench faculty last year meant that the bulk of my days were dominated with the practical and emotional weight of fighting an administration that had no intention of looking for alternatives to their slash and burn approach to the “budget crisis.” I’ve been astounded how “easy” my job feels now – a 4-4 teaching load, and ONLY a 4-4 teaching load, actually feels like a break. How messed up is that?

Stepping down from APSCUF leadership for a bit has allowed me to do quite a bit of thinking about where I want to put my efforts and how to best build some kind of sustained resistance to the budget cuts and assaults on public, higher education. Last year I oscillated between intense frustration and cynicism because I could not understand why faculty and staff at Kutztown University and the other PASSHE Universities were not flooding the streets of Harrisburg and their communities to defend their institutions and the promise of public higher education. I still don’t get it, but I think my experience this semester is helping me understand better how it’s just so much easier — at least in the short term and before the pink slip shows up in your mailbox — to just focus on teaching and let someone else worry about the future of public higher education.

Much of my “free time” is now spent on building my independent, progressive media site, Raging Chicken Press. October will be our fourth issue.  I’ve been kicking around the idea of an autonomous or semi-autonomous organization/institute/center for quite some time. At least two of my conference papers over the past five years have suggested the need to develop extra-curricular institutions for advocacy rhetoric and training citizens for participation in 21st century democracy. In my writing and research, I’ve grown more and more pessimistic about the ability to do the kind of progressive, democratic work that many in my field feel lies at the core of literacy education within the terms of the curriculum. That does not mean that I think there is not room for courses that can contribute to progressive, democratic projects. I only mean to suggest the university and most faculty do not see their work as being primarily concerned with public education’s charge to train the next generation of democratic citizens.

For better or for worse, faculty and curricula tend to be primarily focused on job preparation and more traditional disciplinary concerns. There was a time that I thought it was a worthy struggle, a worthy expenditure of energy, to attempt to shift the curriculum more toward citizen training. And that still may be worthwhile.  However, given the intensity of the attacks on the public sector, workers’ rights, collective bargaining, voting rights, environmental protections, and women’s rights and the rather timid response from faculty, staff, and students in Pennsylvania’s state and state related universities, I have felt an urgency to find more direct means to network and build citizen-based movements in the State.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that faculty, staff, and our unions were silent. I personally made four trips to Harrisburg, organized two bus trips with faculty and students to Harrisburg for rallies, and APSCUF and the other education unions were doing some great work responding to Governor Corbett’s slash and burn budget.  All that is good.  However, to my knowledge, there has been no recognizable, sustained organization effort to push back the budget cuts. When it comes right down to it, people still lost their jobs, students still had a hefty tuition increase, and PASSHE Universities still saw almost 20% of their budgets gutted. These are all losses by any measure. We should be learning from colleagues in Wisconsin, Ohio, New York and others who have organized mass mobilizations–and occupations of their state capitals. These states have now almost nine months of organizing under their belts and are building strong coalitions moving into the 2012 election. Hats off to them.

It has been striking to me that Kutztown University didn’t see a version of #OccupyWallStreet this past year, especially given the administration’s smoke-and-mirrors “budget crisis.”  As readers of the XChange know, APSCUF-KU has been contending for a long time that the University was not being straight with it’s numbers.  President Cevallos was persistent in his claims that Kutztown faced perpetual shortfalls.  However, as I wrote in a post here on the XChange and in the first issue of Raging Chicken Press, we found out that Kutztown University has been sitting on $29.1 million that could have been used to save programs and jobs. Put another way, stripping faculty of their tenure, jobs, and programs was a conscious calculated choice, not an unfortunate, unavoidable consequence of a force of nature as the administration would like us all to believe.

But, as a community, our defense of our retrenched colleagues and efforts at building an organized resistance has been lackluster. I say “as a community,” not “as a union” purposely. Anyone on Kutztown’s campus  who’s been paying even partial attention is well aware of charges that the “union didn’t do enough” or that “the union should have done X instead of Y.”  What baffles me is why people are more willing to criticize their union or stick their heads in the sand instead of organizing.  I’m not suggesting members should not criticize their union.  As a matter of fact, I think member involvement and critical participation is essential to any effective union.  Rather, I am saying criticism does not stand in for action. I mean, think about it. If I was criticizing my union while I was joining together with my colleagues to resist the administration’s attacks that’s one thing. Any community worth its salt comes to the aid of other members of the community out of a commitment to that community.  It does not wait to be told what to do.  It does not wait for others to do it for them. It just acts. Because it’s the right thing to do.

I know this is very ranty and scattered…it will take me a little while to get my XChange groove back. I’ve still got a lot to say about where we go from here and fights we are going to face down the road.

For now, I have to go teach.

