The Periodic Table

2012-03-02T19:00:00.000-06:00

Hit the road, Regent Sviggum...

(emphasis mine)

Regents panel tells Sviggum to choose between two posts

A regents panel believes that Steve Sviggum's new job with state Senate GOP caucus creates a "fundamental, systemic conflict" with his service on the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents. It recommended Sviggum give up one of the two posts.

Regent David McMillan said that he believes the two jobs make it "impossible to maintain the public’s confidence."

That group is making a recommendation to the full board, which meets next week and is the "final authority" on conflict questions, according to its code of ethics. Last time, when a three-regent panel recommended Sviggum pick between his posts, he gave up his job with the U's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

But this time, he did not step down.

"I’m a down-home farmer trying to do the right thing," Sviggum said during a lengthy, often accusatory response to the regents comments, "and that’s why I’m not going to walk out of here and resign.”

Sviggum repeated his point that he can manage his two positions and again argued that he vetted the job with board leaders and the U's general counsel before taking it -- a point they dispute. He said he imagines the board members find him to be a "pain in the butt," but it's important to keep him on the board for his sometimes critical perspectives.

After the meeting, he said he would "take some time" before deciding what to do next.
The panel reviewed three legal opinions released this week. John Stout, of the Minneapolis firm Fredrikson & Byron, and Mark Rotenberg, the U's general counsel, agreed that Sviggum's new job creates an "unresolvable, systemic clash of duties" with his spot on the Board of Regents.

"This systemic conflict cannot be eliminated, managed or cured," Stout wrote. "The public's confidence, the integrity of the Board and the protection of the University's public mission require that Regent Sviggum relinquish one of the two positions he currently holds."

Sviggum also submitted a legal opinion, by an attorney he has not named, which reiterated his opinion that because he's not a "decisionmaker" in his job as the Senate GOP's communications chief, he cannot have a conflict of interest. It concludes that "it is unlikely that Sviggum will be presented with any issue that presents an issue where his judgment may be impaired."

2012-03-02T05:29:00.004-06:00

Letter from President Kaler

to University of Minnesota Faculty and Staff

[Emphasis mine.]

Dear Colleagues,

I delivered my first State of the University address yesterday.
In it, I discussed new initiatives-some of which are moving forward, others that are ideas for exploration.
The following are among them:

To advance our educational mission, I announced we will be

creating a competitive pool to incent faculty to pilot innovative uses of technology; and
re-imagining our yearly academic calendar to include three full semesters, beginning on the Twin Cities campus.

In the area of research we will be

establishing a much-needed and recurring research infrastructure fund; and
developing a new "entrepreneurial leave" program for faculty to partner with the private sector.

Finally, in the broad category of outreach and engagement, we will be continuing to address and reduce Minnesota's alarming educational achievement gap. As part of that effort, we will soon hold a "mini summit" with experts from across our campuses.

I also reviewed how my budgetary decisions last fall and going forward reflect my values and agenda: to do our best to hold the line on tuition increases and keep the U accessible for students from all economic backgrounds, to support excellent scholarship, and to hire more faculty.

I spoke of my commitment to reducing administrative costs, and announced that, for fiscal year 2013, I am proposing a zero percent increase in administrative cost pools, except for salary raises and financial aid. But I have budgeted a 2.5 percent salary increase for all employees to reward you after years of pay freezes, increased health care costs, and furloughs.

I hope you will take the time to read my speech.

I hope, too, you will continue to support our capital request efforts at the Legislature. I will keep you posted as developments unfold.

I've testified before the Legislature six times in the past five weeks. But I can't advocate for the U alone. So, please, let your elected officials know that the U requires strong support.

Thank you.

Eric W. Kaler
President

I will post some brief thoughts about this letter shortly.

2012-03-01T08:34:00.001-06:00

Tripp Umbach

(U of M PR firm)

Fesses Up over Indiana U "Report"

[See an earlier discussion of the Tripp Umbach economic impact study for the U of M in Another Fine Mess (Academic Facilities).]

From the Tech Transfer Blog:

Indiana U’s bold PR statistics on economic impact backfire

Officials at Indiana University recently presented some impressive numbers concerning the school’s economic impact on the state — $4.9 billion to be exact, and $6.6B from its health programs. But independent experts claim the numbers don’t add up. In fact, according to Vanderbilt economist John Siegfried they’re “ridiculous to the extent of being really embarrassing for an institution supposedly dedicated to seeking truth and knowledge.”

Ouch. Siegfried goes even further to say the number is “so high that if it is true, Indiana should be investing in nothing except colleges and universities.”

Another number to consider is the $75,000 IU paid the economics consulting firm Tripp Umbach to conduct the study and 59-page report responsible for the unusual statistics. The firm’s CEO Paul Umbach attempted to clear up the issue by stating the reports are “public relations documents, and they’re designed to be that way,” also noting that the company’s reports are not peer-reviewed, nor are they meant to be published in academic journals. The report, according to Umbach, “exists as a communication tool” to advertise the school’s importance to the state. “It’s not going to win a Nobel Prize.”

In terms of specific errors, the report claimed that for every dollar Indiana taxpayers invest in IU, they receive a return of $24.91. But Peter McHenry, an assistant professor of economics at William and Mary, says the number is misleading since state tax dollars typically go to the school but not its hospitals, where much of the impact is credited.

At a recent news conference, Umbach defended the analysis by saying that the IU School of Medicine faculty is a “driver of a lot of the economic impact” in the report and hailed IU as a “national model” for the way it has interlaced its clinical and academic research. Umbach’s company has done similar reports for a number of public universities including Penn State, the University of Iowa, and the University of Washington. He says that IU’s impact was one of the more impressive he’s ever seen.

While McHenry doesn’t deny the importance of IU or its hospitals, he is still skeptical of the numbers, and of the return-on-investment number in particular. “If we’re making decisions based on that kind of number,” Mchnery adds, “then we’ve misled the public and misused public funds.”

Source: The Indianapolis Star

2012-03-01T07:25:00.002-06:00

Please resign, Regent Sviggum...

Now!

For Some Background.

From Today's MinnPost:

Steve Sviggum has been told to make a choice. Mila Koumpilova’s PiPress story says: “An outside attorney and the University of Minnesota's own general counsel say Regent Steve Sviggum's job with the state Senate Republicans is in conflict with his board duties. University counsel Mark Rotenberg and Minneapolis attorney John Stout both see a 'fundamental, systemic clash' between Sviggum's unpaid regent service and his communications director job for the Senate Republican Caucus. In their opinions released by the school Wednesday, they wrote Sviggum cannot manage that conflict by recusals and needs to choose between the two posts.”

Jenna Ross’s Strib story says: “‘This systemic conflict cannot be eliminated, managed or cured,’ wrote John Stout, of the Minneapolis firm Fredrikson & Byron. ‘The public's confidence, the integrity of the Board and the protection of the University's public mission require that Regent Sviggum relinquish one of the two positions he currently holds.’ The U's general counsel, Mark Rotenberg, concurred. … A three-regent committee will consider the opinions at a meeting Friday before making a recommendation to the full board, which could vote on the matter March 8. Sviggum, who took the job as executive assistant to the Senate GOP caucus in January, has questioned Stout's impartiality and submitted a legal opinion of his own, by an attorney he has not named. In a letter to regents, Sviggum noted that he ‘expressed a great concern’ about having Rotenberg involved in any review of his situation. ‘I feel Mr. Rotenberg is not unbiased and has already made up his mind on the conflict of interest.’ The opinion Sviggum released Tuesday argues that ‘this current "inquiry" lacks policy and legal basis’ and concludes that ‘it is unlikely that Sviggum will be presented with any issue that presents an issue where his judgment may be impaired.'"

Gentlemen, start your hourly billing clocks.

Comments on MinnPost

Sviggum has disgraced himself.

Submitted by Paul Udstrand on March 1, 2012 - 8:15am.

Let me get this straight, Sviggum's anonymous lawyer disputes the impartiality of the University's lawyers? Seriously? He won't even tell us where he got his counter-opinion but he's sure the U can't be trusted to be impartial?

Uh huh. Even if this were a high school debate Sviggum wouldn't get any points.

Mr. Swiggum is a little too clingy...

Submitted by Steve Titterud on March 1, 2012 - 8:33am.

...to these 2 jobs, which makes me suspicious. Why not thank everyone for their assistance and step aside with some grace?

Why is Steve Swiggum so determined to hold both positions?

2012-02-29T20:57:00.000-06:00

"I rounded up..."

Star-Tribune Commentary

The incredibly flippant attitude of former University of Minnesota president Robert Bruininks was noted in my last post. The Star-Tribune has just published a commentary which also picks up on the hubris of our former president.

Selected from Star-Tribune:

Golden Gophers indeed: Administrator largesse at U

Devote resources instead to students or to those who keep the place running.

"I rounded up." According to the Star Tribune, when asked why he signed off on an additional one-time $75,000 deposit to departing provost E. Tom Sullivan's retirement account -- an amount about double what was specified in the provost's contract -- former University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks said, "I rounded up."

Flippant. And disturbing.

When the chancellor of the University of Minnesota Duluth retired, Bruininks applauded her work and called out her willingness to endure multiple pay freezes and a smaller salary than colleagues managing smaller campuses.

Chancellor Kathryn Martin left with an extra $535,000.

Multiple pay freezes. Paid less than comparable positions on other campuses. Sound familiar to anyone?

What is going on around here? On what values are these decisions based?

According to Star Tribune's Feb. 26 article ("U execs are paid well on way out"), these payments are common and even necessary in academia to attract the best and the brightest. So this reflexive largesse is in the name of a top-notch enterprise.

The success of the university demands a more progressive set of values. Let's start by helping the university's next set of leaders -- its students, who are struggling to get and pay for financial aid.

Let's start with my staff colleagues whose earnings are low and have remained low for several years under the same pay freezes that the chancellor endured.

Let's put administrators, who make enough money to be more comfortable than many of us will ever experience, at the bottom of our priority list.

Five hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars to leave the university and not return -- outrageous and audacious irresponsibility, and it does not reflect values that this land-grant institution should hold high.

I wonder a few things about this nice little caste system they've got going. To what extent does this regime get in the way of good-faith negotiations with the university's unions? What does the Legislature have to say about these types of giveaways? Is any talent worth such a concentration of resources? What else is the university willing to sacrifice for us, the 99 percent?

Some suggestions: Suppose Goldy let go the UMD chancellor or the human-resources exec -- free and clear, no golden parachute.

Then suppose Goldy invested in the development and talents of some bright new up-and-comers to lead those functions, people who would challenge the status quo, who would work on the edges of growth. No contractual parachutes.

(Hint: We are your alumni and staff, and we're right under your noses.)

And suppose the university invested a little more in scholarships for students who need it most. And a little more in staff salaries for my colleagues who are struggling more than others.

That kind of progressivity is a value I could stand behind.

Short of stopping the practice of paying administrators anything at all when their job responsibilities are done, how about this: When a university administrator leaves her position, the university pays that person the wage of the lowest-paid union worker on campus?

That would give the person a year to "retool" (or leave) at a wage that university administrators seem to think is acceptable for 2,080 hours of work. If it's enough for an employee with real responsibilities to Goldy, then surely it's enough for someone without formal responsibility who is spending their time retooling for whatever is next.

Occupy Morrill Hall, anyone?

Scott Marshall, of Minneapolis, works in disability services at the University of Minnesota.

Simply disgusting. Time for a change, President Kaler?

2012-02-27T09:07:00.000-06:00

"I rounded up,'' Bruininks said.

Selections from Sunday's Strib, front page, above the fold...

U execs are paid handsomely on their way out

Since retiring 18 months ago as chancellor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Kathryn Martin has collected more money from the U than she did in her last two years on the job.

One of nearly a dozen university executives to step down in the past two years, Martin was granted a two-month sabbatical, a 15-month "administrative transitional leave,'' a final deposit to her retirement fund, and a severance check. Total: $535,700.

Hers was the biggest in a series of compensation packages signed by former university President Robert Bruininks worth more than $2.8 million. The deals routinely granted top administrators lengthy paid leaves, then allowed them to return to faculty positions or depart the U's payroll.

A Star Tribune review of university documents shows that seven of 10 high-ranking officials in the Bruininks administration, including the former president himself, received at least a year off with pay at their executive salaries, as well as retirement and health insurance contributions. The deals often were vague about what the administrators would do on leave. Bruininks also repeatedly waived a university policy that executives repay their stipends in the event they left the U while on leave.

Many of the agreements rival in size the recent employment extension given to retiring U Athletic Director Joel Maturi, which caused several legislators to ask if the university is spending money wisely at a time when many Minnesota students and families are struggling to pay college costs.

... critics such as Dean Zerbe say the packages are a reckless use of taxpayer subsidies at a time when working families are "grinding'' under heavy tuition burdens.

"These are nothing but sweetheart deals and golden handshakes,'' said Zerbe, a lawyer who provided federal oversight of charities, including colleges and universities, for the Senate Finance Committee under Iowa's Sen. Chuck Grassley. "The Legislature and the governor should be demanding that they look at this across the board.''

Linda Cohen, chairwoman of the university's Board of Regents, said the governing board oversees the initial employment agreements for top executives, but "from then on, it becomes a management issue."

But, she said, the board has been discussing the creation of a committee focused on compensation to provide greater oversight. She called the practice of granting transitional leaves common and appropriate. The question is whether during that leave, administrators are paid at the salary of the administration post they are leaving or the faculty one they are taking, she said.

The university's current policy says the salary while on leave is negotiable but "salary and benefits are typically paid at the level of the assumed, or resumed, faculty or professional position rather than at the administrative salary level.''

The same issue arose about two years ago in North Carolina, where the state university system paid about $8 million in executive salaries to 117 administrators who either returned to the faculty or left the university.

North Carolina chancellors ordered reforms that scaled back leaves from one year to six months and made them payable at faculty salaries, not executive rates.

"People stay at universities for a long time these days, and their careers are often phases of things,'' said Carrier, 62, who got a 13-month, $229,000 leave to catch up on a faculty career she left more than 20 years ago. After three months of that leave, she took a job as special assistant to senior vice president Robert Jones. Her deal allows her to take the rest of that leave at a later date.

Charles Muscoplat, 63, president until next June 17 of a university corporation that manages the Dakota County real estate known as UMore Park, said he will use his one-year leave to chair a committee that helps commercialize faculty pharmaceutical inventions and work on clinical trials of a drug to treat patients with cystic fibrosis, among other projects. He will earn a salary of $251,500 while on leave, then return to faculty as a teacher and researcher.

"I do not anticipate taking a 'leave' meaning a leave from duties," he said by e-mail. "I understand this to mean a leave allowing me to return to my skill base in pharmaceutical, clinical trial, tech transfer and teaching."

At the same time, many of the "transition'' agreements worked out by Bruininks are flavored with language that goes beyond the purpose of academic readiness.

"The salary earned during your leave will not need to be repaid should you not return to your faculty position in the Law School,'' Bruininks wrote to Provost E. Thomas Sullivan, whose one-year leave will be cut short when he resigns from the U to become president of the University of Vermont on July 15. A U spokesman said Friday that Sullivan will resign from the U "no later than July 14.''

Sullivan's transition package at the U, which allowed for a payment of $340,750 over 12 months, also contains a special $75,000 retirement payment, documents show. Bruininks said he granted the benefit at his own discretion to reward the provost for staying on the job for about six months longer than originally planned. Under Sullivan's provost contract, the retirement payment should have been about half that size, according to documents.

"I rounded up,'' Bruininks said.

In Carrier's case, Bruininks gave her 13 months of paid leave and a 3.5 percent pay increase. This lifted her annual salary to $212,000 in time for the leave. Should she decide not to return to the faculty after 13 months of transitional leave, the requirement to repay the university for the leave is waived. If she does return to the faculty, Bruininks authorized two months of full-time summer salary to support her research and funds for a half-time research assistant.

"You have been an extraordinary leader and colleague, and I am honored to have had you as a member of my administration,'' Bruininks wrote in her transition agreement.

The documents vary in their discussion of work expectations.

For example, Bruininks gave Martin an expense account of $15,000 to entertain donors, work with alumni and spend on other university functions. Martin did not respond to calls and e-mails asking for comment.

Frank Cerra, former dean of the medical school and senior vice president for Health Sciences, received his administrative salary of $481,500 for a year on leave that ended Dec. 31, 2011. He said he organized a large-scale grant application and worked on two other grants before returning to a faculty position. During a two-year phased retirement with reduced hours and pay, the 69-year-old Cerra will largely be working on a history of the U's Academic Health Center, the amalgam of health schools he led from 1996 to 2010.

Martin received an extended "transitional'' leave even though she wasn't planning to return, Bruininks said. A straight retirement could have limited her to a severance payment of up to one year of her salary. But Bruininks wanted to compensate Martin for years of taking a $233,250 annual salary that had been repeatedly frozen and was lower than the standard pay for leaders of even smaller campuses.

Martin had the option of keeping her tenure and returning to the faculty, but Bruininks said he feared that with her strong personality, "she would have wanted to run it [the school] from the bleachers.''
"I'll just be honest about it,'' Bruininks said. "It was better for her and better for the campus and more cost-effective for the U.''

Disgusting, simply disgusting...

Some comments from readers:

All I can say is 'Wow.' My gosh. and we wonder why tuition is so off the charts spendy....

Filed under: "why college costs so much."

This is going on while all the unions at the U are on a step/pay freeze. I understand that admin will always command a higher salary, but the hardships of the many do not seem to influence how their pay and buyouts are determined. Maturi's buyout alone could make up the lost salary/raises of hundreds at the U who do well at their job.

What an embarrassing institution the U of MN has become over the past decades. ---- Whenever a person says "I'll just be honest about it," how many truths were they hiding before that point? NEVER trust someone who all of a sudden starts a sentence by saying 'Let me be honest here."

Academic arrogance at its' finest! These people live in their own little world, making up silly reasons to give themselves just a little bit more of the public pie...at every chance. And tuition keeps rising. Disgusting!

And they complain that they just don't get enough money from the State.

This is outrageous and must stop.

They need these packages to "retain talent." Who are they kidding, these folks are LEAVING, some for other higher paying jobs anyway. Just let them go.

Irresponsible and egregious

These are the kinds of issues that should make the procurement of taxpayer funding very difficult indeed.

The U has grown to be a an obese creature that relies on public funds to stuff its face. The admin people there should be embarrassed.

All this "reasoning and explaining" by the guilty parties is just an attempt to rationalize their unsavory actions. Anyone who would read this article would not need to have a college degree to understand these despicable golden parachutes. These people have absolutely no shame in their greedy actions while students struggle to even remain in college with the high cost of tuition.

These people are so out of touch with reality that it is simply pathetic. To call these payouts anything but gifts or golden parachutes is insulting to every reader's intelligence.

Bruininks rounded it up? What? Nice legacy to leave Bob.

Now I know why faculty salaries have been frozen for several years. The pigs must have their slop. But I'm still confused by why it takes a year to "retool" and why they need to be paid at the executive level to do so. Surely anyone who is qualified to be in academia can teach entry-level courses with just a little preparation and then move up from there.

As a U staff member, I am also outraged by the huge payouts to the executive administration staff upon leaving the University. The salaries of all faculty and staff have been frozen for several years- rightly so given the economic downturn. Yet, the University continues to coddle the higher admin ranks whose main contribution seems to be creating more red tape for the people who are actually doing something.

They can try and justify it all they want but it is nothing but greed by people that know they can get away with it because they aren't held accountable. Bruininks says "I rounded up", well round up with your own money, not mine. Look what they did for Carrier. On top of everything else she got a 3.5% pay increase just in time for her leave. I haven't received a pay increase for two years but I am just happy to have my job.

If that comes under what is needed to retain the best then it is another example of a broken system corrupted by greed.

Pouring $250,000+ gravy on top of very mediocre careers is absurd. Only educrats could say these freeloaders are the "best and brightest" in society.

Why is the U hiring "the best and brightest"? Clearly, based on performance, the U is not in the top tier of schools in the country. Maybe the focus should be on hiring people who (1) are here for the long haul, and (2) accept that the goal of the U is to provide high quality graduates for MN. Let's stop competing with the rest of the country to be recognized as an elite top tier university. Instead, let's aim for what is best for MN.

Gosh, I hope this isn't the same "talent" that Wall Street needed to plunge us into the recession four years ago. Everyone involved with this should be grossly ashamed of themselves.

This makes me ill. My wife and I were both teachers who spent well over a thousand dollars a year to maintain classroom supplies and I had to raise thousands of dollars a year to maintain athletic programs. An outrage that is beyond belief---the worker bees suffer and slave away while the leadership grows fatter and fatter. I have now become a member of the 99%. Sickening!!!!!

I really tire of this "best and the brightest" argument, as far as pay and benefits. The reality is that many of these administrators are the best at ... working the system.

It is sad to see greedy universities forcing our children and many parents with suffocating debt. When will the media hold them accountable. If the university leaders cannot hold tuition in line with inflation I'd say they failed our children and families by forcing us to mortgage our future. Yet the universities consider this failed-track record worthy of massive bonuses?

Maybe the U needs set aside a few more million to hire more consultants to form a committee to study the problem.

This is criminal, at a time when students and their families have an increasing difficult time sacrificing to come up with tuition, ineffective leaders at the University of Minnesota are only interested in lining their own pockets. Take Muscoplat for example, he was put out to pasture about 5 years ago, from his position as Dean of College of Agriculture and Food Science, as so-called “Vice President of Statewide Strategic Services”. The people of this State deserve to know what he accomplished during this period. Where is the accountability? He states he will use $251,000 more of the taxpayers money so that he can “return to my skill base in pharmaceutical, clinical trial, tech transfer and teaching”, and “ he will use his one-year leave to chair a committee that helps commercialize faculty pharmaceutical inventions and work on clinical trials of a drug to treat patients with cystic fibrosis, among other projects” . Someone should be asking how effective he has been in this role at the University. We should be asking how effective is the “Pharmaceutical Commercialization Initiative” http://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/news/drugpipeline/ which Muscoplat played a key role in developing, or ask about the numerous pharmaceutical commercial ideas that he was involved in. The work done at UMore Park, could have been absorbed by others at a salary of $80,000 or should have been turned over to private interests. A closer examination would show that Muscoplats “arrangement” like many others, are only payback for loyalty to Cerra and Bruiniks, allowing them to create their own pet projects to keep them occupied and on airplanes, at our expense.

It's the administrators who are fleecing the system, not the teachers. My mom is a retired teacher from a 2-year college in the MnSCU system. My 27 year old supervisor at work who only has a Bachelors Degree makes more money than my mom, who has 2 masters degrees, made as a 36 year teacher...and MnSCU and the STATE told my mom she was paid too much for what she did. Meanwhile, the president of of her college, after being there for only about 6 months, received a $9,000 bonus because enrollment was up. Administrators only care about themselves. Everyone shows all this hate towards the teachers, but it's ADMINISTRATORS who are destroying education.

"Gee, I wonder how many of these folks were members of one of those dastardly unions." ---- NONE. Administrators cannot be a part of a union because they are managers...and are firmly AGAINST unions in general. And, as you can see, this is why they don't want unions.

Quote ~ 'It's inaccurate, they said, to characterize the leaves as a year away from work'......NO, its not inaccurate to characterize these leaves as paid vacations because there are no rules, oversight or requirements. This is a misuse of public funds, but when you have the fox watching the hen house, what would you expect? Why on earth would you give an HR person a leave of absence with full executive pay?

I worked at the U/Fairview hospital for 35 years as a senior clinical scientist. When I asked for early retirement due to health issues it was denied. I guess I wasn't high enough on on the food chain.

Ms Martin, wipe that disgusting smile off your face - you should be ashamed. I have a son who works almost a 40 hr/week part time job to help pay for his education while fat cat retirees like you sail off to Tuscany. Disgusting!

I think they should be paid what they are worth. Unfortunately, there is a minimum wage law that prevents that.

The obscene thing here is that many if not most of the people on the front lines actually teaching students and doing the basic business of the University are getting paid peanuts compared to the administrators at the top. The deans and the presidents get golden parachutes, while the adjunct professors teaching 400+ students a year get their wages frozen and their health insurance taken away. The U needs to restore some balance to the way that salaries and benefits are distributed. Priority needs to be placed on quality teaching and research, not on administrating.

This is outrageous!!! And, they keep asking for more money from the State of Minnesota every year!!! This must stop!!!!

The claim these sweetheart deals are necessary to retain talent is nonsense. It is inconceivable to me that an academic who has been out of their field for decades, is nearing the end of their career, and who needs one or more years to get up to speed, would be in demand anywhere. The administrators who okayed these deals need to be fired.

From Minnpost Feb 16, 2011 - "Departing U of M President Bob Bruininks is generally pleased with Dayton’s budget and its lighter hand on education. Jena Ross quotes Bruininks on the Strib’s “Campus Connect” blog: “The Governor’s proposed funding level for the University means we will be able to hold any tuition increase for Minnesota students for the upcoming academic year at a very modest amount necessary to cover inflation. This lower tuition level will protect students and their families first, while we continue the hard work to cut our expenses and balance the University’s budget.”

The big lie here is that administrative bureaucrats in education are branded as rare "talent." Consultants and headhunters yield larger fees with larger packages, and the people making these hiring decisions think of themselves as "talent." Grown-up oversight is badly needed here.

So the taxpayer is paying for 62 and 70 year olds to take paid time off to sharpen their skills, for what? These people are past or near retirement age. Not saying they can't contribute to society but if they truly believe in youth and education they wouldn't continue to feed at the public trough. Volunteer your time and experience. 250,000 to 500,000, payouts and salaries. Disgusting!

2012-02-23T07:59:00.002-06:00

Rotenberg Redux

University of Minnesota

Discrimination Suit Goes to Court

Some background:

Katie Brenny and the University of Minnesota

From today's Minnesota Daily:

Former associate women's golf coach Katie Brenny says she was discriminated against because of her sexual orientation.

Former associate women’s golf coach Katie Brenny will bring her sexual discrimination lawsuit against the University of Minnesota to court Thursday.

The hearing in the Minnesota Court of Appeals could set a trial date in her suit against former golf director John Harris.

When Brenny took the job as Gophers associate women’s head golf coach in the summer of 2010, she thought she had her dream job. Instead, the aspiring professional golfer found herself at a desk, handling paperwork and only interacting with players in a mentorship role — not coaching.

She sued the Board of Regents and Harris in January 2011 alleging that Harris kept her from coaching duties after discovering she is a lesbian.

Brenny left her position just two months into the job in October 2010 after Harris limited her involvement in the golf program.

Brenny did not travel to any of the women’s away matches and claims she wasn’t allowed to discuss golf with players in her brief tenure.

The 14-page complaint alleges that Harris factored sexual orientation into his search for a new associate women’s head coach and offered the job to Brenny without knowing she is a lesbian. It also alleges discrimination, retaliation and sexual harassment based on sexual orientation.

University General Counsel Mark Rotenberg said in a statement last year that “the University of Minnesota strongly contests both the factual foundation and legal basis of the claims asserted in this lawsuit.”

Pathetic, simply pathetic.

Ex-Minnesota Golf Director Harris: Brenny defamed me

And So It Goes...More Funny Smells from University of Minnesota Athletics Department

John Harris, University of Minnesota Golf Coach, Leaves after less than one year...

Why can't a woman, be more like a man?

2012-02-18T09:09:00.003-06:00

Star-Tribune Editorial:

Give Kaler a Break on Maturi Decision

This editorial reminds me of Saturday Night Live news when they say "Really!" Really? You can't be serious. Reader's comment

For background, please see:

Discretionary Funds at the University of Minnesota

The reaction of the community to the original revelation that the retiring Athletic Director at the University would get a significant going away present was general outrage. An attempt was made to pacify the great unwashed by claiming that "no donor funds" were used for the payout. More detail was later provided that the President had used money from a discretionary fund to settle with the Athletic Director, apparently in the belief that this somehow justified the pay out. Unfortunately this line of reasoning will not wash because ultimately donor funds were the source of the discretionary funds. The money did not simply appear out of thin air. It came from interest on endowment funds - which came from donors. It is this sort of twisted logic, or more charitably attempt at a smoke screen, that makes dealing with past, and in this case present, University of Minnesota administrations so frustrating.

In the editorial lampooned above the pitiful plea to give our new president a break is issued. The only break, given the circumstances, that I am willing to give is this. The president is a smart man and I hope he learns from this that the action was a bad move for the university. The fall-out also included the revelation of a rather large amount of discretionary funds. This is of benefit because the previous administration played fast, loose, and non-transparently with the money. I hope that in the future the use of this money will be justified and made public.

My friend Michael McNabb writes about this situation and demonstrates in a less emotional way the folly of the recent action and the lack of insight on the part of the Star-Tribune editorial board:

On closer examination the decision makes perfect sense for a budget-challenged athletic department. It's also consistent with the president's stated belief that academic and athletic excellence go hand in hand . . . .

Kaler has stressed the importance of athletics as the public's "window" to the university, and he is clearly aware that success in big-time athletics primes the pump for more private contributions. The Maturi plan is an investment in that mission.
February 14, 2012 Star Tribune editorial on Give Kaler a Break on Maturi Decision (emphasis added).

As for the belief that academic and athletic excellence go hand in hand, consider that in fiscal year 2012 the amount of state appropriations that the U of M administration allocated to the athletic department ($6.9 million) was substantially greater than the amount the administration allocated to the business school ($3.3 million) or to the law school ($3.6 million). See section 1 in Going To Market Part II.

As for the priming the pump myth, if big-time college sports actually produced widespread alumni support for academic programs, then the universities with winning teams would dominate the rankings of schools by percentage of alumni donors. Yet schools such as Ohio State, Michigan, and Wisconsin are not even in the top 75. In fact, smaller schools that provide a quality academic experience for undergraduate students dominate the rankings. See the September 15, 2011 report of U.S. News & World Report on Alumni's Top 10 Most Loved Schools.

This use of donors' funds puts at risk the continuing goodwill and financial support of donors and state legislators. See A Question of Priorities Part II.

For more on the economics of the athletic department see Expensive Icing.

Michael W. McNabb

University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974
University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

2012-02-16T10:53:00.004-06:00

Another Fine Mess

(Academic Facilities)

In its 2012 Capital Request the administration is seeking $90 million in HEAPR bonds. Governor Dayton has proposed $20 million. (HEAPR bonds are used for the maintenance and renovation of existing academic facilities.)

In the 2006 "stadium session" the administration devoted its energy to securing $137 million in bonds for a new football stadium while the legislature slashed the HEAPR allocation from the $80 million requested by the administration to $30 million. In 2008 the legislature chopped the HEAPR request (the "cornerstone" of the 2008 Capital Request of the University) from $100 million to $35 million. In 2010 the legislature stripped down the HEAPR request from $100 million to $56 million.

The failure of the administration to prevent these drastic cuts was a result of its own misplaced priorities and inept legislative strategy. See Academic Facilities. [Added later, please see below***] The former chair of the Capital Investment Committee (that has jurisdiction over all University bond requests) expressed her frustration at the "arrogance" of the administration. See The Cheese Stands Alone.

The cumulative effect of this failure is clearly visible on campus. The academic infrastructure is beginning to crumble around us. On February 9 President Kaler told the Higher Education Committee that the HEAPR needs are "well more than $500 million if not closer to $1 billion." It is the sad consequence of years of neglect of existing academic buildings.

The response of the state legislators to this stunning estimate was to request information on the economic impact of the University on the state. See the February 9, 2012 report of the Minnesota Daily on Kaler Makes Pitch.

The administration will likely pull off the shelf the 2011 economic report by Tripp Umbach. President Bruininks commissioned this report and paid for it with $100,000 in "discretionary funds." One major problem with report is that it is not an independent analysis. Its conclusions were preordained. Consider this statement by the U of M vice president for research (made before the study was conducted):

Tripp Umbach will also work collaboratively with the U of M to develop analysis and appropriate narrative to describe the unique community and statewide benefits that result from the U of M's operations. . . .

Special emphasis will be placed on highlighting, quantifying and discussing the University's impacts that have a positive impact on the economic, physical and social health of the local communities within the region as well as on the State. Tripp Umbach recognizes that the research findings may be used by the University of Minnesota in garnering support from a broad range of government units--we will structure the research to provide information that will serve to support government relations, advancement, and development.
See p. 2 of the Overview. (emphasis added)

So the administration received the report that it wanted. The decision on HEAPR bonds (or on any other matter) should not be based on such a report.

The case should be made directly on its own merits by presenting specific information on the continuing deterioration of numerous buildings. The person who can present this information in graphic detail is the associate vice president for facilities management. See U of M Facilities Management.

On this issue the President does have the facts to support the position of the University. But he crippled his ability to be a credible advocate when he raided the University of Minnesota Foundation for hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a new one year position for the athletic director. This use of University resources raised questions as to whether the University really needs the funds it seeks from the legislature. See A Question of Priorities Part II.

The $300 million that the Governor and some legislators are willing to spend on construction of (yet another) stadium should instead be used to begin to rebuild the academic infrastructure at the University. Not only would this provide the construction jobs and the boost to the economy, but it would also provide a benefit of much greater significance for the future of our children and our state.

Michael W. McNabb
University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974
University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

***Bill Gleason Adds Later

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

George Orwell

A good example of this technique is provided in one of the links used in this essay. My friend Michael McNabb pointed this out in an email after this piece first went up:

"This current essay includes a link to the previous essay on Academic Facilities. That previous essay includes a link to and an excerpt from a May 2011 notice of the legislative auditor. The excerpt refers to previous reports by the auditor in 1988 and in 1991 in which he concluded that the administration did not have effective planning for preventive maintenance. When you click on the link now it takes you to an October 2011 notice that does not refer to the findings of the 1988 and the 1991 reports. The May 2011 notice has been deleted from the website of the auditor."

[Emphasis/highlighting, mine]

An inconvenient truth can simply be deleted? Obviously, so.

Unfortunately, this is not the only example I know. Many damning endorsements of homeopathy have been removed from the Academic Health Center's web site, with never an acknowledgment of the bad, unscientific approach to medicine that allowed them to appear on the University of Minnesota web site in the first place.

2012-02-10T13:31:00.011-06:00

Nemo iudex in causa sua

No one should be a judge in his own case...

Selected from the Star-Tribune Article:

"It appears to constitute conflict of interest" Cohen tells board.

Regents Chair Linda Cohen announced Friday that Sviggum's job as communications chief for the Senate GOP "appears to me to constitute an employment-related conflict of interest with his duties as a regent." But she said she would not make a recommendation to the board until getting internal and external legal advice.

The university has retained attorney John Stout of Fredrikson & Byron to draft an opinion by Feb. 24. After considering that opinion, as well as another by the U's general counsel, Cohen will either make a recommendation to the board or appoint an ad hoc group to further review the issue.

During the last conflict-of-interest dustup involving Sviggum's job with the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, then-Board Chair Clyde Allen formed and headed such a group.

Cohen said that review was objective and fair but she "wanted to make it even more so" this time. "This is a complex and serious matter that warrants our careful review and due diligence."

In past interviews, Sviggum has said that even if the board determines there is a conflict, he will not step down. He declined after Friday's meeting to repeat that, saying that he's "trying to be less confrontational." But he added that "at this point in time, right now, today, I would not plan on stepping down."

After Cohen's announcement, Sviggum made an emotional statement to the board, saying that he did not want to bring "any harm to this wonderful institution of the university." He again argued that his two roles can be managed.

"I do not, do not have an unmanageable... conflict of interest," he said.

[If I say it twice, it must be true?]

The board is the "final authority" on conflict questions, according to its code of ethics. But as Cohen noted Friday, there's "no way to force a regent to step down."

This is the second time since Sviggum joined the board that his day job has raised a conflict-of-interest question.

Last March, a three-regent panel decided that Sviggum's paid position with the U's Humphrey School presented a regular, unmanageable conflict with his unpaid spot on the board, and recommended he choose between the two posts. He did.

That group recommended that the board revise its code of ethics to prohibit university employees from also serving on the board. The board passed that revision Friday.

Sviggum should resign immediately. To stubbornly refuse to do so is an unnecessary waste of the time and treasure of the University of Minnesota.

The man is a virtual conflict-of-interest seeking missile and apparently doesn't even realize it.

Added later from comments on the Strib article:

You've got prior casework that serving two masters related to the U doesn't work... and it doesn't pass the smell test. Mr. Sviggum has got to choose which job he's holding down. Again.

"I do not, do not have an unmanageable... conflict of interest," he said.
Saying it twice does not make it so. Nemo iudex in sua causa - no one should be a judge in their own case. Think of the University of Minnesota time and treasure that is being wasted on this matter. Sviggum should resign now.

Sviggum needs to resign from the Board of Regents. He's a high-maintenance member and the board has more important things to do than deal with him.

Attention Steve Sviggum: I know this is almost impossible for you to comprehend; but, there are literally thousands of fully qualified and committed individuals who would be honored to devote their time and attention to leading a great university as a member of the board of regents. Unless you are prepared to say you will manage your job conflict by being an unrelenting advocate for the University at all times you have no right to be a Regent.

When Sviggum accepted his new legislative job on Jan. 16, he claimed he had spoken to the Board of Regents' counsel, chair, vice-chair and exec. dir. about the appropriateness of doing so, suggesting they all said "yes." Was Sviggum lying about this? How much will it cost the U to have the Fredrikson & Byron attorney draft his opinion on this matter?

Does Mr. Sviggum now hold the record for taxpayer dollars expanded in resolving his conflict of interest issues? Perhaps it's time for an intervention?

Sviggum for once in his life needs to do the honorable thing and simply ride into the sunset.

The potential for conflict of interest in holding both of Regent Sviggum's positions is obvious. And the failure to see that, in and of itself, should disqualify one from being a regent of an institution of higher education.

Our beloved U of M never slow in raising tuition but has funds to hire outside legal advice on the obvious conflict of interest. It is pretty pathetic that those that run the University from the President on down to the Board of Regents cannot see this.

This is a lot of rigmarole for a guy who for the life of him can't seem to do the right moral, ethical, or spiritual thing.

There is no politician more oblivious to ethical conflicts and more stubborn about his anti-government bias than Steve Sviggum. As a political spokesman he is going to support the Republican's massive budget cuts to education -- an extremely clear conflict of interest for a University Regent who should be maximizing opportunity for higher education.

The first time that the Senate GOP caucus disagrees with the University on a funding or capital request and communicates that to the public, Steve Sviggum has failed in his responsibilities as a U of M Regent. He is the face of denying the U's request before it is even decided upon. And Sviggum can't see that as a conflict? Or he believes that it is OK for him to just step aside and be neutral as his paymasters fight against the goals of the U of MN? Breathtaking hypocrisy from a lifetime politician.

Board Members have an obligation to check their personal hats at the door and work for the betterment of the University. When you have multiple hats, it becomes impossible to maintain the impartiality. A clear thinking person would heed good counsel and step back and realize that they must choose. It means leaving one position or the other. I respect someone that makes the right decision much more than someone who is forced to do the right thing because people are watching.

Good night and good luck and goodbye, Steve.