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First Issue of Raging Chicken Press is Out!

The wait is over.  The first full issue of Raging Chicken Press is set to launch.  We’re going to call this one the July post-Corbett-PA-GOP-draconian-budget-signing issue.  Catchy, huh?

Our first issue includes the following contributions:

• Kevin Mahoney, “Kutztown University, Shock Doctrine, and Snake Oil Tales”
• Wendy Lee, “An Open Letter to Governor Corbett”
• Seth Kahn, “[Self] Pep Talk”
• J. Rizzo Mertz, “Plan to Renew Pennsylvania: A New Hope”
• Aaron Barlow, “No More Teachers?”
• Christina Steffy, “Don’t Want to Accept Responsibility? Blame Teachers!”
• Lee Camp, “You’re Not Alone OR Fighting Back is Bad for Ratings”

If you like Raging Chicken Press, sign up for an email subscription on the right-hand side of the site.  If you’d like to go the extra step and help support our work, check out this post with info on how to offer your support.

Welcome to Raging Chicken Press! 3-2-1…here we go!

 

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hold the champagne for better days

Over the past couple of days an article from the Morning Call, “House GOP: Lessen Education Cuts,” has been making the rounds on PASSHE faculty and students email lists, facebook pages, and twitter.  The article has gotten some ground because of the title and lead paragraph:

Republicans who control the state House will introduce a counter-offer to Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget proposal that largely undoes his deeper cuts to public and higher education in part by spending less on public welfare programs.

For schools and universities facing 50%+ cuts in their state appropriations, this is good news, right?  If you read on, the situation looks even better.  The new Republican budget proposal (details of the budget proposal should be released tomorrow) seems to underscore an emerging narrative that Pennsylvania Republicans legislators are, indeed, reasonable.  I mean, it certainly looks like their bucking the more draconian cuts favored by the Governor.  Just look at the support the Republican legislators are throwing to education :

• Increase funding for higher education line items by $380 million, with schools in the state System of Higher Education getting a $195 million increase. State-related Temple, Lincoln and Penn State universities and the University of Pittsburgh would receive 75 percent of their current allocations. Funding for higher education programs was slashed by 50 percent in the administration’s budget proposal.

• Increase overall state funding for kindergarten through 12th grade education by $210 million. This would ensure every district receives at least as much money as it did in 2008-09, a spokesman said. Under Corbett’s plan, not all would.

• Appropriate $100 million for Accountability Block Grants, which districts use to fund after-school tutoring and other programs. State support for those grants was eliminated in the administration’s budget proposal.

• Set aside $43 million to help school districts meet their Social Security payments.

Good stuff, no?  Well, that depends.  Note that the $380 million “increase” to higher education and the $195 million “increase” to PASSHE are not actually “increases” in state appropriations.  The Morning Call article simply reproduces the language of the Republican proposal.  If you do the math, Corbett’s budget reduces state appropriations to PASSHE from $503 million to $233 million.  The total cuts are actually a bit more than this when you factor in several additional cuts in fees and line items for PASSHE.  But, for ease of argument, let’s use these numbers.

The House Republican plan “increases” PASSHE’s funds by $195.  Really what they are proposing is a $75 million cut to PASSHE.  That is, if you add $195 million to Corbett’s $233 million dollar proposal, you get $428 million.  That’s still about a 15% cut of base appropriations…again, not considering the additional cuts to PASSHE in Corbett’s budget.  Those cuts remain which makes the PA House Republican proposal closer to a 20% cut.  Now, is that better than a 54% cut?  No doubt.  But this is “good” only if you accept the premise for the necessity of the cuts to begin with.  We have to keep in mind that Corbett and the House Republicans have refused to address the state  REVENUE problem by taxing drilling in the Marcellus shale region or by closing the Delaware Corporate Tax Loophole.

And what about the newly released reports that PA has exceeded official projections by $506 million dollars?  Put another way, now that PA has $506 million more than it expected, surely the Governor and the House Republicans will use that money to lessen their proposed budget cuts, right?  Not a chance.  Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Corbett is arguing against using any of the $506 surplus lessen budget cuts:

Gov. Tom Corbett on Tuesday poured cold water on optimism from some legislators that a growing state cash surplus could be used to ease spending cuts he is proposing to such areas as education, saying it might be wiser to hold the money in reserve or use it to pay down debt.

The House Republicans are singing the same tune.

What this should tell us is that Corbett and the House Republicans are committed to cutting public education and privatizing what’s left of the Commons–even if they have to tap the brakes to slow down how fast they do it.  By refusing to consider the revenue side of the budget equation (e.g. taxing Marcellus shale drilling, closing the Delaware loophole) and standing behind his unilateral decision to hand out $200 million in corporate tax breaks earlier this year, Corbett is waging a war against all things public.