Sviggum has proved himself to be a classic narcissist and manipulator - he's willing to have the university, whom he purports to love so much, incur thousands of dollars of legal fees, along with the time of his colleagues - to examine his new questionable arrangement. For Sviggum it's all about ME, ME, ME. He's an embarrassment to the university and needs to leave. But he won't - he likes all the 'prestige' and power that comes with being a Regent and a 'go to guy' at the Capitol.

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2012-02-10T12:08:00.000-06:00

Sviggum Wastes More University of Minnesota

Time and Money

From the Minnesota Daily

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents is moving ahead with a review of Steve Sviggum’s dual roles to determine if a conflict of interest exists.

Sviggum, a former state legislator, announced he was taking a job as the executive assistant and communications chief for the Senate Republican Caucus Jan. 16. He remains a member of the Board, but was asked by chairwoman Linda Cohen to abstain from voting in committee and Board meetings Thursday and Friday.

During Friday’s Board meeting, Cohen released a statement stating that “based upon my understanding of his employment responsibilities, this position appears to me to constitute an employment-related conflict of interest with his duties as a Regent.”

Cohen has asked University General Counsel Mark Rotenberg and an independent attorney’s opinion on whether a conflict of interest exists. Both opinions are expected by Feb. 24.

Cohen expects a decision by the next Board meeting in March.

“It is important that we be objective, judicious, and fair and I believe this process lives up to those principles," Cohen said in a statement.

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2012-02-09T22:25:00.002-06:00

For no man can serve two masters...

Please Resign Regent Sviggum

[Update: at Friday morning Board of Regents meeting Sviggum did NOT resign. Full post later.]

From the Star-Tribune:

The chair of the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents will announce Friday how the board will examine whether Regent Steve Sviggum's new state Senate job creates a conflict of interest.
"It seems to many people and to some board members that there is a conflict," said Regent Linda Cohen. "But we have not determined anything as a board."

Sviggum, a former speaker of the House and commissioner of Labor and Industry, said that as the Senate GOP's communications chief, for which he is paid $102,000 a year, he is not a "decisionmaker" and thus cannot have a conflict of interest. "I would argue that if you're not making decisions, it's very hard to make a decision that benefits you or your institution or your organization," he said.

But several newspapers' editorial boards and university employees have argued that such disclosure does not solve a larger issue of whether Sviggum's paid position with the Senate will make him a less effective regent.

The Republican caucus' plans may have "legitimate policy positions that sacrifice higher education investments for investments elsewhere in the state," said Cramer, who is chair of the Faculty Consultative Committee but said he was not speaking on behalf of the committee.

When that happens, Cramer said by e-mail, Sviggum will not be able to advocate for the University of Minnesota as a regent ought to.

***

2012-02-09T15:04:00.000-06:00

Green = Tuition, Purple = Average U Scholarship

Myth of the High Tuition - High Aid Model

At the University of Minnesota

Kudos to the Daily!

From the University of Minnesota Daily:

Since 2000, annual tuition at the University of Minnesota has risen more than $7000 for residents, a jump of about 165 percent.

The University gave out $35 million more in scholarships in 2010 than it did in 2000 and the percentage of students who receive funding from the school has risen from 15 to 36 percent.

In 2000-01 an average scholarship from the school covered 60 percent of resident tuition. Last year, it covered 33 percent.

2012-02-08T22:36:00.002-06:00

"Everything we do at the University of Minnesota
is out in the open." former Pres. Brunininks

Discretionary Funds at

The University of Minnesota

From the Star-Tribune:

The six-figure retirement package granted recently to Joel Maturi has thrown a spotlight on spending practices at the University of Minnesota, particularly a little-known discretionary fund that has placed millions of dollars at the disposal of the institution's presidents since 2000 to fund pet projects or spark change in the massive bureaucracy.

Documents reviewed by the Star Tribune show that former President Robert Bruininks spent almost $2 million during his last three years in office on projects such as a mentoring program, patronage of Gophers athletic boosters and a therapeutic horseback riding program for disabled children.

Such discretionary funds appear to be common at large universities. Bruininks occasionally turned to the fund, comprising University of Minnesota Foundation money, to avoid the controversy sometimes entailed by spending tuition funds or taxpayer dollars. Nevertheless, the Maturi episode illustrates the delicate perception problems that surround university finances at a time of shrinking state budgets and rising tuition.

President Eric Kaler's decision to spend more than half of his annual allotment from the Presidential Advised Fund on one personnel matter is a departure from the pattern set by Bruininks. He supported 12 to 20 initiatives a year at an average price of $40,000, records show.

"It's about trying to move the dial and create a culture of innovation and creativity," Bruininks said Wednesday in an interview. "They're the kinds of things that fall through the cracks of normal academic investments."

His own spending from the fund included:

• $99,712 in 2010 for the University Northside Partnership, an effort to boost wellness and prosperity in north Minneapolis

• $28,250 to entertain guests considered "boosters'' in a suite at six Gopher football games during TCF Bank Stadium's 2010 inaugural season

• $5,000 in fiscal year 2010 for production of "Troubled Waters," a documentary film about Mississippi River pollution.

Filling gaps, solving problems

The annual $650,000 fund is provided by the University of Minnesota Foundation, the U's private fundraising arm. The president's only obligation is to spend the money in the best interests of the university and report back to the foundation, a spokesman said.

The Advised Fund is separate from an even larger and older President's Discretionary Operations and Management Fund, which totaled $1 million in fiscal year 2011. Line-item spending records from that fund were not immediately available from university officials.

Bruininks said the Advised Fund let him get things done quickly and is modest in the context of a $3.7 billion institution. "Quite frankly, this fund is way too small to do the things that need to be done," he said.

In 2011, he tapped the fund for $100,000 to pay for a study used by the U's Capitol lobbyists to show the school's impact on the Minnesota economy. He also used the fund to support "new ideas" and early-stage projects in the hope that they would attract matching funds from elsewhere.

Bruininks called Kaler's decision to tap the fund for Maturi's final year "perfectly appropriate.'' One of the fund's uses is to "fill gaps" and "solve problems,'' he said.

When Maturi retires this summer as athletic director, he will start a one-year appointment as a special assistant to Kaler, for which he will earn the same salary he does now: $351,900, plus benefits and a retirement package that will push his compensation to more than $468,000. University spokesman Chuck Tombarge said Kaler wanted to retain Maturi for his fundraising abilities and connections while the new athletic director takes over the job. He didn't want the expense to fall on other budgets.

Such funds are common

Charles Schwartz, professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, said the existence of such a discretionary fund is typical for a large university. Schwartz has studied the use of such funds at Berkeley and pushed for greater disclosure.

"Accountability and transparency are buzzwords often used by executives who want to appear respectable; holding them to it is another matter,'' he said.

Howard Bunsis, a finance expert hired earlier this year by the U's chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said that such funds are "certainly not anything unusual."

Bunsis' review of the U's finances was highly critical of spending on administration, but it was based on data not deep enough to look into particular funds. He said that the Maturi episode illustrates that the U's "priorities are not appropriate."

"If they have a choice between spending [the fund] on an old athletic director or enhancing an academic program, in my view, the money should always go to enhancing the academic program," he said.

Documents from the last three years of Bruininks' tenure show outlays for projects including scholarships, a lecture series and $65,000 annually split among the coordinate campuses' chancellors to use for new initiatives. Bruininks' biggest one-time expense since 2009, the earliest year for which records were available, was $250,000 toward the U's "Driven to Discover" marketing campaign.

How Kaler uses the fund could illustrate his leadership style and personal passions. Under Bruininks, who rides horses, the fund paid for two equine initiatives, including "We Can Ride,'' a therapeutic riding program for disabled children in partnership with the U's College of Veterinary Medicine. Bruininks, who entered college as a music major, also funded jazz scholarships and a special anniversary of the jazz ensemble on the Morris campus.

I have a lot more to say about this. What is particularly disturbing is the way that Bruininks used some of these funds to "tilt the table" in favor of pursuing his grandiose schemes that were not in the best interests of the university. This under the table spending has got to stop.

These revelations give the lie to former President Bruininks' claim that "everything was out in the open."

2012-02-08T14:39:00.005-06:00

A Question of Priorities

Part II

In response to a question from a reporter about criticism from state legislators about the compensation for the special assistant position created for Joel Maturi for one year President Kaler declared:

"His principal job next year is going to be fundraising. He will raise for the institution far more money than we're paying him in this salary. The salary is a big number. I get that."

See the February 8, 2012 report in the
Pioneer Press on Kaler on Maturi's Term

Either the President does not "get it" or he is intentionally turning a blind eye to the real issues.

The University of Minnesota Foundation is the source the President is tapping for funds to pay for the new position he has created. Those funds were solicited for the general purposes of education, research, and public service. See the University of Minnesota Foundation. The administration may be able to lawfully raid the Foundation to use non-restricted funds for this purpose. But donors may see this action as an abuse of trust for using funds for a purpose for which none of them intended their contributions to be used. See the sample comments in A Question of Priorities.

This action has also outraged a number of state legislators. They see the administration making up a new job in which the former athletic director will collect $468,000 in total compensation. So they question whether they can trust the administration to use the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual state appropriations for the right priorities and whether the University really needs the amount of state appropriations it seeks. See the February 4, 2012 report in the Star Tribune on Maturi's pay does not play well at Capitol.

So with one action the President has put at risk the continuing goodwill and financial assistance of both donors and state legislators. This may cost the University far more than the former athletic director might raise in his one year as special assistant.

Why should the University incur this risk? Most of the soon to be former athletic director's relationships are with sports boosters, so it is likely that most of the funds he would raise would be for the athletic department. This is the responsibility of the new athletic director (with a likely base salary at or approaching $400,000) and his director of development with a staff of 10 persons dedicated to raising funds for athletics. For general fund raising the University has the president of the University of Minnesota Foundation (with a base salary of $521,415) together with scores of staff members. See the Development Directory.

If the President does not act to remove this risk and to restore the trust of donors and state legislators, then the Board of Regents should do so.

Michael W. McNabb

University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974
University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

2012-02-03T22:35:00.002-06:00

University of Minnesota

Maturi Deal Not Selling...

From the Star-Tribune:

Joel Maturi's compensation package after retiring as University of Minnesota athletic director could hurt the university's future state funding, two legislators who serve on higher education committees said Friday.

On July 1, a day after he retires as AD, Maturi will begin a one-year appointment as a special assistant to university President Eric Kaler. Maturi will receive the same base salary he earns as athletic director -- $351,900 -- plus a standard university benefits package (health insurance and retirement totaling slightly more than 33 percent of his salary) that will push his compensation to more than $468,000.

Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, the lead DFLer on the House Education Finance Committee, described the package as "a golden parachute'' that "will hurt the U when President Kaler comes crying poor to the Legislature for money for our students.''

Sen. David Brown, R-Becker, a member of the Senate Higher Education Committee, said he did not want to micro-manage every decision made by Kaler and the university's regents, saying legislators would ultimately have a say in the makeup of the regents if they disagreed with policy. But he also predicted that legislators would not forget Maturi's deal at budget time.

"It will influence us when they come to the Legislature and we've read these kinds of stories, yes,'' Brown said. "How badly do they need money if that's how they're handling it? I don't think the Higher Ed Committee is going to jump in [at this point], but again, it is going to influence what we think is necessary for budgeting.''

"The university takes very seriously the feedback we've received from legislators, positive and negative, and President Kaler and his team consider this feedback very carefully,'' university spokesman Chuck Tombarge said after a meeting with Kaler's staff. "To be clear, no state or donor funds will be used to pay for Mr. Maturi's salary, but certainly if legislators have concerns, the administration stands ready to meet with them and discuss those concerns.''

Kaler declined a request for an interview.

"I think it is definitely a direct legislative issue, because these kinds of salaries make legislators think, 'Does the U really need money and why don't they ever put it toward students when we give it to them?'" Greiling said. "Once again, it looks like the university is putting students last in terms of their budgets when we see things like this.''

Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, who serves on the Capital Investment Committee and whose district includes numerous university employees, said she has become almost immune to university decisions that she believes show the wrong priorities.

"I don't think any of us buy the argument [that foundation money makes it acceptable], but they give the argument with a straight face,'' she said.

"Whether true or not, in the grand schemes, perception is reality at the Legislature," Greiling said. "The university has the image of living in its own ivory towers, and this is just one more example.''

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7.

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2012-02-03T17:18:00.006-06:00

A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES

Prelude: Bill Gleason

As implied, in the previous post, "more to come" this topic is extremely painful. I have corresponded via email off and on with Mr. Maturi over the years. He has been admirable in terms of responding candidly and rapidly to my sometimes snarky remarks. I appreciate his support of "minor sports" at the U of M, which unfortunately are all that is left of the scholar-athlete ideal of my youth.

I remember Brian Generalovich at the University of Pittsburgh who played football or basketball - I forget which - as a first year dental student. He had been an All-American in the corresponding sport while an undergrad. Or Jim Pitts - my classmate in German with Fraulein Konig - who was an outstanding basketball player at Northwestern. He went on to earn a PhD in sociology and became a professor of sociology at Northwestern. At Carleton I remember Tab Baumgartner - an outstanding football player and chemistry major - who went on to Divinity School. And of course, what Minnesotan can forget Allen Page, All-American, Purple People Eater, and State Supreme Court Justice? I could go on, but Mens sana in corpore sano is a real and admirable phenomenon.

And it is not just "Mens" - thank you Lindsay Whalen and other great women Gopher athletes...

What absolutely galls me about this latest development is the private funding aspect of these discussions. The previous administration - Bruininks and company - behaved as if any non-state funding was their personal piggy bank. If they chose to spend it on an unnecessary renovation of Northrop, for example, then the public be damned. This is wrong. The money was raised on the good name of the University of Minnesota and is not to be used by administrators for whatever purposes they choose.

It is the people's money. It is the money of U of M alums and others who want to see it used for the advancement of the University. I am sorry but giving almost half a million dollars to my friend Joel Maturi is unacceptable and wrong.

My good friend and admirable U of M alum, Michael McNabb writes:

"I expect to be judged for better or worse by the performance of the next athletic director."

President Eric Kaler in the February 3, 2012 report in the Pioneer Press on Kaler up to job of hiring new AD.

The President should walk outside his office and read the dedication above the entrance to Northrop Auditorium.
Maturi bordered on tearful in his remarks. They could have been tears of joy, since Kaler made up a job for Maturi that allows him to collect his salary of $351,900 for an additional year.
See the February 3, 2012 report in the Star Tribune on Legacy of a botched hiring.

Consider this comment on the use of donors' funds in the February 3, 2012 report in the Star Tribune on Donors will fund Maturi's new job:

Sadly, about six years ago, I came to realize that any money I donated to the U, no many thousands that might be, could never be even as much as a drop in the bucket compared to their ability to waste money every day of the year. They, employees of the U, just live in a totally different world than the planet the rest of us live on. Joel Maturi was "earning" this kind of money for each of his ten years working at the U. . . . It is not that fund raisers at the U see us as suckers, it is just that they do not live on this planet when it comes to spending money.
Or this comment:
The money for his salary comes from donors so it's nothing for anyone to raise objections about? . . . I'm pretty sure that if the donor money was not going to Maturi that it would have gone to something else to better the university.
Or this coment:
This is so sad. That money could send a few worthy students to graduate school. I've given up on sending any more money to the U. As much as I love it, the powers just have no idea of reality.
Indeed.

The administration may be able to lawfully raid the U of M Foundation to use non-restricted funds to pay the golden parachute to the athletic director. However, those funds were solicited for the general purposes of education, research, and public service. If the administration abuses the trust of donors by using funds to pay for a "made up job"--a purpose for which none of the donors intended their contributions to be used--then donors will simply stop making donations.

Michael W. McNabb
University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D.1974
University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

2012-02-03T09:07:00.002-06:00

Donors will fund Maturi's new job at old salary

More about this later...

From the Star-Tribune:

Joel Maturi will retire as Gophers athletic director when his contract expires June 30. He will not be taking a cut in pay.

Maturi will begin his new role as special assistant to university President Eric Kaler the next day, and the one-year appointment will include a base salary matching the $351,900 he currently makes. Maturi also will receive the standard benefits package that includes health insurance and retirement, pushing his compensation package to more than $468,000.

Maturi's salary as a special assistant will come from the University of Minnesota Foundation, which is from fundraising -- not state -- funds.

Maturi's new role will involve fundraising, helping with the transition of the new AD and doing some classroom teaching. Kaler said in an e-mail response that he considered the compensation to be "a fair salary for the job given Joel's experience and service to the 'U'."

Not everyone agrees.

Michael McNabb, a local attorney who received his undergrad and law degrees from the university, expressed outrage.

"It's another example of the extravagant compensation being paid to senior administrators at the University of Minnesota at a time of skyrocketing tuition that's created hardships for students and parents,'' said McNabb, a member of the Minnesota Alumni Association and a frequent blog contributor on the subject of administrative costs.

This is simply pathetic and deeply disturbing.

As some of the commenters on this article put it:

"The money for his salary comes from donors so it's nothing for anyone to raise objections about? Umm, I'm no accountant but I'm pretty sure that if the donor money was not going to Maturi that it would have gone to something else to better the university..."

"'fair salary?' I wonder if the president was able to say that with a straight face. He probably had to email it. and 'special assignments that have to get done?' This would be funny if it were not so sad."

"Did this 'job' exist before Maturi or was it created for him? What a joke - as a U alumna, I'm flabbergasted that donor funds are used to fund his 'retirement'."

"A half a million dollars! This is outrageous! And they want more money (tax-payer) from the legislature? Outrageous!"

$$$

2012-02-02T01:02:00.000-06:00

Turf Wars, Struggle for Dollars

Distorting Academic Values at University of Minnesota

From the Minnesota Daily:

(emphasis mine)

U colleges battle for enrollment, tuition dollars

The quest for more funding leads colleges to offer more classes that fill requirements in order to draw in more students.

Colleges within the University of Minnesota are competing to enroll more students in order to net more tuition dollars.

By duplicating courses traditionally available in other colleges and applying to have more of their courses satisfy liberal education requirements, colleges can fill more seats and make more money.

Tuition is the main source of revenue for colleges, and increased enrollment nets colleges more tuition revenue. With the current budget model, 75 percent of a student’s tuition goes to the college where the class is held, while 25 percent goes to the college they are enrolled in.
With budget constraints, colleges and departments are feeling the pressure to collect as much tuition revenue as possible, perhaps at the expense of students’ education.

To increase enrollment and thus revenue, there is inter-collegiate competition for more courses with a liberal education designator, said Walt Jacobs, department chairman of African-American and African Studies.

“Colleges are trying to figure out ways for students to take their classes,” he said.
There is a perception that having a liberal education theme or core requirement, or ideally both, increases enrollment.

Robert McMaster, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, said that perception is incorrect for most courses. But a class like Biogeography of the Global Garden fills many seats because it is a “double-dip” course — it meets an environmental theme and biological sciences liberal education requirement.

Of the about 700 classes per semester that meet liberal education requirements, one third of those meet a theme and a core requirement.

Chemistry professor Chris Cramer said this is a market-based approach that could twist the focus of existing courses.

While the original philosophy of liberal education requirements was founded to broaden students’ minds, Cramer said it’s “grown a little out of control.”

“There’s a pressure to adjust that intellectual content to maximize enrollment,” Cramer said.

As a department chairman, Jacobs said he wants to keep up with other departments and increase the number of liberal education classes offered.

On the other hand, he said he is worried that these additional courses will “water down the system.”

Jacobs, who is a member of the Council on Liberal Education, which approves or denies courses the designator of a liberal education theme, said there is concern that these courses are overcoming others.

“If more courses are taught that have LEs, that kind of crowds out other courses that may also be valuable for students to take,” he said.

All liberal education courses will be recertified beginning in 2014. McMaster said they will specifically look to see that tenure-track or tenured faculty are teaching the courses and that there is no “curricular slippage” — or deviation from course plans.

Poaching ‘intellectual turf’

Another way for colleges to increase revenue is by poaching — duplicating classes commonly taught in another college.

“That is direct competition for those tuition dollars,” Cramer said.

Cramer said this practice is inefficient in a time of strained resources.

In the College of Liberal Arts, Jacobs said departments are rewarded for hitting enrollment targets. Those that do are allowed to keep any surplus of the instruction budget from that year.

He said it’s fair, but it puts a lot of pressure on departments.

Curricular conflicts arise when certain colleges teach something they see as “their intellectual terrain,” McMaster said.

In order to correct these problems, McMaster will appoint a campus curricular committee by the end of spring semester to review curricular conflicts and new course proposals.

He said almost all peer schools have a campus-wide curricular committee.

The committee would review new courses proposed and negotiate curricular conflicts.
Statistics courses, for example, could be “problematic” because there is both a School of Statistics and a statistics department.

“The concern is, to some extent, tuition loss, but it’s also just a concern of intellectual turf,” he said.

Third. Greatest. Public. Research. University - the gift that keeps on giving...

2012-01-31T12:39:00.002-06:00

A Return to Sanity About MoreU Park?

One of the biggest fiascos and unneccessary draining of resources by the Bruininks/Sullivan regime was the UMore Park fantasy.

For some background please see:

Perhaps Now is the Time for Rethinking Plans for MoreU Park?

On the Continuing MoreU Park Fiasco Is the University of Minnesota a Land Grant Institution?

MoreU Park The Public be Damned?

An Ag Researcher at the University of Minnesota Questions Priorities for MoreU Park

More on MoreU...

More on MoreU Sunshine is the best disinfectant...

Exactly how long is the UMore Park craziness going to continue?

Perhaps the new Kaler/Hanson administration will take a closer look at this house of cards?

The President met with faculty members from the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Sciences to discuss the impact of UMore Park plans on their research.

He has also asked for a reassessment of the path forward with respect to UMore Park, given the real estate market and that the market for the gravel is also down.

There are a variety of constituents that will need to be involved in the conversation.

January 19, 2012

Faculty Consultative Committee

$$$

2012-01-30T10:11:00.001-06:00

University of Minnesota Academic Health Center

to Undergo External Review

Dear AHC colleagues,

This fall the Academic Health Center Review Executive Steering Committee, chaired by Vice President and Dean Friedman and Vice President Mulcahy, completed a review of the AHC mission, structure and centers. This review was an instructive self-study and was consistent with the charge issued by President Bruininks.

As I noted upon receiving the report, it made several meaningful recommendations but was not designed to answer larger questions about the vision and the future of the AHC. I believe those are important questions and for that reason, I am charging a small committee to complete an external review. This external committee will be chaired by Dr. Ken Kaushansky, a member of the Institute on Medicine, dean of the School of Medicine, and senior vice president for the Health Sciences at Stony Brook University.

The primary question for the external review committee to consider is whether the AHC is structured to ensure excellence in all of our health science schools. One of my strategic goals for the University is to strengthen the health sciences and improve the national reputation of the Medical School. It is critical to both the future of the University and the state of Minnesota that we improve our leadership position in the health sciences in order to meet workforce needs, discover new cures and treatments, continue to provide high-quality clinical care, and support the biomedical industry. This requires an objective look at where we are and where we need to be to improve our position.

The recent self-study, along with many internal and external reviews and strategic plans that outline the strengths and challenges of our health science enterprise, will provide a valuable starting point for the external reviewers. In addition, the committee will visit campus to interview leaders and have the discussions necessary to fully understand and assess our needs.

As you may know, the Medical School accreditation team will be here in March. The external review team will visit as soon thereafter as is practical.

The mission of the AHC—to train the next generation of health professionals, to discover new cures and treatments and to enhance the economic vitality of our health industries—has never been more important. We need to ensure that we are positioned to meet that mission to the fullest.

Thank you for all you do to make the AHC and the University successful. I look forward to working with you to continue to build on the strengths of the Academic Health Center.

Sincerely,

Eric W. Kaler
President

2012-01-22T12:13:00.008-06:00

Going to Market Part II

On December 8, 2011 the provost and the business school dean presented to the six Regents who serve on the Educational Planning & Policy Committee the proposal of the administration to impose a tuition surcharge on the undergraduate students in the business school. By the end of a three year phase-in period the business students would be paying a "differential tuition" that would be $2,000 more per year than the other undergraduate students on the Twin Cities campus. The tuition surcharge would generate $4.9 million for the business school. See p. 16 of the December 8, 2011 report of the Committee.

The senior administrators told the Regents that the increases in tuition over the past five years have not offset the decline in state funding and increases in operating costs. They informed the Regents that allocations of state appropriations have fallen from approximately $14 million in fiscal year 2007 to $4 million in fiscal year 2012 and are now less than 4% of the business school budget.

1. Allocation of state appropriations.

The state legislature does not determine the amount of state appropriations that the business school receives each year. The legislature provides a lump sum grant of hundreds of millions of dollars in state appropriations for the general fund of the University (the Operations & Maintenance fund). The senior administrators and the Regents are the persons responsible for determining the amount of state appropriations to allocate to the business school (and to all the other units of the University).

In fiscal year 2007 the University received $556 million in state appropriations for its general fund. The administration allocated $13 million (2.3%) to the business school. See p. 69 and p. 71 of the June 27, 2007 report of the Board of Regents.

For fiscal year 2012 the University received $484 million in state appropriations for its general fund. The administration allocated $3.3 million (0.7%) to the business school. (By comparison, in fiscal year 2012 the administration allocated $6.9 million in state appropriations to the athletic department.) See p. 103 of the September 9, 2011 report of the Board of Regents and pp. 80-81 of the June 10, 2011 report of the Board of Regents.

The administration made the decision to reduce the allocation of state appropriations to the business school. Now it seeks to impose a greater financial burden on undergraduate business students (and their parents) in the form of "differential tuition."

2. Tuition

Is it accurate for the administration to assert that the increases in tuition over the past five years have not been sufficient to offset its $10 million reduction in the allocation of state appropriations to the business school and the increases in operating costs? Let us examine the actual numbers (that the senior administrators failed to provide to the Regents).

In fiscal year 2007 the business school collected $54.9 million in tuition, fees, and executive education tuition. See p. 29 of the 2007 annual report of the business school.

In fiscal year 2011 the business school collected $68.7 million in tuition and fees and an additional $3.3 million in executive education tuition (now reported separately). See the Financial Report section of the 2011 annual report.

Then there are the additional sources of revenue--endowment earnings and gifts--that the senior administrators also failed to disclose to the Regents. (The business school has its own endowment fund that increased in value from $117 million at the end of fiscal year 2008 to $137.5 million at the end of fiscal year 2010. See the final line of Facts & Figures of the business school.) In fiscal year 2007 the business school received $8.3 million in endowments earnings and gifts. See p. 29 of the 2007 annual report. In fiscal year 2011 the business school received $10.5 million in endowment earnings and gifts. See the Financial Report section of the 2011 annual report.

On the issue of accuracy consider that the senior administrators told the Regents that the number of faculty had remained "static" over the past eight years from 104 in fiscal year 2004 to 104 in fiscal year 2011. (The administration advances the need to hire additional faculty as the primary justification for a tuition surcharge.) Yet the number of faculty increased from 104 in fiscal year 2010 to 111 in fiscal year 2011 without any tuition surcharge (as reported by the business school itself). See the Statistics section of the 2011 annual report .

The senior administrators present to the Regents the facts that support the proposals of the administration. The Regents are part-time volunteers. They do not conduct their own research on the facts and then make independent assessments. So the outcome is preordained. Virtually every major proposal of the administration is approved by the Regents, usually by unanimous vote.

3. A Financial Barrier

Shortly after taking office President Kaler made a pledge:
I will push back on anything that begins to put a financial barrier in front of qualified students.
See p. 8 of the Fall 2011 issue of Reach, the magazine of the College of Liberal Arts, (emphasis added).

A reporter asked the president about his pledge in light of his support for the tuition surcharge on undergraduate business students. He responded:
The combination of financial aid and the marketplace is consistent with the idea of not putting a barrier in front of qualified students.
See the January 16, 2012 report of the Star Tribune on Chasing U Funding.

An unspecified amount of the tuition surcharge would be used to provide scholarships to students in need according to the written materials that the senior administrators presented to the Regents on December 8, 2011. Yet when a Regent asked the business school dean about this unspecified amount the dean responded that none of the $4.9 million surcharge would be used for scholarships. The business school would instead rely on "private funds and other means" for scholarships. See the December 9, 2011 report in the Star Tribune on U Regents hear pitch for Carlson tuition hike.

The undergraduate students in the business school should not hold their breaths waiting for a significant increase in scholarships. The dollar amount of scholarships awarded by the business school has barely budged from $3 million in fiscal year 2007 to $3.3 million in fiscal year 2011 despite an increase in enrollment of more than 300 undergraduate students. See p. 27 of the 2007 annual report and the Statistics section of the 2011 annual report.

The "marketplace" factor mentioned by the president is a reference to the fact that the average starting salary for a graduate with a B.S is over $48,000 according to the business school. See the Facts & Figures of the business school .

If the business school provides a quality education, then the administration should have confidence that the students will support the school after graduation (and will be able to do so because the students will not have large student loans). The administration should not have to resort to strong-arming the students (and their parents) with a tuition surcharge while the students are still in school.

There is a final point to make here regarding a tuition surcharge. The senior administrators place an emphasis on the "significant private benefits" that the business students receive. See p. 18 of the December 8, 2011 report of the Educational Planning & Policy Committee. This emphasis serves to reinforce the perspective of some state legislators of a college education as merely vocational training. Those legislators then have no hesitation in voting to slash state appropriations to the University in order to shift more and more of the cost of education to the students who receive "significant private benefits."

4. A "Minor" Amendment

The current policy of the Board of Regents requires that on each campus of the University the same resident undergraduate tuition rate must be charged to all resident undergraduate students. The administration is proposing what it describes as a "minor" amendment to the policy by adding this sentence:
A college specific tuition surcharge may be established as a supplement to the relevant undergraduate tuition rate.
See the final paragraph on p. 19 of the December 8, 2011 report of the Educational Planning & Policy Committee.

The scope of this "minor" amendment is without limit. It could be used to impose a tuition surcharge on the undergraduate students in any of the colleges at the University.

Perhaps the "marketplace" factor would be used next to justify a tuition surcharge on the undergraduate students in the College of Science & Engineering or in the College of Biological Sciences. (Some universities have already imposed "differential tuition" on undergraduate students in engineering.) The graduates of these colleges probably have an average starting salary that is greater than that of the graduates of the College of Liberal Arts.

The administration asserts that it does not have any plans at the present to impose a tuition surcharge on any other undergraduate students. But, as American philosopher George Santayana reminded us, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

During the past 10 years the administration has increased spending on operations by 50% to $3 billion per year. The senior administrators have financed their billion dollar increase primarily through skyrocketing tuition that has more than offset the reduction in state appropriations. See section 1 of $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspective.

The administration has declared that "tuition is the revenue stream with the highest potential for significant, long term growth." See New Fiscal Reality No. 2 on p. 8 of the 2009 Report of the Future Financial Resources Task Force; see also, Recommendation No. 2 (Grow Tuition Revenue) at pp. 7, 51-52 of the 2011 report on Financing the Future. The "minor" amendment that would allow the administration to impose a tuition surcharge on undergraduate students in any college at the University opens the floodgate to this "revenue stream."

The billion dollar increase in spending by the administration over the past 10 years compels it to now do everything it can to increase the "revenue stream" of tuition in order to maintain a $3 billion (and growing) annual budget. As Professor Chris Cramer, chair of the Faculty Consultative Committee, recently observed:
The broader problem is that the vision should be that this is a university where the best courses are taught, but it is moving to teaching courses that instead make the most money.
See p. 6 of the December 22, 2011 report of the FCC (emphasis added.)

Conclusion

In fiscal year 2012 the University received $484 million in state appropriations for its general fund. The administration allocated $3.3 million (0.7%) to the business school. The amount that the business school collects for tuition, fees, and executive education tuition increased from $54.9 million in fiscal year 2007 to $72 million in fiscal year 2011. The amount that the business school receives from endowment earnings and gifts increased from $8.3 million in fiscal year 2007 to $10.5 million in fiscal year 2011. If the business school truly needs additional funds to hire faculty, the administration should increase the minuscule percentage of state appropriations that it now allocates to the school--not impose an even greater financial burden on the undergraduate students and their parents.

Related Posts

Going To Market

Deck The Halls

Off Course in Higher Education

Course Correction in Higher Education

University Inc. Part II

Michael W. McNabb

University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974

University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

2011-12-30T14:43:00.005-06:00

Course Correction in Higher Education

"To save the U, Bob Bruininks had to destroy it," declared Minnesota Monthly in its July 2011 report. The administration prefers to refer to this destruction as Transforming the U.

Here are some suggestions for a course correction.

1. Scrap the "high tuition high financial aid" experiment and roll back tuition.

This experiment is described in the July 2011 report in Minnesota Monthly aptly entitled The Man Who Slew the U. In practice this model has been a financial disaster for students and their parents.

This method of financing undergraduate education works for students only if financial aid in the form of scholarships and grants keeps pace with the increases in tuition. For most students this never happened. Instead, students were forced to borrow more and more to pay the skyrocketing tuition. See the October 14, 2011 report in the Star Tribune on Generation Debt.

The administration used part of the skyrocketing tuition for scholarships for students from lower income families. This method of providing access to the University by shifting the financial burden to other students raised questions of fairness. See the June 29, 2011 report in the Star Tribune on Tensions Rising Over Cost Disparities at U.

On December 8, 2011 chief financial officer Richard Pfutzenreuter informed the Finance & Operations Committee of the Board of Regents that his office has now developed a method to calculate the cost of instruction and to allocate the sources of revenue available to pay that cost. The report of the Committee notes that "this type of analysis has not been presented to the Board of Regents in the past." See p. 4 of the report of the Committee. So over the past 10 years the senior administrators and the Regents made a series of decisions that doubled undergraduate tuition without having such a basic analysis.

How does one determine whether increases in tuition are necessary and reasonable without knowing either the cost of instruction or the allocation of other revenues (such as state appropriations) to pay that cost? The senior administrators and Regents who have done so are so far removed from the economic lives of most students and parents that they are oblivious to the hardship caused by skyrocketing tuition.

This ill-conceived experiment for financing undergraduate education should be abandoned before it creates an entire generation of indentured students. Rolling back tuition is the most effective and efficient way to provide financial aid. We need to once again make higher education affordable for all students.

2. Reward quality teaching as much as quality research.

The current system rewards professsors for their research. So enormous amounts of time and effort are dedicated to research that does little to advance knowledge. See the December 4, 2011 commentary in The Chronicle of Higher Education on The Research Bust. Those professors who do produce valuable research are rewarded with fewer classes and with graduate students to teach the classes.

Professors who care about teaching should teach undergraduate students. They should devote their time to improving their classroom instruction and to meeting with students. Their pay and promotion should be based primarily on the quality of their teaching.

Those who care about research should be research fellows in a separate Institute of Research at the University. Their pay and promotiion should be based primarily on the quality of their research.

The few who have both the skill and the time to excel at teaching and research should be paid a bonus. They will have earned it.

3. Roll back the costs of administration and restore the ideal of public service.

During the past 10 years the administration has increased spending on operations at the University by 50% to $3 billion per year. This is due, in part, to the explosion in the costs of administration since 2005. See section 3 in University Inc. Part II. This explosion includes the extravagant compensation of senior administrators that now far excceds the compensation of their fellow public servants in state government who have similar qualifications and duties. See On The Cost of Administration.

Skyrocketing tuition also provided a gusher of money to hire numerous additional administrators to report to the senior administrators. We now have an administrative structure that is incomprehensible even to the insiders. See Rube Goldberg Administration. The "cost pools" used to support this structure have become financial black holes that drain tens of millions of dollars from the colleges at the University. See Stop Using Students as ATMs.

There should be substantial reductions in the compensation of senior administrators and in the sheer number of administrators. Those senior administrators who believe that they should continue to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation and benefits each year would be free to seek such compensation in the private sector or at other universities whose leaders fail to ask Questions of Value. There are many qualified persons in our state who are still dedicated to public service.

4. Give real authority to the faculty senate and eliminate most of the faculty committees.

At present the administration is able to simply ignore the faculty, as it did when it combined the positions of medical school dean and vice president of the academic health center and when it reorganized the graduate school. See Faculty Governance is an Oxymoron and An Offer She Can't Refuse.

Every major proposal of the administration should be subject to the approval of the faculty senate. The administration should be able to submit major proposals to the Regents only if it is able to successfully make its case to the faculty.

At the same time most of the faculty committees should be eliminated. The numerous committees produce much talk and little action. Instead of spending time in committee meetings, the professors should devote the time to the instruction of their students.

5. Repeal the Bayh-Doyle Act (the University & Small Business Patent Procedures Act).

This 1980 federal legislation enables universities to obtain patents for inventions even though though public funds are used for the research. The mere prospect of profits has generated huge increases in the operating expenses and capital costs related to research. (The U of M spends hundreds of millions of dollars on research each year.) Federal grants cover only a part of those expenditures. Only a few universities realize sufficient revenues to make a profit. See On The Hidden Cost of Research.

To make matters worse, the law of unintended consequences took effect. The hopes of senior administrators for a huge financial payoff for their own institution promotes secrecy that blocks the free flow of information among scholars. The quest for the advancement of knowledge has been submerged in the quest for profits. See University Inc. The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education by Jennifer Washburn.

As costs have mounted and federal grants for research have declined, the universities have looked more and more to corporate sponsors. See the December 10, 2011 report in the Pioneer Press on U Open for Business Research. This has produced a blurring of the priorities of non-profit institutions of higher education and the priorities of for profit corporate sponsors. See The Markinson Files and Continuing Disgrace. The increasing reliance on corporate funds can also cause senior administrators to attempt to block the public presentation of research that might offend major corporate donors. See The Troubled Waters of Big Ags Influence.

Research is an essential function of the University. But it must be done in the right way for the right reasons with the right safeguards.

6. Leave busines to business.

As the senior administrators at the U of M looked for ways to increase profits, they decided to transform UMore Park into a unique combination of a commercial gravel pit and a utopian residential community. They told the Regents that this new business model would produce from $3 million to $10 million in revenues each year. This projection turned out to wildly unrealistic. See section 1 in University Inc. Part II.

The gravel pit will be located on land that has been used for agricultural research that has produced hundreds of millions of dollars for the economy of Minnesota. It appears that the senior administrators and the Regents made the decision on UMore Park without consulting either the professors who were engaged in the research or any agricultural economists. See Rethinking MoreU Park.

This is what can happen in the new corporate university when senior administrators and Regents go moonlighting and use public funds to start business ventures on the side. It is easy for senior administrators and Regents to take enormous financial risks on such business ventures as they are not using their own money.

7. Transfer the major revenue sports teams.

In fiscal year 2009 the University ranked No. 20 in the nation on expenditures on athletics at $70.3 million. The color of the financing is red. Each year the athletic department continues to receive multi-million dollar subsidies from the general fund of the University. Meanwhile, the administration plans to continue to eliminate academic programs and to replace professors with part-time instructors. See Expensive Icing.

In the 20th century intercollegiate athletics evolved from club teams to big business, especially in the major revenue sports of football and men's basketball. There was a transition from a game in which a limited number of coaches with modest salaries instructed local students to an annual $70+ million financial enterprise at the University in which numerous coaches with lavish compensation engage in the national recruiting of young men merely for their athletic skills.