By going after education, Corbett may have slightly miscalculated the strong response from Pennsylvania citizens.  However, he may have inadvertently given himself a distraction that would allow his House Republican troops to wage the class war.

The Morning Call article reporting on the “reasonable” House Republicans standing behind Pennsylvania public education may have given faculty, teachers, students and education advocates reason to breathe a sigh of relief.  However, as Luzerne County’s CitizensVoice reports:

The GOP proposal will offer up to $500 million of cuts in public welfare spending in order to spare public schools and state-supported universities from deep cuts proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett.

That’s right.  The House Republican budget robs Peter to pay Paul.  It restores some funding to schools and universities by stripping funding for public welfare spending.  Education funded on the backs of poor and working class Pennsylvanians.  I am sure there are some Republican strategists who hope that teachers and students are going to take the money and run.  It’s a classic divide and conquer strategy.  And, face it, it’s easier road to go after those who don’t have lobbyists speaking on their behalf.  The House Republican budget is set up, if not designed, to ask those of us in education to make a devil’s bargain: to take care of ourselves and toss the least of our brothers and sisters to the wolves.

Last week’s Rally for a Responsible Budget in Harrisburg was sponsored by the CLEAR Coalition, a coalition of labor unions ranging from higher education faculty to fire fighters.  The House Republican budget proposal seeks to pit the education sector against the service sector, faculty against fire fighters, teachers against technicians.  Furthermore, the House Republican budget proposal dangles a carrot in front of educators, hoping that we will confirm the image they have painted for us in the media: that we are a greedy bunch who only care about taking care of their own interests.  If we take the bait, then we deserve what we get.

In my mind, the CLEAR Coalition represented a strong start to an alliance that has the potential to raise all boats and reclaim our Commonwealth.  When I signed my name to join the CLEAR Coalition, I was making a pledge to my brothers and sisters from PA AFL-CIO, AFSCME, AFT, APSCUF, PPFFA, PSEA, SEIU, and UFCW to be there.  That’s no small pledge.  To recall the slogan of the IWW that is as good today as ever: An Injury to One, Is and Injury to All.

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APSCUF-WCU | All-Faculty Meeting, All the Time

If you haven’t discovered the APSCUF-WCU (West Chester) blog written by Seth Kahn yet, well, XChange readers, you should check it out today.  Here’s how the latest post on APSCUF-WCU begins (click link at end for full article):

Follow the money!

I’m sorry to title this post with such a tired cliche, but dagnabbit, it’s right on target again!

As you’re likely aware, Governor Corbett is attacking not just public higher education but all public education in PA.  There’s legislation pending in Harrisburg that would transfer a huge chunk of the money Governor Drill-and-Kill (Drill the Shale, Kill the Schools) wants to cut from K-12 education into a voucher program.

From my early morning cruise through the blogosphere, two articles that help debunk the notion that vouchers are anything but money-stealers from public schools for private interests:

via APSCUF-WCU | All-Faculty Meeting, All the Time.

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Pennsylvania is running more than $500M ahead of tax projections | PennLive.com

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s tax collections continued to roll in ahead of projections last month.

Ten months into the 2010-’11 fiscal year, the state Department of Revenue reported on Monday the state is running $505.9 million, or 2.3 percent, above projections.

That brings the year-to-date collections to $22.5 billion to support the state’s $28 billion budget.

In April, the state’s biggest revenue month, the revenue department collected $3.3 billion, which was $273.2 million, or 9 percent, more than estimated.

All three of the state’s biggest revenue streams — the sales tax, personal income tax and corporate tax — all produced more revenue than was estimated for the month.

The current year’s budget anticipated 3 percent revenue growth after coming up short by $1.2 billion last year and $3 billion the year before.

Related topics: pennsylvania budget

via Pennsylvania is running more than $500M ahead of tax projections | PennLive.com.

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I went to Harrisburg and my head exploded

This past Tuesday, I joined a handful of Kutztown University faculty and students on a trip to Harrisburg for the NAACP’s “Children’s March to Save PA Public Education.” [to hear my take on the rally, check out my postmortem discussion on The Rick Smith Show].  The nice thing about going to Harrisburg is that you tend to run into folks from APSCUF (our state headquarters is just a short walk from the Capitol building) and lots of other activists from around the state.  Not only do you get to network with other activists, but you tend to learn things that you might not if you weren’t there to hear it for yourself.

Shortly before I was scheduled to speak at the rally, I found out a bit of information about a recent PASSHE Board of Governors’ meeting that sent all sorts of veins popping out on my forehead.  First, let me give you a little background before I drop the bomb.