The result has been an endless series of embarrassments for the University: the on court riot instigated by some members of the basketball team of Bill Musselman; the cash doled out by Luther Darville to certain football players of Lou Holtz; the group sex in Madison by some basketball players of Jim Dutcher; the academic fraud during the tenure of Clem Haskins; the 2007 conviction of a Gopher football player for criminal sexual conduct for ejaculating on the face of a young woman intoxicated to the point of being unconscious; the star basketball recruit who arrived on campus in 2009 with a felony assault charge for allegedly breaking facial bones of a young woman by punching her when she had the nerve to resist his attempt to pull down her pants; the dismal graduation rates for the football and men's basketball teams.

There is a solution that would permit the University to disentangle itself from the big business of major revenue sports while allowing those programs to continue. The football and men's basketball teams should be organized as separate corporations. The University would grant a license to those corporations to use the University name for the teams.

The fee for the license would be a percentage of the revenues the corporations generate from ticket sales, broadcasting rights, advertising, etc. The University would use part of the license fee income to support the non-revenue sports it decides to retain, such as track and swimming. This is a solution that would enable the sports fans to continue to enjoy the games and enable the University to focus on its academic mission--the reason for its existence.

Michael W. McNabb

University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974

University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

2011-12-08T09:50:00.001-06:00

Deck The Halls

[My friend and fellow alum, Michael McNabb, writes:]

Students from the U of M School of Music performed Deck The Halls in the atrium at the business school on November 23. One can see the spirit generated by the performance in the faces of the business students who were present. Now a tone deaf administration announces a plan that will crush that spirit by charging business students with "differential tuition." Within three years the undergraduate business students will pay $2,000 more per year in tuition than other U of M undergraduate students. See the December 1, 2011 report in the Star Tribune.

The administration asserts that it must increase tuition in order to hire more faculty due to increased enrollment. Yet that increase in enrollment has produced a corresponding increase in the total amount of tuition paid by business students.

The Provost claims that state budget cuts prevented the administration from implementing a plan to hire more faculty. The fact is that the senior administrators and the Regents are the persons responsible for determining the allocation of state appropriations to the business school. In fiscal year 2012 the University will receive $484 million in state appropriations for its general fund. Senior administrators (with the approval of the Regents) made the decision to allocate less than 1% of the state appropriations ($3.3 million) to the business school. See Off Course in Higher Education.

"Differential tuition" can be justified only if the cost of instruction at the business school exceeds the amount of tuition paid by the students, state appropriations, and the corporate and individual contributions dedicated to that cost. The real problem here is that the administration has not calculated the cost of instruction. In the absence of an accurate calculation of that cost there is no rhyme or reason to imposing a greater financial burden on the students (and their parents). See also Going To Market.

Postscript

"I will push back on anything that begins to put a financial barrier in front of qualified students."

President Eric Kaler at p. 8 of the Fall 2011 issue of Reach, the magazine of the College of Liberal Arts (emphasis added).

Kaler is recommending that the board change a regents policy to allow the tuition surcharge ["differential tuition"]. If it passes, it would make it easier for other U colleges to get similar approvals.

December 1, 2011 report in the Star Tribune.

---

2011-12-02T14:50:00.000-06:00

Thoreau: We have become the tools of our tools...

The Minnesota Daily Pulls Another Tooth -

Technology Worship at the Dental School?

From the Daily:

DentSims: to teach or to tout?

When the School of Dentistry brought 20 DentSims to the University, it characterized them as something that would revolutionize learning. But the lab is vacant 85 percent of the time, and some say the product doesn't match the publicity.

In 2008, leaders of the University of Minnesota’s School of Dentistry got what they were looking for — a clinic to put the institution at the forefront of dental education.

Part of the clinic featured DentSims, a virtual simulation tool that the University said could revolutionize the way dental students learn. The school was the first in the Big Ten to get them.

Each DentSim features a mannequin with an adjustable head, a lifelike mouth and a set of plastic teeth. An infrared camera tracks students’ work and displays it on a screen. A computer offers instant feedback on how students perform and provides a 3D representation of the tooth they’re operating on.

The University spent $1.5 million for 20 DentSims during a roughly $10 million renovation of Moos Tower’s fourth-floor clinic area. The DentSims cost $75,000 each and sit in the School of Dentistry’s Advanced Simulation Clinic, part of a larger simulation area.

Nearly four years later, the dummies sit unused about 85 percent of the school year, according to a Minnesota Daily records analysis. The lab is in use for an average of 8.4 hours a week.

But only half of that use is for classes, and they’re mostly introductory ones. Tours, cleaning and maintenance take up the other half of the lab’s schedule.

Judith Buchanan, interim dean of the University’s School of Dentistry, has been researching virtual reality teaching tools since the late 1990s.

Buchanan found students learn almost twice as fast with the technology, she told the Daily in 2006.

Former School of Dentistry Dean Patrick Lloyd celebrated the University’s new DentSim units when the lab opened in 2008.

“The equipment has made us re-evaluate the way we educate dental students,” Lloyd said in a statement from that year. “It’s dental education designed for students raised in the digital era.”

But nearly four years later, the machines sit largely unused. Faculty members and students say the lab is often empty when they walk by it.

Schedules from fall 2010 through fall 2011 show the clinic is unused about 85 percent of the time. The clinic is booked for an average of 8.4 hours a week.

“They sit there vacant most of the time,” said one clinical faculty member who asked to remain confidential for fear of risking his job.

The previously mentioned clinical faculty member called the machines an “administrative toy.”

“When they wanted to impress the president with the School of Dentistry, what did they show him?” he said. “They held his hand, they brought him into the computer simulation area and they turned on all the lights and bells and whistles. They let him play with it because you can do that.”

He said DentSims fool people who aren’t familiar with dentistry and the machine’s actual capabilities.

Many directly involved in using the clinic for courses, research or demonstrations declined to comment publicly about the lab or didn’t return multiple requests for comment.

Lloyd also declined to comment.

An upper-level dentistry student who asked for confidentiality because of a student leadership position came to the University because of the DentSims and other technological upgrades in the school that were touted at the time.

The student said it’s well-known within the school that the lab is rarely used and that there are problems with the technology.

“Everybody that’s there knows it,” the student said. “The students all know it, the faculty all know it and the administration thinks it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Dentistry second-years Nicole Haus, Salma Helal and Amy Ott said the clinic was plugged during their interviews at the School of Dentistry, but its use never really materialized.

“When we did our interview, that was huge,” Ott said. “They were like, ‘Oh, look at this, no other school has this.’”

The three agreed that their introductory class in the clinic wasn’t very useful and glossing over the material was easy. If she messed up drilling a tooth, Ott said she would just redo it.

“I wouldn’t do it the right way,” she said. “You can totally cheat the system for the class.”

In Pennsylvania, Maggio said she has used “superglue and gum” to hold parts of her older models together. But, like Buchanan and others, she stands behind the technology because of its educational potential.

The upper-level student disagreed.

“You have administrators who think that’s the new way of dentistry, and it doesn’t work.”

2011-11-30T14:31:00.001-06:00

Student debt is sky-high

Minnesota has the fourth highest post-grad

average student debt in the U.S.

Can't say it enough times....

Maybe the Kaler administration will rise to the challenge?

From the Daily:

A report recently released by the Project on Student Debt reflects the abysmal realities of Minnesota college graduates and the recent trend of Minnesota’s waning support for public higher education.

From the fourth highest average student debt upon graduation — an average of $29,058 — to the fifth highest percentage of students graduating with debt at 71 percent, Minnesota’s drift away from affordable higher education cannot be simply dismissed from public discourse. The access to post-secondary education should remain important.

With Sen. Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, becoming director of the Office of Higher Education, the public conversation needs to center on the fastest-growing type of personal debt in the country. Young Americans have the potential to pull us out of economic stagnation if we give them the chance.

Our society does not merely encourage but basically compels many young individuals to get a college degree, which invariably means taking on debt. We think that it is a bad idea for 18-year-olds to have credit cards, yet we pile on $30,000 of debt and dim job prospects onto hordes of 22-year-olds.

The average Minnesotan college-hopeful ought to understand that society is presenting a double-edged sword. Odds are students will spend years or decades paying down debt that they are told they must take on if they want a high-paying, fulfilling job.

No practical solutions have been proposed to this dilemma, and the general public doesn’t seem to care about students’ undeniable plights. Suffocating amounts of debt should not be the price for doing what society tells us we need to do to be successful.

My comment on the Daily site:

Some of us have been complaining about this situation at the U for many years. For example see the latest post on The Periodic Table - Administrators vs. Students - link: http://bit.ly/u2UMSe - and links therein.

We know the solution to the problem. It is called transparency about educational costs and unreimbursed costs of research. It also has to do with grandiose schemes to achieve world class greatness by the previous administration.

See: University of Inefficiency: http://bit.ly/qOvAfG

and my article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: World-Class Greatness at a Land-Grant University Near You: http://bit.ly/bN3sbD

The time for talk is over. President Kaler, let's start to take some steps to address our tuition nightmare.

$$$

2011-11-29T10:14:00.002-06:00

University of Minnesota to Limit Transfers,

as Enrollment at Other State Colleges Swells

A funny thing happened on the way to more cooperation between the University of Minnesota and MNSCU...

From the Pioneer Press:

A bid to shrink the ranks of transfer students to the University of Minnesota has opened a rift among the state's public higher-education institutions.

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System has sounded alarms over the U's plan to trim transfer student enrollment roughly 8 percent over the next couple of years. MnSCU supplies 45 percent of U transfers.

The U's plan is "troubling and disappointing," said Larry Litecky, interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at MnSCU. It goes against the state's commitment to improve access to four-year degrees for all residents, added Litecky, who noted that amid talk of closer cooperation between the U and MnSCU, he heard of the plan through the media.

But U officials say the flak is unfair.

[They would.]

The U's plan doesn't mesh with the state's push to increase minority, low-income and first-generation student enrollment, said MnSCU's Litecky. The planned transfer limits come at a time when the system is graduating more students - and more of those under-represented students - than ever.

"In a lot of ways, this decision couldn't be timed any worse," Litecky said. "It's a time of record-high demand."

______

It should be noted that the U of M is in the process of increasing the number of students admitted to the U, ramping up to a thousand more in the next few years. An economic analysis would make clear why transfer students are more costly per head than first-years.

But is a decision based on this fact desirable? Is it in the best interests of the state to cut down on transfers to the U?

Seems to me that the U admin is engaged in a bit of the bait and switch game here. They may pay for it at the legislature.

And, if President Kaler and Chancellor Rosenstone are such close personal friends, why is it that, as Litecky notes, MNSCU officials first learned of this in the newspaper?

As the higher ed pie stays static or even shrinks, a battle for resources seems inevitable. A 50/50 split may not be in the cards unless real cooperation occurs, not just talk. This lack of agreement between MNSCU and the U on an important issue is not a good way to start the much ballyhooed new age of cooperation.

2011-11-25T10:05:00.003-06:00

Administrators v. Students

My friend and fellow alum, Michael McNabb writes another of his timely and important analyses of financial matters at the University of Minnesota. In the absence of full and transparent disclosure at the U, these essays have been widely read by those interested in returning to the U's original land grant priorities and in making it an institution of which all Minnesotans can be proud.

During the past 10 years the administration has increased spending on the costs of operations at the University by 50% to $3 billion per year. This is due, in part, to the explosion in the costs of administration since 2005. See section 3 of University Inc. Part II and Rube Goldberg Administration. This explosion includes the extravagant compensation of senior administrators that now far exceeds the compensation of their fellow public servants in state government who have similar qualifications and duties. See On The Cost of Administration.

The senior administrators have financed their billion dollar increase primarily through skyrocketing tuition that has more than offset the reduction in state appropriations. See section 1 of $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspective. This skyrocketing tuition is creating a generation of indentured students who are also confronted with a dismal job market. See the October 14, 2011 report in the Star Tribune on Generation Debt.

So the senior administrators have now created a financial conflict of interest with students (and their parents). Scores of senior administrators now collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation and benefits each year. The administration defends this lavish compensation as within market range for the positions. This economic justification--straight from the Wall Street executives who gave us the Great Recession--fails to provide an ethical justification for the pursuit of personal wealth by the leaders of a non-profit institution dedicated to public service. See the dedication engraved above the entrance to Northrop Auditorium. See also section 3 and the Postscript to $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspective.

The Code of [Ethical] Conduct for the University proscribes conflicts of interest. See Section III, subd. 8 of the Code. Recall that the Regents demanded that Steve Sviggum resign from his position in the School of Public Affairs so that he would avoid any conflict of interest with his duties as a Regent. See First the Sentence Then the Verdict.

The financial conflict of interest of senior administrators is not removed by requiring the Regents to approve the budget. The Regents are part-time volunteers. They rely on the senior administrators to sift through the volumes of information about the operations of the University, so they see only the information selected by the administrators.

Nor do the Regents have much time to listen to other members of the University community with different perspectives. The Regents develop a bond with the senior administrators with whom they spend most of their time and thus have a tendency to dismiss other viewpoints. They should ask Questions of Value. Instead, each year the Regents approve the budget proposed by the administration, almost always by unanimous vote.

So what is the remedy for this financial conflict of interest? Perhaps the senior administrators should be barred from participating in the development of the budget on the compensation of administrators whose annual compensation and benefits exceed $200,000.

Or perhaps the state legislature should enact a student and parent version of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. That federal legislation requires the approval of shareholders for executive compensation. See the summary of Title IX, Subtitle E of the Act. The state version would require the approval of a majority of all 67,000+ students for the compensation of the most highly paid administrators at the University.

Or perhaps the state legislature should set certain conditions on the allocation of state appropriations. This solution would recognize both the constitutional autonomy of the University and the constitutional power of the legislature to allocate state funds. Congress often imposes conditions on the allocation of federal funds to the states.

Legislative conditions may be necessary course corrections for a land grant institution whose leaders are transforming it into a quasi-private corporation at the expense of the students, their parents and the citizens of our state. See Off Course in Higher Education and Going to Market.

If nothing is done about the skyrocketing tuition, then the students will vote with their feet by going to colleges that provide better value. Because even with the billion dollar increase in annual spending on operations the administration is planning to continue to eliminate academic programs and to replace professors with part-time instructors (or, cheaper yet for the University, with online instruction). See section 1 of $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspectice. Not even the "Because" advertising campaign on which the administration is wasting millions of dollars will convince the students and their parents that such actions increase the value of education available at the University. See section 2 of University Inc. Part II.

END QUOTES

The real issue is increasing the value that we the University bring to the State of Minnesota, to its stakeholders and to our students. Increasing that value, communicating it and demonstrating it will be the major goal of my presidency.
President Eric Kaler in the July 7, 2011 report of the St. Paul Pioneer Press (emphasis added).

To the best of my recollection, no great scientific discoveries, no insightful social science tracts, and no novels have been produced in Morrill Hall. No classes are taught in Morrill Hall. No patients are made well in Morrill Hall. . . . Without authority invested where the real work of this University is done, the light of excellence will only grow dimmer.
President Mark Yudof in his 1997 Inaugural Address (emphasis added). See Tenth Anniversary of Inauguration.

Michael W. McNabb

University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D 1974
University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

2011-11-21T12:17:00.002-06:00

UC - Davis

The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

The chancellor of the University of California Davis has been involved in some earlier experiences that did not exactly cover her in glory. This pepper spray incident may be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back.

My friend Roy poses writes in an email:

(emphasis mine)

A very big story last week was how campus police pepper sprayed unarmed, peaceful student demonstrators at the University of California - Davis. This lead to widespread calls for the resignation of the University Chancellor, Linda Katehi. This aggressive, violent response to peaceful protest seems to be the latest example of the arrogance of some current leaders of our important organizations.

This case appears directly related to the problems in leadership and governance we discuss on Health Care Renewal (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com) Ms Katehi has the distinction of having been already written up twice on Health Care Renewal for questions about her leadership.

On her arrival at UC-Davis in 2009, she showed ignorance of, if not hostility to the fundamental university mission by suggesting the university should enthusiastically embrace the development and marketing biotech products:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/university-leaders-goal-taking-new.html

At that time, I called this an example of "how the leaders of academic institutions seem to be forgetting or radically deconstructing their academic missions."

In 2011, Ms Katehi showed her support for the self-interest of management by defending the entitlement of the medical center CEO to nearly a million dollars yearly in compensation:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-repeats-of-talking-points.html

Although I could not have predicted that Chancellor Katehi would preside over the pepper spraying unarmed students for peaceful, legitimate protest, it is not surprising that a leader without respect for the academic mission and who supports executive exceptionalism would foster an authoritarian climate in which such an incident could happen.

You heard it here first on Health Care Renewal (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com).

Keep your eye on Health Care Renewal for continued discussion of parallels between problems in health care and in the larger political economy.

Update:

I just put a longer version with quotes and an embedded video of the pepper spray story, and slightly longer discussion of our previous write up of Ms Katehi up as a post on Health Care Renewal:

http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/uc-davis-pepper-spray-case-as.html

Roy Poses, M.D.

$$$

2011-11-14T10:49:00.002-06:00

Can Conceal and Carry Permit Holders

Who Are Not Students or Employees

of the University of Minnesota

Bring Guns on Campus?

It appears so....

If this is true, then some action by the legislature is called for...

Public Postsecondary Educational Institutions

Any public postsecondary educational institution may establish policies restricting the carrying or possession of firearms by its students while on the institution’s property. Public postsecondary educational institutions are not authorized to generally prohibit the lawful carrying or possession of firearms by members of the public who are neither their students nor their employees. Minn. Stat. § 624.714, subd. 18(b).

Unsurprising given the gun nut wackos, like Cornish, being egged on by Mitchell P. Berg who wants to make "gunz" a wedge issue in next election...

< ! >

2011-11-14T06:00:00.002-06:00

Dirty Laundry Gets Spin Cycle

The University of Minnesota Administration's Reaction

to Criticism has Been Too Focused on Public Relations Spin

From the University of Minnesota Daily:

The Minnesota Daily Editorial Board has been extremely disappointed with the response from administrators to criticism of the School of Dentistry’s arrogance, autocratic management and questionable ethics.

The guest column “Dentistry dean took school forward” that ran Tuesday, Nov. 1, was signed by several members of the dentistry school. The authors signed the column with their faculty titles, but neglected to inform readers that every one of them is also a member of the dentistry school administration, most being department chairs and associate deans.

Furthermore, the authors of the guest column wrote it before the news story was finished. Its purpose was clearly an effort by the dentistry school administration to drown out criticism by talking past the point.

The column’s failure to acknowledge any real criticisms of the dentistry school is characteristic of the arrogance we criticized them of last week. The relentlessly positive perspective of the column shows either a great deal of hubris or a cynical commitment to projecting a certain image of the dentistry school regardless of the reality.

Provost Tom Sullivan and Vice President for Health Sciences Aaron Friedman also wrote a letter last week called “Interim dean selected fairly,” which ran Nov. 2. This letter also missed the point and failed to address criticisms of the dentistry school.

The letter argued that faculty were consulted before a decision to hire an interim dean was made. The criticism, however, was that those faculty were simply given lip service and ignored. At one point in the letter, Sullivan and Friedman write, “We … [received a] list of nominees from a segment of the faculty. [Interim dentistry school dean Judith] Buchanan was on that list.” She was indeed; she was last.

The combination of these pieces shows an administration not only unwilling to address its problems, but one so arrogant that it will not even acknowledge it has any. Instead, it resorts to attempts to change the discussion and confuse the public with lies of omission.

The administration of the dentistry school clearly places a higher priority on managing its public perception than on seriously addressing its problems.

It is important to note that this attitude is not specific to the dentistry school. Many areas of the University of Minnesota and its administration have been more committed to improving the perception of the University than its actual quality.