Over the past couple of years our local APSCUF-KU leadership–particularly our Meet and Discuss team–has been probing Kutztown University’s books and accounting practices.  When President Cevallos decided that he was going to retrench faculty this past year, we were given even greater access to the university’s financial data as required under Article 29 of our contract.

For at least two years we have been chipping away at a simple problem: how is it that Kutztown University has been in a perpetual budget crisis when it has seen a nearly 20% increase in enrollments since 2002, has seen class size explode, and has the lowest faculty cost in the State System?  Every time we ask the Provost or the Administration and Finance people this question, we’re treated to rather vague explanations about “increasing costs.”  But we have never been satisfied with that explanation.

Recently, former APSCUF-KU vice president and Meet and Discuss member, Ken Ehrensal, spearheaded a team that did a long-term analysis of Kutztown’s budget and expenses using publicly available PASSHE data.  The key part of their analysis was that they adjusted for inflation.  All of the numbers that the university has been using in their “budget presentations” have neglected to adjust for inflation, resulting in flawed data that presented a skewed picture of the university’s finances.  The most striking finding of Ehrensal’s team was that the faculty salaries and instructional costs have declined by about 10% and 20% respectively since academic year 1994-1995.   Put another way, the academic division of Kutztown has already taken significant cuts and is operating at a high level of efficiency already.  I would encourage everyone to check out Ehrensal’s team’s full presentation here:

SHOW US THE MONEY! – APSCUF-KU Presentation

The analysis in “Show Us the Money!” only furthered our questions about what the administration has done with all the money.  Every time we’re shown budget data including KU’s reserves — or “rainy day fund” — they appear to show that the university is, indeed, struggling financially despite HUGE cost savings over the past decade.  But, I’ve had a nagging feeling that the money is somewhere and that we’ve been presented with a ruse.

Fast forward to Tuesday’s NAACP rally.  We may have just opened the first major crack in that ruse.  Let me cut to the chase.

At an April 6th Board of Governors’ budget meeting an Assistant Vice President for Finance presented a slide containing new budget projections based upon a 30% cut in PASSHE funding and a 10% increase in tuition.  As part of that presentation the Assistant Vice President for Finance presented a slide listing all 14 PASSHE universities’ “Unrestricted Net Assets Available” and the funds needed to cover a budget gap caused by a 30% budget cut over the next two academic years.

The interesting number here is the “Unrestricted Net Assets Available” column since it represents the actual funds each university has at its disposal to spend.  These funds are defined by a Board of Governors policy on “University Financial Health”.  According to the policy, “Unrestricted Net Assets” are defined as follows:

Unrestricted Net Assets – This category of net assets includes funds that the Board or University trustees have designated for specific purposes, auxiliary funds, and all other funds not appropriately classified as restricted or invested in capital assets. It represents all funds over which the University can exercise discretion and may be used to meet the general financial requirements of the institutions. For the purposes of this policy, the following unencumbered unrestricted net asset designations will be included: Educational and General Activities, Life Cycle Maintenance, Retirement of Debt, and Plant. The following unrestricted net asset designations will be excluded: Educational and General Encumbrances, Plant Encumbrances, contractually required Health Care Reserves, Auxiliary net assets, and the unfunded net asset balances attributed to postretirement and compensated absence liabilities (Board of Governors Policy 2011-01).

Got that?  Unrestricted Net Assets refer to “all funds over which the University can exercise discretion and may be used to meet the general financial requirements of the institutions.”  In other words, these are funds that the Kutztown University administration can use to cover its costs.  So, given that KU just went through retrenchment and has declared a budget crisis just about every year I’ve been here (2002), you would assume that KU would have very limited Unrestricted Net Assets, right?

Dead fracking wrong.

As it turns out (and this is where my head exploded), Kutztown University has THE [SECOND] MOST UNRESTRICTED NET ASSETS IN THE ENTIRE STATE SYSTEM.  Do you want to take a stab at how much money the Kutztown University administration has at its disposal to meet its general financial requirements?

Not even close.

West Chester tops the list with $36.1 in Unrestricted Net Assets. Kutztown University has $29.1 million in Unrestricted Net Assets.  Bloomsburg University is a distant second with $20.8 million.  Don’t believe me?  Fine.  Here’s the slide [sorry for the errors in my initial post.  Thanks to Bilbo (see comments) for the assist]:

So, there you have it folks.  It’s OK. Screaming out loud is a rational action at this point.  I am looking forward to our next Meet and Discuss.  We must never forget that this administration proceeded consciously and deliberately to close programs, retrench faculty–temporary, tenure-track, and tenured, and force all of us to question the future of our institution.  And they did so crying poverty from the top of their $29 million pot of gold.

Excuse me now, I need to go throw up.

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Mahoney on Rick Smith Show – post rally discussion

Yesterday’s NAACP “Children’s March to Save Public Education” was quite a show.  K-12 students from PA public schools were out in force and showed off their marching bands, drum lines, and choruses.  I was proud to be one of the handful of KU faculty at the rally – I even got to speak along side APSCUF-KU President, Paul Quinn.

Visit the Raging Chicken Press for pics and reflections on the rally in the Field Notes section.

Last night I got to chat again with Rick Smith again on The Rick Smith Show.  We talked about organizing and concerns about losing this decisive battle to preserve public education in PA.  You can check out our discussion here:

Rick Smith Show: Kevin Mahoney on NAACP Rally and Summer Organizing

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just what does a retrenchment notification look like?

I am sorry that my posts have been minimal over this past week.  It’s the end of the semester here in universityland and I have been trying to catch up on my grading and end of the semester work.  The bulk of my “free” time has been spent getting the Raging Chicken Press site up and running (participation still welcome!  looking for writers!).

As XChange readers will know, last week APSCUF Presidents at the 14 state universities (PASSHE) received notification that university presidents will be pursuing another round of retrenchment this coming year.  In other words, we will be looking at more faculty jobs lost, programs cut, and services limited.  Once again, Corbett’s budget cuts are the motivating factor here, although I suspect that PASSHE will be using “crisis” to reorganize state universities with or without a real budgetary shortfall.

Most of us don’t ever see one of these “intent to retrench” notices, so I thought I would share it here.  Here is a copy of KU President Cevallos’s “intent to retrench” memo sent to APSCUF-KU president Paul Quinn last week:

Cevallos Retrenchment Letter

I would also like to remind all readers of the XChange that we will be forced to say good-bye to six (6) faculty members as a result of KU administration’s previous round of retrenchment.  We will also say good-bye to the Advising Center, the Theater major, the Nursing program, and the Early Learning Center.  We’ve also just learned that the KU administration has not renewed the contract of one of our coaches who was active in getting PASSHE coaches their first union contract.  Assistant Coach for Women’s basketball, Steve Hahn, is the latest casualty of the adminstration’s budget ax.

At this point, no one is safe and the administration has refused to provide a specific articulation of its priorities and goals, which would presumably be used in any coherent retrenchment plan.  Instead, we continue to get nothing but empty generalizations that you could find on any university web site in any state in the country.

I’m keeping my eye out for rats leaving the ship.

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PASSHE announces it will retrench faculty: Here comes the Ax (again)

This is an email sent by APSCUF President Steve Hicks to all faculty today:

Message from Dr. Steve Hicks, APSCUF President
Colleagues,

We knew it was coming, but that still did not soften the blow last Friday when, at the negotiations table, the Chancellor’s Office confirmed the rumor that all fourteen of our universities would be sending out retrenchment notices for the 2012-13 academic year.

One might have reasonably expected that, given the context of Governor Corbett’s budget cuts and the need for all in our system to work together, that the Chancellor might, at least, delay this divisive and dispiriting initiative until the fog of the budget battle had cleared.   This would have been the rational path, the politically astute path, and the empathetic path for our students and the faculty.   They have, instead, moved precipitously.
Fortunately, our Association negotiated a CBA that protects us from impetuous administrative action.  The retrenchment notices do not mean that there will, necessarily, be retrenchment.  Under both Article 29 of our collective bargaining agreement and PASSHE’s internal guidelines, campus administrations (and the Office of the Chancellor [OOC]) are to begin the process by notifying the union of “any changes, including those involving curriculum and programs, which will lead to retrenchment.”  These notices fulfill these requirements.  We have been notified as to the possibility of retrenchment.

Thus, colleagues, we must fight on another front.  Amid the budget battle and negotiations, both on your campus and in Harrisburg, we will fight on another front.  There is no time to be panicked or discouraged.  Our state meet and discuss teams and your local meet and discuss teams are ready for these battles.  Our staff is ready.

With record enrollments for thirteen years, and years of budget surpluses, the universities are in a poor position to argue very vehemently that they need fewer faculty.  It belies logic and calculation.  The faculty is at the core of any serious academic mission, and we will never let them forget it.

We must remain diligent, steadfast, and united.  We will fight any attempt to retrench faculty with all the tools at our disposal, but our most effective resource continues to be our ability to stand together with our students in support of quality public higher education.  And, that we will do.

In Solidarity,
Steve

Is it real enough for everyone now?  Time to get on the bus for Harrisburg on April 26th and again on May 3rd.  We’re fighting for our future, for our students, for our families, for our jobs.