Undoubtedly this attitude has trickled down from former President Bob Bruininks’ administration’s strategic positioning agenda which sought to improve key statistics that factored into national rankings more than it did on improving real quality.

A new president has now taken office, giving the administration a chance to change course and renew its focus on matters of substance instead of superficiality. Karen Hanson will also replace Tom Sullivan as Provost at the beginning of 2012, and the dentistry school will be hiring a permanent replacement for former dean Patrick Lloyd, who was responsible for many of its problems.

We hope this new set of leaders brings more humble leadership that is more willing to analyze itself critically in a genuine attempt to improve.

Our current administrative leaders have shown they would rather deny a problem’s existence than solve it. We are profoundly disappointed in them for their cynical spin campaign and for placing their own reputations above the good of the school they serve.

We look to the future for administrators who aren’t afraid to engage with criticism seriously, admit faults and work sincerely to fix them. Our current leaders in the dentistry school, including Sullivan, have failed on all these counts.

2011-11-11T08:11:00.006-06:00

OFF COURSE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

My friend, Mr. Michel McNabb, writes:

At the November 1, 2011 meeting of the Senate Committee on Finance & Planning the deans of the law school and the business school again asserted that state appropriations provide less than 10% of the annual operating budgets of their schools. This assertion fails to identify the senior administrators and the Regents as the persons who actually determine the allocation of state appropriations to those schools.

In fiscal year 2012 the University will receive $484 million in state appropriations for its general fund. Senior administrators (with the approval of the Regents) made the decision to allocate less than 1% of the state appropriations to the law school ($3.6 million) and to the business school ($3.3 million). The state legislature does not direct the allocation of those funds. See question (8) in Questions of Value.

What is the response of the deans to this decision of central administration to allocate a minuscule percentage of state appropriations to their schools? They tell the committee that "they have the capacity to raise tuition." Once again we have the reliance on tuition, which senior administrators describe as "the revenue stream with the highest potential for significant, long-term growth." See section (1) in $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspective.

This skyrocketing tuition is creating a generation of indentured students who are also confronted with a dismal job market. See the October 14, 2011 report on Generation Debt in the Star-Tribune.

There are alternatives to endless increases in tuition. The senior administrators could allocate a larger percentage of the state appropriations to pay the operating costs of the schools and colleges. They could use part of the accumulated surplus of more than half a billion dollars in revenue that they continue to carry forward from year to year. See Question (7) in Questions of Value. They could make substantial reductions in the costs of administration that have exploded since 2005. See section 3 in University Inc. Part II.

Have the emergence of the corporate university and the pursuit of personal wealth replaced the ideal of public service? Have the leaders of a non-profit institution of higher education lost their moral compass when they believe themselves entitled to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual compensation and benefits? Should their decisions require students (and their parents) to incur tens of thousands of dollars in debt that will take years to repay? See the the Conclusion and the Postscript to $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspective.

We are now off course in higher education. See the recent essay entitled Our Universities--Why Are They Failing? by Princeton University history professor Anthony Grafton. We can begin to find our way back by restoring the ideal of public service, by recognizing that an education in the liberal arts is more than vocational training, and by requiring our professors to be as devoted to the students in their classrooms as they are to their research.

Michael W. McNabb
University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974
University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member

2011-11-10T12:42:00.003-06:00

A Double Standard on Financial Aid?

An open letter to administrators at

the University of Minnesota

A former employee of the Academic Affairs and Provost office writes to Robert McMaster and Tom Sullivan.

From the Minnesota Daily:

By Andy Howe - University lecturer

Although I am a past employee of your office, I am writing today as a concerned alumnus of the University of Minnesota and taxpayer in the state. I received my Ph.D. in higher education from the University in 2009, so I have a keen interest in the integrity of the land grant mission of the University. As a taxpayer, I want to make sure that my contribution to the University is aligned with this mission and provides broad access to undergraduate education.

Lately, policies on which you have led give me concern about access to undergraduate education and integrity of the land grant mission. Let me first get a few things out of the way. I am fully aware of the competition in higher education, federal and state cuts, the research focus of the University, middle-class affordability and the needs of multiple stakeholders.

These concerns are substantial and need to be addressed.

The University is also a land grant university, so intersections of choice, access, affordability and student success are equally if not more important to consider.

Although many universities have made access and affordability a priority, low-income students are being priced out of public, four-year institutions. You and others have mentioned that the University is consistent with other public universities with tuition, fees and institutional financial aid. But if there is a national issue with institutional policy, comparing the University with others who are also pricing out low-income students does nothing but present a half-truth.

Because of recruiting strategies, decreased need-based aid, increased merit-aid, caps on enrollment, increased tuition and fees, and a host of other policy decisions on which you have led, what has been the outcome? Recently, Washington Monthly ranked universities on social mobility (enrolling and graduating students on Pell Grants). The University was ranked one of the lowest in the Big Ten and in all flagship universities. The University also has one of the highest achievement gaps in the Big Ten and in all flagship universities.

What then is the long-term strategy for choice, access, affordability and for low-income student success at the University? I am an advocate for balanced — but not open — admission, beneficial financial aid policies, and transparency and accountability to these policies at public institutions.

With that said, you both have mentioned and written that institutional financial aid has grown substantially over the past several years, yet I can find no clear evidence that indicates that the percentage of out-of-pocket expenses (net price as a percentage of income) from those families making $30,000 or less has decreased substantially. How does the growth of merit-based institutional aid compare to the growth of need-based institutional aid from 2008 until present? Over the same time period, what is the average net price as percentage of annual income for students from families at $30,000, $70,000 and $110,000?

You both take pride in the increase of ACT scores and high school rank of entering first-year students and hope to continue these increases. As Vice Provost Robert McMaster stated in a recent Minnesota Daily article, “Aside from Carleton College and Macalester College, we [the University] probably are the most difficult to get into in the state of Minnesota.” Taking pride in limiting access at a land grant university is not one of the founding principles of the Morrill Act of 1862, which established land grant universities. President Eric Kaler has said that one of the things he had learned in his 100 days of listening was that many people feel the University is “aloof and arrogant.” Policies and statements like McMaster’s do nothing to change the public perception.

McMaster also stated in the most recent Board of Regents meeting that he and others “pressure colleges when we see that they are not performing to our expectations.” When it comes to informing the public and being accountable to the land grant mission, it appears you are not holding yourselves to the same standard.

2011-11-07T10:40:00.000-06:00

Legal Education and the Heir of Slytherin

The always interesting Dean of the University of Louisville Law School, Jim Chen, writes on MoneyLaw:

[Jim Chen is a former U of M law school prof. The following material is selected from the complete post that is well worth reading. Emphasis mine.]

... I still believe what John Steinbeck said in East of Eden: There is one story in the world, and only one. Whether the setting is Will Rogers High, Hogwarts, or the law school of your choosing, formal schooling often pits Socs against Greasers and Purebloods against Mudbloods. The narrative is one of epic, ceaseless competition between elites and outsiders.

If you've managed to miss one of the greatest cultural phenomena of the last generation, let me introduce you to the magical world of Harry Potter... In the mind of the Dark Lord, only those born to pure-blooded witches and wizards deserve to command the potions, incantations, and spells of his profession.

All of this prepares me to open one of the darkest chambers of secrets in law and legal education. Law schools and the country's largest law firms have long occupied — and jealously guarded — the most coveted corners in the American legal profession. BigLaw draws its talent from the most highly credentialed students emerging from our law schools. Without elite grades, no student stands a chance of scoring a BigLaw interview, let alone a BigLaw job.

At some schools, BigLaw does dig deeper in the talent pool. ... At schools such as Harvard, Duke, or Vanderbilt, or Virginia, Michigan, or Berkeley, BigLaw historically has been willing to interview a broader spectrum of students. At schools that historically operated under a municipal charter and have dedicated themselves to the higher training and useful education of local youth, BigLaw has been decidedly pickier.

This is not an altogether flattering portrayal. I admit as much. In fairness, I will say this: My own corner of the profession, legal education, has been complicit in this elitist exercise. ... If anything, academia has doubled down on BigLaw's bet. We draw our own faculty ranks from an even more selective pool of candidates. BigLaw and American law schools have anointed their superstars on the basis of schools attended and grades attained when these lawyers and professors were students in their twenty-something years...

Excessive emphasis on pedigree over performance has pushed the legal profession to a point of reckoning. ... Law schools can no longer indulge the conventional assumption that they can focus entirely on training their students to "think like lawyers," without attention to concrete skills or the pragmatic nuances of actual practice. Every BigLaw hire that flames out after two unproductive years should prompt honest recognition of the limits of elite credentials. Honesty about the limits of the existing model of legal education should prompt all law schools to ensure their students a true return on their educational investment ... to be as fully prepared to serve clients and deliver results as a lawyer can be upon passing the bar exam.

This is not a jeremiad against legal education and elite law firms. ... I believe wholeheartedly in the transformative power of legal education, motivated by a passion for teaching and informed by serious scholarship. For me to believe otherwise would force me to declare my own life an evil, bankrupt waste, and I emphatically believe that I have not lived in vain.

...the benefits of working in BigLaw or the legal academy affirmatively compound the heavy burden that its defenders must discharge. Those of us who care most about the legal profession and have gained the most from it owe a corresponding duty to take a hard look at the weaknesses of our shared calling. Whatever personal or professional inconvenience we may incur, those of us at the pinnacle of professional success must tell the truth.

How shall we make things better? ... Speak the truth and point to hope. This message combines my own experience with insights from history and literature .... The world of Harry Potter is one that pits the virtuous Order of the Phoenix against Lord Voldemort's degenerate Death Eaters. Those stories, real and fantastic, teach us useful lessons. Extreme opponents often become agents of reconciliation. The greatest breakthrough between the Communist world and the West came when Richard Nixon, the consummate Cold Warrior, visited "Red" China. By contrast, those who prevail through conflict and confrontation often do so by virtue of some close connection to the enemy, perhaps even kinship. At the risk of spoiling J.K. Rowling's books and the movies inspired by them, I will tell you that Harry Potter ultimately defeats Voldemort on the strength of a mysterious connection that links the boy wizard to the Dark Lord's most treacherous powers.

And so it must be that a critic of elite legal education, to be credible, must be one who has succeeded by its terms, both in school and in later professional life. With your indulgence, I'll make my argument very personal. In my twenties I enjoyed a double dose of privilege and prestige: Not only did I attend Harvard Law School alongside the future President of the United States; I also clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States. These experiences gave me the privilege of choosing between BigLaw and the legal academy. I spent many hours in my thirties divining some of the law's most intellectually challenging mysteries, from the use of macroeconomic indicators in utility regulation to the legal protection of biodiversity and functioning ecosystems as information platforms. All those things came to me, in large measure, because I turned in fantastic performances in torts, federal courts, and international business transactions. Those grades predicted intelligence of some relevance to the legal profession, and I worked my hardest to make good on the promise of my youth. But the task to which I have devoted my forties, that of managing a complex educational institution for the betterment of its students and the clients they will ultimately serve, is one that transcends my grades, my diplomas, my clerkships, and even the articles on my curriculum vitae. Everything I've done in life didn't get graded in law school. Grades were then. Life is now. As a firmly committed Muggle, I am no heir of Slytherin. Fate did bestow upon me a bundle of legal education's most elite experiences. And this is what I have learned since graduation: There is no value in prestige or credentials. There is only performance, and those who have the wisdom to prize it.

2011-11-02T20:15:00.000-05:00

Minnesota ranks 4th in student debt

Surprise, surprise. This whining dinosaur has been complaining about student debt for years.

From the Strib:

College students who graduated in 2010 piled up an average of $25,250 in student loan debt, showed a report released Thursday. That's up about 5 percent from the previous year.

Minnesota graduates had more debt than that -- $29,058, for the fourth highest average in the country, according to the Project on Student Debt's annual report. The state also ranked fifth in the proportion of students with debt, at 71 percent.

Last year, Minnesota ranked sixth in average debt and third in percentage of students with debt. Of the state's colleges and universities included in the report, Minneapolis College of Art and Design graduates carried the greatest average debt: $44,385. About 88 percent of its 2010 grads had debt.

The report does not include for-profit colleges, whose graduates traditionally have higher debt loads than their public and private nonprofit counterparts.

The Project on Student Debt notes that nation's growing student debt loads coincide with a record 9.1 percent unemployment rate. But "that's still less than half the unemployment rate for young adults with only a high school diploma," the report said.

2011-11-01T12:04:00.002-05:00

Yet another Spin Doctor Gives an "Official"

Answer to Questions about Homeopathy

At the University of Minnesota

From the Minnesota Daily:

"Simply put, we do not teach, nor advocate, for homeopathy in any way, nor does the University as an institution."

Tony Baisley

communications director

Center for Spirituality & Healing/School of Nursing

I guess it is cheaper to hire another spin doctor than to fix things?

My response:

Mr. Baisley-

Please tell that to the Director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing.

Director of University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing Writes Approvingly of Homeopathy

http://ptable.blogspot.com/201...

In a letter to the Daily
(link: http://www.mndaily.com/2010/02...

"As a scientist [sic] and nurse, I read with great interest an article that appeared in the medical journal Chest (Frass et al., 2005). This is a peer-reviewed scientific journal read by many physicians and surgeons. It is published by the American College of Chest Surgeons (no slouch of a group). The article describes a study (a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled trial) comparing critically-ill patients on mechanical ventilators in Intensive Care Units who received a substance called potassium dichromate with those who did not. It was found that the patients who received potassium dichromate had less thick, stringy tracheal secretions and were able to get off the ventilator more quickly and out of the ICU. Clinical outcomes like that are important. Potassium dichromate is a homeopathic remedy."
________

This hogwash has been thoroughly debunked, see: http://ptable.blogspot.com/201...

It is time for the Academic Health Center to own up about homeopathy at Minnesota. Homeopathy has no place in evidence based medicine.

"We do not teach, nor advocate, for homeopathy in any way, nor does the university as an institution."

Mr. Baisley, go to the home page of the University of Minnesota and type "homeopathy" into the search engine. Or just click this link:

http://bit.ly/tT2cSd

You are practicing what is known as the Big Lie technique. As Orwell put it in 1984: “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient..."

William B. Gleason, U of M med school faculty and alum

2011-10-31T12:09:00.000-05:00

Concerned Faculty Member at University of Minnesota

Dental School Comments

A faculty member at the U of M writes about the latest scandal at the Academic Health Center:

The information in the article is unfortunate, but true.

Concerns were registered with the University administration during Lloyd's Dean's review, but nothing happened.

The fact is that the University administration cared more about the fact that he could raise money and railroad through initiatives than whether he could effectively engage the faculty and staff or create a healthy, collegial working environment that could capitalize on the strengths of all of the faculty and staff rather than just his chosen few yes-people.

When he left, the faculty sent a loud and clear message to the University administration that better collaborative leadership and communication was seriously needed, and the University responded by appointing the least capable candidate, who in only a few weeks showed that she could not communicate with the faculty or even understand basic University policies and procedures.

When people raise objections about the poor leadership of a public-service organization and no one listens, why is anyone surprised that it winds up in the news media?

2011-10-31T08:51:00.001-05:00

Open wide, this might hurt a little...

School of Dentistry must change - from the Minnesota Daily:

As the search for a permanent dean continues, faculty sources have called out current and past administrators and are waiting to see if their voices will be heard.

Alleged intimidation and favoritism have embittered faculty at the University of Minnesota’s School of Dentistry for years, interviews show.

In extensive interviews with the Minnesota Daily, current and former faculty members alleged years of what they claim was oppressive leadership within the school. The concerns are ongoing.

Personal relationships and favoritism continue to factor into administrative hiring decisions.

Former Dean Patrick Lloyd’s autocratic decision-making and micromanagement alienated some faculty members.

Fear of retribution suppressed disagreement and debate.

Contradicting faculty and student input, University officials appointed Judith Buchanan — an administrator that Lloyd recruited and who came to the University in 2005 — as interim dean.

The controversy intensified in early August when Buchanan announced she would appoint her husband to a leadership position in the school, raising concerns of nepotism.

As the search for a permanent dean continues, many faculty members are clinging to hope that a new administration will reverse the climate they say permeated the school under Lloyd.

In an email to some faculty, professor Muriel Bebeau criticized Buchanan for promoting her own husband.

“The issue our department is facing is something worth fighting about,” Bebeau wrote in the email obtained by the Daily.

“If we hope to have some say in the next administration of this school, the time to speak up is now.”

An empty vote

If dentistry faculty members had their first choice, professor Mike Rohrer would be interim dean.

The process of temporarily filling Lloyd’s position started in late May. Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Tom Sullivan asked faculty, staff, students and alumni for input. When more than 90 faculty members voted for their favored candidates, many thought the results would be a deciding factor in the search.

Rohrer came out on top, and a group of faculty members congratulated him on what they presumed to be his upcoming appointment.

But without explanation, Judith Buchanan was named interim dean. She had placed last out of the four eligible faculty candidates and wasn’t one of the three choices students submitted to Sullivan in a separate vote.

“I couldn’t understand the choice,” said associate professor Thomas Larson, who supported Rohrer. “But I wasn’t the one picking.”

Sullivan said that ultimately he was required to listen to all stakeholders. The faculty’s vote was only one of many factors.

But it’s not just the appointment process that frustrated some faculty members. Buchanan was often absent for travel and outside consulting work, said one clinical faculty member who requested confidentiality because of concerns of losing his job. Several professors, including Larson and Bebeau, said Buchanan changed curriculums without adequately consulting faculty.

“The people that she works with most closely really didn’t support her as an idea for interim dean,” the clinical faculty member said.

But the widespread fear was that Buchanan would continue the same purportedly repressive atmosphere many said existed under Lloyd, her predecessor.

Divisive leadership

More than 100 dentistry school students and faculty members gathered in McNamara Alumni Center in June 2008 for the memorial service of a respected colleague who died of a heart attack. Dean Patrick Lloyd was not among them.

Lloyd often clashed with Charlie Schachtele, a former associate dean, and at the request of Schachtele’s widow, Lloyd was asked not to attend.

“I knew that Charlie would turn in his grave to have Lloyd involved with his memorial service,” family friend Richard Simonsen wrote in an emailed response to a Daily inquiry

Throughout his seven-year tenure as dean, sources said Lloyd attempted to control every aspect of the school — from dictating course content to picking paint colors. People who spoke out against his vision often felt they risked retribution.

Several faculty members said that when Lloyd was upset with employees in the school, he would sometimes call them into his office to scream and curse at them.

The Daily repeatedly sought comment from Lloyd for this article. He responded with a letter through an attorney.

Among his responses, Lloyd called one faculty member’s claim of being yelled at a “personal perception” that didn’t match his own recollection.

Before a faculty position opened for hire in 2008, Lloyd asked the search committee to tailor the position’s posting to a person who ultimately got the job, said Nelson Rhodus, a dentistry professor on the committee. Rhodus then withdrew his participation in the search and called the process a “total farce.”

‘Nothing to be done’

If dentistry faculty members were so upset with the school’s leadership and direction, why didn’t top-level University officials step in?

It’s unclear how many complaints made it to them.

Employees said they thought anonymous reporting wouldn’t result in action and wouldn’t stay anonymous, raising concerns about the possibility of reprisal.

The handful of complaints that did make it to Frank Cerra, Lloyd’s former supervisor, were evaluated and discussed with Lloyd.

“Usually, we found the allegations to be unfounded or misunderstandings,” Cerra, former vice president for health sciences, wrote in an email.

Cerra refused to elaborate in a follow-up phone interview if any of the investigations showed that faculty members’ allegations were founded.

Although they only supervised him directly for seven months, the two administrators that currently oversee the dentistry dean said they didn’t hear any concerns until after Lloyd announced he was leaving.