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APRIL 26th RALLY IN HARRISBURG

The next big rally to defend higher education, public schools, workers’ rights, and the future of Pennsylvania is coming up!  This time the rally is being supported by public and private sector unions, the PA NAACP, several student organizations around the state, and many more.  I will be posting a full list of rally supporters when it becomes available.

I the meantime, I’ve designed a flyer for the event.  Anyone interested in sponsoring the event can use this flyer freely or adapt it to their use.  I’ve left a blank space at the bottom so people can add local contact information.  Clicking on the image below will give you access to the jpeg file.  Below the image is a link for a PDF version.

April 26th Harrisburg Rally Flyer

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some recent coverage of resistance to Corbett’s cuts | GET ON THE BUS!

There has been significant news coverage of student and faculty rallies around the state in response to Corbett’s cuts, so I wanted to take a little time to post some of that coverage here.  I think it is critical that we see the work we are doing locally on our campuses and in our communities as part of a significant network of people working to push back against Corbett’s attempts to cut the future.  We might not all know each other (yet), but we are, nonetheless, in this together. Here is a sampling of the news just from the past couple of days:

• KU Students Protest Gov. Corbett’s Proposed Cuts in Education Spending (WFMZ 69 News)
• Angry KU Students Protest Potential Education Cuts (Reading Eagle)
• PA Budget Battle | The Rick Smith Show (WIOO 97.9 FM and 1000 AM (Carlisle/Harrisburg) and WEEO 93.9 FM and 1480 AM (Chambersburg/Shippensburg)
• West Chester University Students and Faculty Protest Against Proposed Budget Cuts (West Chester Patch)
• MU Students, Employees Object to Funding Cuts (Wellsboro Gazette)
• Faculty, Students Protest Education Cuts (Shippensburg News-Chronicle)
• Union Faculty Rally at State Owned Universities (ABC 27 Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, Lebanon)
• SU Rally to Protest Cuts to Higher Education (Shippensburg News-Chronicle)
• Gallery: Shippensburg Students and Faculty Rally Against Corbett’s Budget (8 photos) (Patriot-News)
• President Smith Ready to Fight Back Against Budget (Online Rocket, Slippery Rock)
• Protesters Blast Cuts in Higher Education at Lock Haven University (Centre Daily Times, Lock Haven)
• ESU Students, Faculty Protest Cuts (Pocono Record)
• Pennsylvania State Universities’ Faculty and Coaches Union Rally Opposition to Gov. Tom Corbett’s Higher Education Budget Cuts (Patriot-News)
• IUP Faculty, Students Rally Against Funding Cuts (Indiana Gazette)
• Students Support Union Rally Against College Budget Cuts (Daily Local News, Chester County)
• Students, Faculty Rally Against Proposed Corbett Cuts (Meadville Tribune, Edinboro)
• Officials, Students Rally Against Cuts in School Funding (Sun-Gazette, Williamsport  [Mansfield U])
• SRU Students, Faculty Hold Rally Against State Budget Proposal (Butler Eagle)
• Mansfield University Students, Faculty Rally to Protest Cuts (Star-Gazette)
• Pay Cut Protest – Cal U Faculty Union Expresses Opposition to Governor’s Education Funding Plan (Herald-Standard)
• Edinboro Students, Faculty Rally to Oppose Cuts (Erie Times-News)
• “Rock the Capitol” – LHU Rallies Against Education Cuts (The Express)
• Pitt Rallies Students to Fight Budget Cuts (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• Student Voices Needed to Change Proposed Budget (SRU The Online Rocket)
• Universities Rally Against Proposed Cuts (WNEP 16 Moosic [Bloomsburg])
• Proposed Cuts Spark Campus Protests (6 ABC News, Philadelphia [West Chester])
• Public Education Supporters Rally at Cheney University (Daily Local News)

Yes, there are a lot of articles here and no I didn’t put them in any special order.  I am sure that I missed several articles and stories that ran on local TV news stations.  But the point of posting all of them here, is to recognize that there is significant resistance to Corbett’s cuts and that students and faculty from around the state are already mobilized and resisting.  I’ve heard some students and faculty lament that the protests on their campuses should have been bigger.  OK, I hear ya.  However, I think we also need to see that when taken together, a couple thousand people stood up this past week and said: “Enough!”  AND…(continuing on my upbeat mood)…this Monday, March 28th we expect those folks and more to converge on the State Capitol and make our collective voices heard.

For now, plan on being in Harrisburg on Monday, March 28th.  Monday is a second day of State Senate budget hearings and we need to be outside and inside the chamber to make our presence knows.  The starts at 11:30 am and lasts till 1:00 pm.  The PASSHE hearing will begin at 1:30 pm.  The PASSHE hearing will last until 2:30 pm and then PHEAA will up on the stand.  The Rally is scheduled for outside at the Main Capitol Steps, but in case of rain, we have the Rotunda reserved as well. PSEA, who has their office directly across from the Main Capitol Steps, at 400 North Third Street, has offered their headquarters as a staging area, so faculty and students can arrive at 11:00 am.

Buses will be leaving Kutztown at 9am.  We will meet in the parking lot behind Beekey.  There are still a few seats left on APSCUF-KU’s two buses, so if you want a seat email APSCUF-KU or call 610.683.4277 asap to reserve your seat.  KU’s Student Government Board, Association of Campus Events, and Undergraduate Council also have several buses going.  If you can’t get space on our bus, you can sign up in MSU 153 or call 610.683.1383 with one of their buses.  APSCUF-KU has coordinated with the student groups and all of our buses will meet in the same place and leave at the same time.

So, keep the laments for better times.

GET ON THE BUS!

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St. Patrick, a few hundred students, and a no show

If you haven’t already, you should check out the pics I posted of last week’s St. Patrick’s Day protest against Gov. Corbett’s cuts to education.  If I haven’t said it enough already, I was incredibly impressed with the passion and energy of Kutztown’s students.  They put together a powerful event that said in no uncertain terms: we will not stand for Corbett’s Cuts! One chant in particular stood out and will no doubt become the slogan for their continued protests:  the future of Pennsylvania is standing RIGHT HERE!

At the event, I announced that APSCUF-KU would be sending at least one bus to Harrisburg on Monday, March 28th for APSCUF’s PA Senate lobby day.  We will gather outside the State capitol with hundreds of other students and faculty from the 14 universities of the PA State System of Higher Education to make our voices heard.  To make sure we are heard, I ordered a dozen vuvuzelas for the event. I would encourage my brothers and sisters from around the state to do the same or to bring their own “instruments” for an APSCUF Noise Band.  I want to give credit to one of my students for putting the vuvuzela bug in my ear.  One of my ENG 023 students is researching the history and use of the vuvuzela — it’s also called a grenade whistle (a bit shorter than the full-length vuvuzela) and has been featured on the Jersey Shore in addition to its well-known use during the World Cup.

Anyway, by the end of Thursday’s rally, we already had enough people to fill one bus…today we may very well fill a second.  There are still some seats left, so if you’re from the KU community and you want a seat, contact the APSCUF-KU office asap.  On April 6th, KU’s Student Government Board (SGB)  and Association of Campus Events (ACE) will send at least four buses to Harrisburg for another PASSHE-wide protest at the State capitol. I am thrilled to see people pushing back.  As I said in my interview last week on the Rick Smith Show, until Harrisburg begins to look like Madison, I have little faith in our elected leaders to do the right thing.  When I hear legislators — Democratic and Republican alike — talk about “decreasing the amount of the cuts,” I become even more convinced that we need people in the street and at the Capitol every single day.  The fact is, even the cuts are reduced to 25% instead of the Governor’s currently proposed 50% cuts, we are still talking about cuts that will fundamentally transform PASSHE — and not necessarily in the way that the Chancellor may have envisioned. The only appropriate response to what the Governor is trying to do is what I said at the St. Patrick’s Day protest: you don’t cut the future, you invest in the future.

The most encouraging aspect of KU’s St. Patrick’s Day Rally was the passion and energy hundred’s of students brought to Main St.  But the day was more than a “day of rage.”  Students used the event as an organizing opportunity to get more students involved and to organize for the next step in their struggle, in our struggle.  I mean, let’s face it: the results of our efforts to resist Corbett’s cuts, will determine their future opportunities and, more general, their futures.

As amazing as the St. Patrick’s Day protest was, there was one thing that represented a significant disappointment.  You’ll recall that last Tuesday, KU President Javier Cevallos held an open forum to discuss the impacts of budget cuts. Cevallos called for “unity” and suggested that we are “all in this together.”  In support of his call for “unity,” Cevallos invited the presidents of all the unions on campus and the president of the Student Government Board to address the forum.  It was a good move for the cameras, for sure.  At the forum, I spoke briefly about Cevallos’s call for “unity.”  I said that while I am all for “being in this together,” we have to be clear on what that means.  In other words, I am going to fight to preserve higher education in PA and to defend KU and PASSHE against the Governor’s attacks.  However, if “we” are going to do this “together” our administration is going to need to show some backbone and leadership too.  That is, I am not willing to pretend that I, and my union, are on the same side at KU’s administration only do the grunt work and then get sold down the river when Cevallos decides to roll over and cut more faculty, staff, and programs.  I made the same case later in the day at our APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss.