“Not once, not once in that time did I receive any complaint about Patrick Lloyd,” Provost Sullivan told the Daily.

Aaron Friedman, who took over for Cerra in January, said he didn’t receive any complaints either. He said “it is impossible to believe” that seven years of complaints would fail to reach senior administrators like him.

Four tenured dentistry professors, including Nelson Rhodus, met with Sullivan in June to address their concerns about Lloyd’s leadership style.

Rhodus planned the meeting before Lloyd announced he was leaving, and kept it when the faculty heard of the dean’s departure.

Sullivan and Friedman referenced the meeting only to comment that, “at that point, there was nothing to be done.”

But Rhodus and his colleagues felt the opposite — it was their chance to insist that, in its search for the next dean, the administration use Lloyd’s leadership style as an example of what not to look for.

For the school to get back on track and move forward, Rhodus said, selecting a markedly different dean would be crucial.

Married with benefits?

Buchanan’s interim position, expected to last about a year, could begin a new era in the school.

But one of her first acts may have marred her deanship from the start.

During her second week, Buchanan announced in a dentistry school newsletter that she would promote her husband, Peter Berthold, to interim chairman of the Department of Primary Dental Care.

Soon after Buchanan’s announcement, faculty liaisons Jill Stoltenberg and David Bereiter started hearing concerns from across the school. They received more than a dozen email or in-person complaints and met with faculty members, they said.

They brought the objections to Buchanan and asked her to reconsider the decision.

Bereiter, chairman of the school’s Faculty Consultative Committee, told Buchanan that promoting her husband could become her “legacy” as interim dean.

Buchanan was surprised to hear that many considered the appointment problematic.

When Bereiter and Stoltenberg left the meeting, “there was no assurance that anything was going to change,” Bereiter said.

In an email the next day, Buchanan called Bereiter and Stoltenberg’s points “valid,” but wrote, “I see it differently.”

“I had enormous hope when I thought we were going to get interim leadership that would restore faculty governance,” professor Muriel Bebeau said in an interview. “But, you know, the first act is the failure of consultation.”

Buchanan and top administrators said Berthold’s managerial and accreditation experience warranted the post. Buchanan said he would not have received a pay raise.

“There was not another person I felt comfortable with asking to lead as chair,” Buchanan said.

Associate professor Steve Shuman balked at that explanation.

“That’s the issue — comfortable,” he said. “What does she mean by comfortable?

“I think it’s best to find leadership that everyone’s comfortable with.”

Top administrators questioned the timing of the announcement, which came before a key step: The nepotism management plan for Buchanan’s promotion of her husband had not yet been established.

University President Eric Kaler said Buchanan “got ahead of herself in making that announcement.”

Sullivan also called the move “premature,” but said Buchanan conformed with University nepotism policies as she worked to finalize the appointment.

“I think that I probably would have tried to come up with a different solution,” Buchanan said of her intention to appoint her husband. “I didn’t anticipate so much concern about it.”

When Sullivan learned of Buchanan’s plans to promote her husband — nearly two weeks after she told faculty — he halted the appointment and called a meeting.

The resolution was to have four division heads, including Berthold, lead the department to avoid giving Berthold sole decision-making power.

The nepotism management plan was signed more than two weeks after Berthold began his new leadership position. Under the plan, administrators meet to discuss his activities twice a month. To bypass his wife, Berthold reports directly to AHC Vice President Friedman.

Berthold declined multiple requests for comment.

About 40 faculty members gathered for an emergency meeting Sept. 27 to discuss concerns about Buchanan, her appointments, faculty governance and the permanent dean search.

Faculty members still had concerns about the four-person committee leading the Primary Dental Care department. They asked that faculty leaders bring their concerns to Buchanan directly a second time.

In mid-October, faculty leaders from multiple departments told Buchanan that the committee was a departure from the school’s constitution, which states that a “chairperson” will lead each department.

“It’s a person — it’s not a group, it’s not plural,” Bereiter said.

Technically, the link between Buchanan and Berthold has been cut, but he still has personal access to the dean that “could be influential in the running of the department,” said Stoltenberg, secretary of the faculty’s council.

Buchanan listened and responded civilly to faculty points at the meeting, Stoltenberg said.

But when Buchanan left, faculty leaders still had no idea if anything would change.

‘Things are really heating up’

On Sept. 1, Judith Buchanan forwarded an email she had received from University faculty to Patrick Lloyd at Ohio State.

She shared with him faculty concerns about the Department of Primary Dental Care’s committee leadership. The faculty email was originally sent to Buchanan and top administrators.

Above faculty criticisms in the email, Buchanan wrote a personal note to Lloyd.

“Patrick, Things are really heating up as you can see. Wish I was there. Judith.”

As they raise their concerns, faculty members wonder if anything will change under Buchanan, and eventually with the selection of a new dean.

Buchanan told the Daily she’s trying to set a new tone.

“We are making an effort to do things a bit differently, just because I’m a different person than Dean Lloyd was,” Buchanan said in an interview two months after she took office.

“He was a bit of a micromanager,” she said.

Faculty members hope for “a true partnership” with the interim dean, professor Bereiter said.

So far, it’s unclear if Buchanan will act on their concerns.

Faculty members are rallying their ideas for the future of the School of Dentistry and say strengthening their role in governance is key.

They have grown weary of being ignored, professor Thomas Larson said, and the administration must do more than “pay lip service” to the faculty.

“It is not a small vocal minority,” he said. “It is, in fact, a majority.”

2011-10-24T12:26:00.001-05:00

Duke Powell, a Paramedic and Former Legislator,

Raises an Interesting Issue About Redistricting

Although Duke and I are on opposite sides of the fence politically, he is a decent and knowledgeable person.

I thank him for giving me permission to quote him: (emphasis mine)

I question the Constitutional authority of either the Governor or the Courts in matters concerning redistricting. While I’m not a lawyer, I am able to read. The MN Constitution seems clear:

“Article IV Sec. 3. CENSUS ENUMERATION APPORTIONMENT; CONGRESSIONAL AND LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT BOUNDARIES; SENATE DISTRICTS. At its first session after each enumeration of the inhabitants of this state made by the authority of the United States, the legislature shall have the power to prescribe the bounds of congressional and legislative districts.”

Nearly all of you might react to this by saying, “But the Governor has the right to approve or veto all bills passed by the Legislature.”

My response is “Yeah, except for when he doesn’t.” Consider this section:

“Article III Section 1. DIVISION OF POWERS. The powers of government shall be divided into three distinct departments: legislative, executive and judicial. No person or persons belonging to or constituting one of these departments shall exercise any of the powers properly belonging to either of the others except in the instances expressly provided in this constitution.”

The powers of redistricting were expressly granted to the Legislative body. The Governor, nor the courts, are given a role.

To further buttress this argument, consider this section:

“Article IV Sec. 24. PRESENTATION OF ORDERS, RESOLUTIONS, AND VOTES TO GOVERNOR. Each order, resolution or vote requiring the concurrence of the two houses except such as relate to the business or adjournment of the legislature shall be presented to the governor and is subject to his veto as prescribed in case of a bill.”

As we see, there are exceptions to the power of the Governor to veto as they “relate to the business… of the Legislature.” It is my position that the MN Constitution has made redistricting the “business” of the Legislature.

Very interesting analysis...

2011-10-17T13:22:00.001-05:00

Does the University of Minnesota

Need an Academic Health Center?

Excerpts from a frank discussion, finally, at the Faculty Consultative Committee:

Faculty Consultative Committee
Thursday, October 6, 2011

3.    AHC Faculty Consultative Committee Response to the AHC Executive Steering Committee Report

    Professor Cramer now welcomed Professors Lytle, Oakes, and Weckwerth to the meeting and turned to Professor Campbell, chair of the AHC Faculty Consultative Committee (AHC FCC), to lead a discussion of the report from the AHC FCC. The report follows, between the * * *.

* * *

On September 1, 2011, the Faculty Consultative Committee (FCC) charged the Academic Health Center (AHC) FCC with preparing a formal response to the draft report of the AHC Review Executive Steering Committee. In terms of a formal response the AHC FCC was asked to address the following questions, as appropriate:

1.    What recommendations in the report does the committee endorse without change?

2. What recommendations does the AHC FCC believe are ill advised? What rationale led the AHC FCC to a conclusion different from that of the review committee?

3. What recommendations would benefit from specific modifications; what are those modifications, and what motivated the committee’s thinking in suggesting any changes?

4. What issues are not addressed in the report that the AHC FCC deems sufficiently important to warrant additional scrutiny, either prior to finalization of the report or at some later stage?

5.
Members of AHC FCC are Colin Campbell, chair, Susan Berry, Cynthia Gross, Leslie Lytle, Paul Olin, Ned Patterson, and Cheryl Robertson.

Background: Earlier this year, President Bruininks and Provost Sullivan charged an Executive Steering Committee with conducting a comprehensive review of the AHC. The purpose of the review was to examine and define the appropriate role, mission, and value of the AHC and to make recommendations on how the AHC should be best organized in order to ensure that academic programs are properly supported, that there is no duplication of administrative services, and to make certain that interdisciplinary centers are appropriately aligned.

On September 7th and 16th, 2011, the AHC FCC met and discussed at-length the draft report of the AHC Review Executive Steering Committee. Additionally, as suggested by the FCC, AHC FCC members made every effort to solicit opinions from a broad cross-section of AHC faculty, including school governance groups. Based on those discussions and input received, the AHC FCC identified the following:

• There was widespread agreement with the Executive Steering Committee’s Recommendation 1 that the AHC should continue to serve as the convening academic and administrative unit for the schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, and Veterinary Medicine.

• There was general agreement with Recommendation 2, the AHC should report to a Vice President for Health Sciences reporting to the President, and that the Vice President should focus on interdisciplinary education, research and clinical programs. However, the report lacks specificity regarding these domains, and did not propose a vision to direct defining its boundaries.

• The response to Recommendation 3 was mixed. With the exception of the Medical School, there was agreement that the Medical School Dean should report to the Provost on broad academic issues and not directly to the President. As noted above, the interface between academics and clinical education and research has not been defined.

• The AHC FCC found widespread support for Recommendation 4, to split the position of Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean of the Medical School into distinct and separate positions. More outside-the-box thought should be given to looking at how to handle these positions such as the Medical School FAC’s suggestion to have the Medical School Dean also serve as the Vice President for Medical Services (VPMS), and have a separate Vice President for Health Sciences (VPHS) position focusing on interdisciplinary, interprofessional and intercollegiate programs that cut across the AHC colleges and other University collegiate units engaged in health science education and research. [See attached letter from the Medical School Faculty Advisory Council (FAC)].

• Recommendation 5 was generally viewed as acceptable.

• Recommendation 6 was generally viewed as desirable.

• The AHC FCC found widespread skepticism and unmet expectations regarding Recommendations 7 and 8. The report did not go far enough in sharpening the focus or in leveraging enterprise resources. The report calls for continuation of centers that are “essential and unique” and services/functions that are “critical and unique” to the AHC, but supports the status quo without delineating a framework for distinguishing what is essential, critical and unique.

• The Executive Steering Group’s charge called for broad representation from AHC staff, faculty and University leaders on each of the sub-teams to ensure that there is a breadth of expertise represented. However, despite requests by both the AHC FCC and the FCC, there was inadequate non-administrative faculty representation on the sub-teams. As a result, inadequate rank and file representation served to undermine the credibility of the report.

• The Executive Steering Committee’s recommendations were unremarkable. The report lacked vision and failed to put forward a plan to make the AHC better.

•    The report was vague, ambiguous and lacked transparency. For example, it lacked financial data to support its recommendations. In addition to finances, the report did not fully address accountability, oversight or governance matters.

With regard to the FCC’s request to identify recommendations that are ill-advised or should be modified, it must be acknowledged that there was near-unanimous support for a focused AHC (Recommendations 1, 2 and 5) and separating the Dean of the Medical School from the AHC Vice President for Health Sciences (Recommendation 4). Recommendations 3 and 4 needed greater specificity of scope and rationale to guide implementation. With regard to Recommendations 7 and 8, the AHC FCC would like an independent body, including representation of faculty from all AHC colleges and external experts, to re-evaluate the findings and recommendations of the sub-teams given a significant number of their recommendations were overturned by the Executive Steering Committee without compelling rationale and supporting data. As previously noted, the credibility of the report was undermined by the narrow composition of the Executive Steering Committee. This re-review should begin by establishing a framework for assessing what is unique, critical and essential in order to optimally leverage enterprise-wide resources with the flexibility to meet unit-specific unique needs.

What was not addressed in the report? The report was Twin Cities-focused, and did not consider the coordinate campuses, although at least three AHC schools have major divisions at Duluth and Rochester. Finances and the size of the infrastructure of the AHC were not adequately addressed. Data on the size, organization and functions of the AHC, separate from its colleges and centers, was omitted as well.

In conclusion, the AHC FCC as a group, and, on behalf of the collective faculty, there were significant concerns about the report. Most notably, we question the degree to which representation of the faculty was achieved. We also felt that the report lacked details that would address accountability, oversight, and governance. The response to our solicitation of comments also reflected the divide between the Medical School and the other AHC schools about the role of the Medical School Dean. The AHC FCC agrees that the AHC should continue to serve the health science schools, and the Vice President for Health Sciences should be a separate position from the Dean of the Medical School. The report did not delve deep enough. There needs to be a more in-depth analysis of the current AHC structure and finances evaluated by an independent committee that includes direct input from more rank and file AHC faculty and staff. This report provided recommendations that were broad, non-specific and open to interpretation, and presented the status quo as acceptable while failing to present data to support that conclusion. We would like to see a report that puts forth a vision for how the AHC can best serve the University community in years to come.

* * *

    Professor Campbell said that there was broad consensus on the AHC FCC on many of the items in the report, including that the AHC should exist, at least in its ideal form, that there should be a vice president for the AHC, and that the positions of Dean of the Medical School and vice president should be split. The AHC FCC also found much of the report too vague.

Except for those individuals from the Medical School, the AHC FCC did not believe the Dean of the Medical School should report to the President, but should report to the Provost. The AHC FCC viewed skeptically the Executive Steering Committee report intimation that everything is working fine and there are no redundancies; there were few references to support the claim. To many, the report represented an opportunity to sketch out a vision for the AHC, but it did not do so.

There is also a concern that the report will not have as much impact as it might have because there were so few (one) faculty members involved. They are also concerned, Professor Campbell concluded, that many faculty members in the AHC will not respond to the report, which should not be interpreted to mean that they are happy with the way things are, but rather reflects a perception that their opinions will have no impact on the process, which is regarded as a fait accompli.

    Professor Cramer said he has noticed that the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Science and Engineering, and the College of Education and Human Development all have large numbers of undergraduates; perhaps they should be grouped as Colleges with Large Undergraduate Majors and Programs, or CLUMP, and CLUMP should be provided its own administrative structure to provide and coordinate services. The implementation of the CLUMP structure might be revenue-neutral from a University perspective, or then again it might not be--certainly staff in CLUMP colleges would probably appreciate having their own support structure, but, as matters stand they don't have that (instead they use central University services, e.g., room scheduling). Does there really need to be a wrapper around the six colleges called the AHC? Professor Campbell said that he could not respond effectively because he is not a clinician, and it is clinical activity that binds the AHC together. Professor Cramer said that there is no CLUMP office of student services, instead there is a University-wide office, even though it serves primarily CLUMP colleges; why cannot there be an office of clinical care that serves the entire University? It was noted that some AHC colleges have negligible clinical activity and some non-AHC units have substantial clinical activity, making the clinical activity justification seem weak.

     Professor Bitterman said that two points should be clarified with regard to any perceived discrepancies between the Medical School faculty view and the rest of the AHC colleges and schools. First, the Medical School Faculty Advisory Committee opinion (letter sent to the AHC FCC to be included in today's report to the FCC) is in close accord with the views expressed by the other AHC colleges, that deans should not become middle managers reporting to a vice president when, in the view of the faculty, they should be disciplinary leaders and run their colleges. Second, to address the unique challenges posed by the position of UMP in the University reporting structure, the Medical School FAC suggests a very different type of combined Dean-VP position than the one discussed in the AHC Executive Steering Committee Report.   Their suggestion is that the Dean of the Medical School also be the Vice President for Medical Services. In that capacity, the Dean-Vice President for Medical Services would report to the President only for matters related to the practice of medicine by UMP. This is a nearly-$1-billion-dollar-per-year activity that includes complex contractual relationships with private health care corporations, creating a significant risk that it could stray from the core University academic mission without direct input and guidance from the President. For all functions other than the practice of medicine, the Dean of the Medical School would be on par with all other deans and report to the Provost. This would focus the Dean of the Medical School only on the Medical School and practice plan, and not on the functions of any other college.

    Professor Pacala said that his concern is that there are already enough problems because the Medical School and UMP are run separately; if a separate reporting structure is created, that would further complicate coordination and synergy of the clinical mission of UMP and the academic mission of the Medical School.

    What has not come up, Professor Ziegler said, is the responsibility the AHC has for interprofessional education between the AHC schools. He said he does not know how far that has progressed, but it was to be explored and is a reason to retain the AHC. Professor Cramer observed that there are many intercollegiate programs at the University that do not have a special wrapper like the AHC. But they are problematic to set up with clinical settings, Professor Ziegler said, and the AHC umbrella makes it easier to do so—especially if the program will be out in the state.

    Professor Luepker said the report: (1) appears to be heavily driven by the word "clinical," but there are many people at the University who deliver clinical services but are not part of the AHC; and (2) of the AHC schools that are pulled together under that umbrella, his offers no clinical services and the paid clinical activity in Nursing and Pharmacy is trivial, the Committee just learned from Ms. Nunnally, so is the AHC limited to six schools, three of which do not have a clinical practice? With respect to who reports to whom, Professor Luepker said, deans report to the Provost, but for clinical activities they report to the Vice President for the AHC. If a college has no clinical activity, should it report only to the Provost? There are universities with health science schools but without an AHC and the schools/departments take care of clinical imperatives. He said he did not want the AHC to be driven only by clinical imperatives.

    Professor Ben-Ner asked about the linkages among clinical activities across Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine, Nursing, and so on; there are also schools that have professional degree programs that it was not found necessary to connect together for programmatic or financial reasons. Professor Lytle said that in the School of Public Health, their interdisciplinary work often extends far beyond the AHC. Administrative help from the AHC is not often required for the interdisciplinary work in which many faculty members in Public Health are involved.

    All of these comments, Professor Campbell said, are being made because there was no vision in the report; it was very pedestrian and contained nothing about what should be done. It is a lost opportunity. That is what he has heard over and over, Professor Bitterman agreed.

    One small counterweight, Professor Chomsky said, is that there has long been discussion about how interdisciplinary efforts do not work well all around the University; this report could have been an opportunity to improve that situation. She said she did not know if the answer is to get rid of the AHC cluster.

    Professor Chomsky asked about the AHC FCC report. In the case of recommendation three, it appears to be the Medical School versus everyone else. That division warrants more discussion. If there is no body to engage in "visioning," and given the criticisms of the report about vagueness, lack of faculty participation, and lack of specificity, should one outgrowth of this discussion be a recommendation for involving more faculty members in the process?

    Faculty apathy is not unique to the AHC, Professor Cramer said. Speaking more to the point of shared identity, he noted that there were eight faculty members from AHC colleges present at this meeting; he asked them how they respond when asked by people in the supermarket what they do: Do they say they are a professor in the AHC or a professor in, for example, the Medical School? The AHC is supposed to be a brand that has value. None of the eight said that they would identify themselves as being "in the AHC" as opposed to their college.