As I discussed in an earlier post, I suspended the “normal” agenda of our Meet and Discuss meeting so that we could address the impacts of Corbett’s cuts. Here’s a small piece of that earlier post:

Over this past year, we–the APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss team–have been pushing for the Kutztown University administration to articulate a coherent, transparent vision for the university.  Such as vision does not consist of the kind of platitudes and hyper generalizations that our university president continues to articulate in public forums and in the local newspaper.  A coherent vision for a university means that the administration has articulated a set of principles that guides decisions and the university.  It also means a set of priorities that will determine how resources are spent, programmatic decisions are made, and which academic areas are considered “core” to the university.  Such a vision is not self-evident, nor is it a by-product of the invisible hand of the academic market place.  In the real world, people have to make conscious decisions and they need to take responsibility for those decisions.  The absence of a coherent vision and an institutional leadership that is explicit about its priorities and guiding principles helps foster a dysfunctional culture–where rumor and half-truths stand in for principled discourse; where concern about the stability of one’s job is the white noise seeping into every office; and where one cannot distinguish between work that is critical to one’s individual success and the success of the institution from busywork or punishment.

As I lamented in that post, we — APSCUF-KU — have been pressuring the administration, president Cevallos in particular, to articulate a vision for Kutztown University that has some substance and that could withstand the demands of a first-year writing course’s requirements for detail and argument.  At one point in our discussion, the Provost, Carlos Vargas, and I got into it a bit about the question of “leadership.”  Vargas argued that I needed to understand that not everyone is a leader in the same way, that being confrontational (like I am) is not the only way to be a leader.  I argued that I am not asking Cevallos to be “confrontational,”  I’m asking that he fulfill the first item in his job description which says that he needs to develop a vision for the university.  My argument was that Cevallos needs to demonstrate some kind of recognizable leadership, especially in this moment.

Corbett’s budget cuts presented Cevallos with an opportunity to “show us his leadership.”  He had his public forum.  The jury was out as to whether that forum was just another in a line of dog-and-pony shows, or if Cevallos was going to step up and put his administration behind defending public higher education in PA.

At first, I was encouraged when some of the student leaders who organized the St. Patrick’s Day protest told me that Cevallos had agreed to come to protest and be one of the featured speakers.  The students agreed to move the protest from its original site — President Cevallos’s front lawn — to the front of Schaeffer Auditorium (right next to the president’s house).  Apparently, there was some concern that holding the protest on the president’s front lawn could be misinterpreted as being a protest against Cevallos.  From what I was told, the students agreed to move the protest because they didn’t have an investment in the front yard of Cevallos’s house, as long as the protest would still be highly visible from Main St.

The protest began and the numbers of students continued to grow.  About 40 minutes to the protest, one of the organizers of the event, Manny Guzman, called everyone over to the podium set up for the event.  People gathered around, but no sign of Cevallos.  Speakers spoke, but no sign of Cevallos.  The protest came to a close about 2 1/2 hours after it began. Still no sign of Cevallos.  That’s right, despite telling students he would come to the protest and that he would speak at the protest, Cevallos was a no show.

I had to leave the protest early, because I had to teach.  After my class, some students tracked me down by my office to let me know how the rest of the protest went and to ask me if they could put one of their signs on my office door.  Then, they told me this story:

Toward the conclusion of the protests, students began to ask: “where is president Cevallos?”  They had all expected him to be one of the speakers.  Apparently, a rumor was circulating that Cevallos’s office had called some of the student organizers shortly before the protest to say he could not be at the protest, he had to be in Harrisburg.  A couple of students didn’t believe this and went to his house and knocked on the door.  Someone answered the door and told them he was not at home, but should check his office.  The students went to Cevallos’s office.  He was there.  He came out, apologized and said he had a meeting with the Board of Trustees that he just found out about that morning.  So, he didn’t show.

What the full truth of the situation was, I don’t pretend to know.  What I do know is that president Cevallos had an opportunity to be a leader, to come out and help bring the KU community together behind the shared purpose of defending KU and PA higher education.  That’s not even controversial.  At least not among our students and the citizens of the Commonwealth who have come out 80% against Corbett’s cuts to school districts and 70% are against his cuts to higher education. Instead, Cevallos remained in his comfortable leather chair in his office.

So, to my counterparts at the Meet and Discuss table and readers of the XChange, I ask you this: If it is true that there are “different kinds of leadership,” what kind of leadership was president Cevallos exercising when he decided to tell students he would be there and then didn’t show?  Call me abrasive if you will, but I’m having a little trouble understanding his leadership style.  Please, enlighten us.

From a union perspective at some point a struggle becomes so critical, so dire that there is no space for the luxury of sitting on the fence; no place for misplaced, postmodern undecidability.  You have to decide.  We’re at that point. In the immortal words of Florence Reece, which side are you on?

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