    Professor Pacala said he would identify himself as a professor in the Medical School. There exists a curious disconnect here: He recently attended a national conference on interprofessional education and the University of Minnesota was the "rock star" in the room, seen as the furthest along in developing it. Relatively speaking, the AHC is doing well; on an absolute scale, it is doing poorly. The potential of the AHC in interprofessional education is not being realized and there are few programs run or sponsored by the AHC.

    And some faculty members are very rigid, Professor Weckwerth observed. In some cases, Professor Pacala agreed, but he said he does some interprofessional education in spite of the AHC. There was a local conference on how the AHC could promote interprofessional education; he said then that what is needed is a common calendar and decent room scheduling. Neither has happened. Instead, he must call colleagues in the School of Nursing and the School of Public Health to work out times when an interprofessional class might be offered. They wanted a hard look in the mirror with this report and they didn't get one, Professor Pacala concluded.

    Professor Ben-Ner said that it's not possible to control the many units and departments of the University directly from the center, so there is a need for intermediate structures. Colleges are one way to decentralize, but those may also be too many. Structures like the AHC may be the answer, but it's not an obvious one (the University experimented with provostal areas for health, arts and sciences, and the professions in the 1990s). He said he did not believe the re-visioning of the AHC should be from the inside; it should be done externally, from above. It is very difficult to look beyond one's own horizon. He said he had no view about how an AHC might be structured—perhaps initially there were synergies that may not be present now. He suggested there could be opportunities for interprofessional and interdisciplinary synergies and cost savings from reconfiguration of the University collegiate structure and reorganization, something the current University administration is considering already. Professor Cramer agreed that the report seemed inward-looking even though the Executive Steering Committee included two vice presidents from outside the AHC. The report does not reflect the outside looking in, he agreed.

    Professor VandenBosch noted that Professor Pacala had commented that classroom scheduling does not work—but there is an AHC office of classroom management, as was discussed earlier in the consideration of AHC finances. This raises questions of why AHC classrooms are not managed by the central Office of Classroom Management, and whether central scheduling might be more efficient. As apparently the scheduling of AHC classrooms is not effective currently, she asked? Ask any professor, Professor Pacala responded.

Professor VandenBosch said she would like to hear more about how AHC colleges related to the non-AHC colleges. Not all clinical activities are in the AHC, she also observed, and AHC colleges interact with other colleges in research and teaching, as well. She said she would like to hear about the charge and the committee’s activities from the faculty member who served on the Executive Steering Committee—Professor Oakes.

    Professor Oakes reported that the gist of the charge to the Executive Steering Committee was to provide the new president with a richer understanding of the AHC and how it is integrated, or not, with the rest of the University. The group met many times, and like all committees, it aimed for a horse and got a camel; committee work is about compromise and, for better or worse, the products of committees are typically compromised products.

Regardless, those who drafted the report view this comment period as absolutely critical. Dr. Oakes applauded the AHC FCC for having done its job and he believed that this Committee (the FCC) is correct to consider the report at its own level. From his perspective, as an AHC professor and former member of this Committee, the elephant in the room is the question, "to what extent does the AHC help the University versus the University helping the AHC?" Are they going together or apart? What the President needs is an understanding of what the vision of the AHC is and whether or not it fits with the University. Professor Luepker tapped a nerve: When people say "clinical," non-clinical people shudder because lives are at stake, but that should not be used to dissuade serious reconsideration of the AHC structure.

    The big issue on the campus, Professor Oakes continued, is the Washington Avenue moat, that physical and metaphorical divide that seems to create two universities from one. There appears to be a lot of lost collaborative opportunity created by the current structures of the AHC. Professor Oakes wondered how the moat could be drained and increased efficiencies exploited.

    Those comments are not in the report, Professor Bitterman observed, and if they had been, the report would have been better received. How to make the University better is nowhere in the report nor are his insights, Professor Bitterman told Professor Oakes. This was an opportunity to get talent together to make the life and health sciences at the University better for its students and faculty, and he objected to the absence of vision, creativity, innovation, and information. This represents a missed opportunity. The final AHC Executive Steering Committee Report as written would be unscored in an NIH study section—or "not recommended for further consideration, streamlined."

    It was a committee of people who did their best, Professor Oakes said, and he expressed the hope that the Committee would pursue vigorously the topics FCC has raised. That is why the comment period is so important.

What are the obstacles to addressing Professor Bitterman's points, Professor VandenBosch asked? It is difficult for any group to look at itself, Professor Oakes said. A self-report is important, but an external review is also always needed; there needs to be external peer review. Professor Cramer is correct, Professor Oakes said: Among others, there were vice presidents with a University perspective on the Executive Steering Committee. And the group also included some very smart people who worked very hard to take a fresh look at things. But the basic challenge is that self-assessment is hard to do. An outside assessment is typically needed, he emphasized.

    Professor Bearinger said she agreed with Professors Bitterman and Luepker. She is in three of the six schools and would not identify herself as a professor in the AHC, but rather name the three schools. When Senior Vice President Cerra had an AHC-level meeting to announce that the positions of dean and vice president would be joined, it was talked about as a temporary arrangement. At the meeting, one person asked if any other dean could be the vice president; Dr. Cerra's answer was that any dean who could handle the clinical enterprise could take the position. That told the story, she said. When one looks at the dollars, clinical practice is a Medical School issue—and the tail should not be wagging the dog. When she looks at the list of services provided by the AHC (reviewed earlier in the meeting), where they are going is disproportional to the pie chart entries (alos provided earlier in the meeting) with the vast majority servicing the Medical School. If the services provided to the Medical School by the AHC were moved under the Medical School umbrella, what would remain? If there is to be an AHC, one should ask what should be remain in the AHC and what could/should be provided by central administration.

    Professors Bitterman and Oakes addressed a more philosophical point about the AHC, Professor Cramer said, while Professor Bearinger spoke to a more technical point about the AHC budget. He said he believes the services of AHC do need to be offered, and that if there are savings to be achieved, it is likely at the level of supervision, not of frontline workers. Professor Bitterman agreed; "we need doers and the financial question is about the number of watchers."

    Professor Bearinger said she has been involved in interdisciplinary education for the past two decades and, relative to the support she has received has come from Vice President Mulcahy and from the Graduate School, the AHC provided very little.

    Professor Luepker said there are a couple of elephants in the room. One is the lack of vision on how to make the AHC better; on that point, there is nothing there. He also had an "aha" moment during the discussion with Vice President Friedman and Ms. Nunnally earlier in the meeting: Why was the AHC bureaucracy built? Not for his school. It is for the $200 million in centers it oversees. There is an infrastructure there, with good people in it, but it is protecting itself. Professor Oakes said he chaired the subcommittee on centers; by and large, the centers found little benefit to the AHC umbrella per se. But Ms. Nunnally said that is why the AHC is needed, Professor Luepker recalled—but the Cancer Center has its own human resources, public relations, and information technology staff. Professor Oakes said he interviewed every center director and, if he recalled correctly, only one indicated they could not move from the AHC to the university level.
    When the AHC was created, Professor Weckwerth recalled, the issue was the hospital. Its time is now past. And the AHC could lose its shirt if it were linked to the hospital again.

    Professor Ziegler noted that the Medical School has an accreditation review in March and that in a mock review, it was said that the relationship between the dean and vice president needs to be clarified.

    Professor Chomsky said there is an odd disjuncture between the conversation at this meeting and the first bullet point in the AHC FCC report about a consensus view that the AHC should continue. Professor Campbell said that those on the AHC FCC have asked what the AHC aspired to do and how much it would cost. The broad perception is that it costs too much and does too little.

Professor Cramer said that he thinks it is critically important that FCC communicate to the President its thoughts on the AHC report, but that rather than simply sending a memo, it would be good to learn from the President what he might find most useful in terms of formal or informal input. He suggested that he and Professor Jacobs would talk with President Kaler about the report and ask what he would like to see from this Committee.

    Professor Cramer thanked Professors Lytle, Oakes, and Weckwerth for joining the meeting and adjourned it at 2:10.

A good start would be for the president to read this discussion.

2011-10-15T11:30:00.002-05:00

Do People Have a Moral Obligation

to Participate in Research?

My latest post on the Chronicle of Higher Education Brainstorm blog.

2011-10-13T15:30:00.002-05:00

Speaking Truth to Fiction

Bunsis Replies to Pfutzenreuter

Over at On Campus, MPR blogger Alex Friedrich reports:

Budget analyst: U’s administrative costs are still really high

Remember last Friday’s presentation on University of Minnesota finances by accounting professor Howard Bunsis, an officer in the American Association of University professors? He said spending on administration was a big factor in the rise of university costs. He was confronted at the session by the U’s CFO, Richard Pfutzenreuter, who said Bunsis was presenting a misleading picture.
.

Pfutzenreuter essentially said Bunsis had inflated administrative spending by including categories that either weren’t really administrative expenses, or were indirectly tied to instruction.

Here is Howard’s response to CFO Pfutzenreiter’s objections.

None of this would have changed my approach or conclusions.

Let me first report some more detail which supports the conclusion that administrative costs have increased significantly over the last several years.

This data is critical to rebutting any assumption that administrative costs went up for ancillary reasons. Do not (be persuaded) that there has not been an astronomical increase in administrative costs.

Per Audited Statements (all campuses)	2002	2010	%change
Institutional Support Salaries and Benefits	99,424	172,929	74%
Institutional Support Supplies and Service	4,232	61,379	1350%
Institutional Support Total	103,656	234,308	126%
Instruction Salaries and Benefits	457,444	582,468	27%

Per IPEDS (TC only)	2002	2009
Institutional Support Salaries and Benefits	88,757,000	190,237,439	114%
Instruction Salaries and Benefits	412,028,930	512,636,014	24%

If we take out the “accounting change” and other stuff that the CFO claims is in institutional support, then we still see a 74% increase in institutional support salaries and benefits. Per IPEDS at TC, institutional support salaries and benefits increased 114%. Notice how those increases dwarf the increases in instructional salaries and benefits. No amount of (persuading) can explain away those numbers.

Now, the supplies and services part of institutional support went up quite a bit. But here is the thing; there may be some additional items in there, but this is mostly the budgets of the upper-level administrators for services, supplies, travel, etc. It will be interesting to see what that yields.

Using the IPEDS data, comparing 2002 to 2009 (2010 is not yet available), the 114% increase in institutional support salaries and benefits is startling. When we get the 2010 and 2011 numbers, the same conclusion will be true: There has been a tremendous increase in administrative costs.

Now, I can do a year-by-year analysis as we proceed; for now, please use this data to rebut any conclusion that institutional support increased because of extraneous factors; there are too many administrators making too much money at the U.

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2011-10-13T13:29:00.009-05:00

QUESTIONS OF VALUE

"The real issue is increasing the value that we the University bring to the State of Minnesota, to its stakeholders and to our students. Increasing that value, communicating it and demonstrating it will be the major goal of my presidency."

President Eric Kaler in the July 7, 2011 issue of the Pioneer Press. (Emphasis added.)

The financial analysis by Eastern Michigan University accounting professor Howard Bunsis raises questions about determining the value that the U of M provides to its current students and to the citizens of our state:

(1) What is the cost to the University of providing undergraduate education for one year?

(2) How did the administration determine the amount of undergraduate tuition increases over the past 10 years?

(3) What is the percentage increase in undergraduate tuition over the past 10 years adjusted for inflation?

Annual undergraduate tuition rose from $5,720 in 2002 to $11,650 in 2011, an increase of 133% (not adjusted for inflation). See p. 53 of the analysis.

The administration claims that the Net Price for undergraduate education has increased an average of 3.4% over the past 10 years. The calculation of Net Price does not reflect the economic reality facing students (and their parents) because it subtracts the amount of student loans that the students and their parents will be paying off for years to come. See section (2) of $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspective .

(4) What are the amounts of operating costs for research that have not been paid by grants over the past 10 years? What are the capital costs related to that research? See On The Hidden Cost of Research .

(5) What pays for research, education, public service, and financial aid?

This is the question proposed by U of M chief financial officer Richard Pfutzenreuter at the April 5, 2011 meeting of the Senate Finance & Planning Committee. See the final paragraph of Rube Goldberg Administration.

Students (and their parents) should know how tuition is used. State legislators should know how state appropriations are used.

(6) On what did the administration spend capital reserves funds over the past 10 years?
The projected balance for the central reserves fund was $10.3 million by the end of fiscal year 2011 (ending June 30, 2011). The balance should have been $24.7 million to comply with the policy of the Board of Regents. See section (1) of University Inc. Part II.

(7) How does the administration use the profit accumulated by the University?

The U of M Operating Budget for fiscal year 2012 adopted in June 2011 shows total revenues of $3.7 billion and total expenditures of just over $3 billion leaving a net balance of $674 million for ? See p.33 of the June 20, 2011 report of the Board of Regents. (The University received an additional $25 million for its general fund in the final state appropriations. See pp. 102-103 of the September 9, 2011 report of the Board of Regents).

The administration continues to carry forward from year to year this accumulated surplus of more than half a billion dollars rather than using these funds to pay expenses. Instead, the administration chooses to increase tuition, which it describes as "the revenue stream with the highest potential for significant, long term growth." See section (1) of $tate of the University--A Parent's Perspective.

(8) How does the administration decide on the amount of state appropriations to allocate to the separate colleges in the University?

In fiscal year 2012 the University will receive $484 million in state appropriations for its general fund (the Operations & Maintenance fund). See p. 103 of the September 9, 2011 report of the Board of Regents. The administration allocated $3.3 million to the business school and $3.6 million to the law school. See p. 81 of the June 20, 2011 report of the Board of Regents.

The senior administrators at the business school and the law school claim that state appropriations pay for less than 10% of the operating budgets of those schools. The fact is that the central administration makes those allocations, not the state legislature.

(9) How much will the administration spend in fiscal year 2012 on the separate categories of expenses that are classified as institutional support? Where is that information published?

Chief financial officer Pfutzenreuter described those categories at the April 5, 2011 meeting of the Senate Finance & Planning Committee. See pp. 3-4 of the report of the committee.

(10) What are the separate categories of expenses that are classified as research? instruction? academic support? student services? public service? How much will the administration spend on those separate categories in fiscal year 2012? Where is that information published?

(11) How does the administration determine the amount of the subsidy that it will provide to the athletic department each year from the general fund of the University?

In fiscal year 2010 the subsidy was $8 million; in fiscal year 2011 the subsidy was $7.8 million. See the link to the U of M budget in Expensive Icing.

Note that the subsidy is more than twice the amount that the administration allocates from the general fund to either the business school or the law school.

(12) How does the administration determine the priorities for HEAPR funds used to repair existing buildings? See Academic Facilities.

(13) How much did the administration spend on the Office of General Counsel over the past 10 years? How much did the administration spend on outside legal representation over the past 10 years?

In fiscal year 2011 the administration allocated $4.3 million to its Office of General Counsel. See p. 76 of the June 20, 2011 report of the Board of Regents. Of that amount the General Counsel paid $1.8 million to outside law firms. The administration paid an additional $4.4 million to outside law firms. See p. 15 of the 2011 annual report of the General Counsel.

The General Counsel states that a majority of the $6.2 million paid to outside counsel was for insurance defense and patent and technology commercialization. What are the most expensive claims against the University? Does the University have insurance to cover such claims? Does the insurance also cover the cost of defense?

(14) How many administrators receive annual compensation and benefits in excess of $100,000? How many receive annual compensation and benefits in excess of $200,000? See On The Cost of Administration.

(15) How much has the administration spent on advertising since 2007? What has the University received for this multi-million dollar expenditure? See section (2) of University Inc. Part II.

(16) Should the administration be engaged in non-academic business ventures? See section (1) of University Inc. Part II and Rethinking MoreU Park.

Michael W. McNabb

University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974

University of Minnesota Alumni Association life member
.

2011-10-12T04:13:00.001-05:00

The False Budget Crisis at the University of Minnesota

From the Minnesota Daily

By Daily Editorial Board (emphasis mine)

Last Friday, the University of Minnesota chapter of the America Association of University Professors brought a financial analyst to the University to take a look at the University’s budget and true financial state. The analyst, Howard Bunsis, found some eye-opening results.

According to Bunsis, the University is actually in a strong financial state, a claim backed up by evidence of healthy financial ratios dealing with debt and reserve funds. Bunsis argues that the furloughs and pay cuts implemented under former President Bob Bruninks were unnecessary because of the University’s large amount of unrestricted reserve money, which could have been used to pay employees’ salaries during a temporary budget shortfall.

The University’s chief financial officer has argued over how some of the numbers are calculated, but the point of Bunsis’ analysis still stands. The University administration has used an atmosphere of budgetary crisis to make cuts wherever they want and discourage protest. They provide a false narrative that cuts to academics and salaries and wages are necessary because otherwise the budget will be in crisis. Meanwhile, spending on administration continues to rise, another point Bunsis highlights in his report.

The bottom line is that the University must cut its administrative spending. Spending on areas like instruction and faculty pay is being crowded out by a bloated and still growing administration. If cuts are even necessary given the University’s apparent strong financial footing, those cuts must come from administration first. Students, faculty and others in the University community should stand up to the false urgency of cuts and demand that any chopping start at the top.

Well said, and the evasiveness of Mr. Pfutzenreuter over the years has been disgraceful.

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2011-10-08T18:04:00.001-05:00

University of Minnesota claims start up success

on par with Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia.

From the Minnesota Daily:

"The review left no doubts about the office’s accomplishments — the OTC is spinning off startup companies on-par with Harvard, Columbia and Stanford universities, it concluded."

My comments on the Daily site:

Really? Somehow this seems incredibly unlikely....

What exactly does "on-par" mean?

“Stanford, to no one’s surprise, ranked No. 1 in a recent global “Top Ten” of university startup communities...Rounding out the top five were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, University of California-Berkeley and the Indian Institutes of Technology."

link: http://bit.ly/5C3CQB

See selected Harvard startups: http://bit.ly/qeBH9k

For facts and figures about Columbia's technology transfer operation, please see: http://techventures.columbia.e...

In the long run exaggerated claims, such as the intro quote, make the U look bad to the community... Citizens and legislators are aware of the start-up generating productivity of Stanford, Columbia, and Harvard.

To claim that the U is "on-par" with them is absurd.

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2011-10-07T14:01:00.011-05:00

Chickens, Coming Home to Roost...

From the Higher Ed Reporter Alex Friedrich's tweet stream on 10/7/11:

Introducing Howard Bunsis, AAUP officer and prof in accounting at Eastern Michigan U #UMN

Bunsis: #UMN has third-highest in-state tuition among peers, but among lowest for out-of-state students.

Bunsis: #UMN retention numbers are already good -- and very hard to move

Bunsis: Magnitude of state cuts to #UMN -- not debilitating.

Bunsis: #UMN tuition needn't increase as it is. Cuts should be made to growing admin to control costs.

Bunsis: Disturbing that #UMN instruction part of budget went from 26% in 2006 to 23.2 % in 2010. That should never go down.

Bunsis: Many univ. support services that seem tied to instruction are actually admin. If #UMN differs, it needs to fully explain how.

Bunsis: Instructional salaries less than 20% of total #UMN budget.

Bunsis: #UMN has highest % admin spending among peers, but instruct. spending third to last.

Bunsis: Faculty salaries and benefits make up 8.9% of budget at #UM

Bensis: The #UMN attitude of OMG about the financial situation needs to "chill out."

Bunsis: Furloughs, pay cuts were more a political need than a financial one. #UMN needed to demonstrate to leg. that it's sharing the pain.

#UMN finance chief disagrees with Bunsis' use of numbers. Says he inflates admin costs by including those like advisers, libraries, etc.

Fin chief won't say whether he agrees or disagrees with Bunsis' statement that #UMN furloughs, pay cuts were political, not fin need.

The U has a big PR problem (again). Time to get into Morrill Hall and out of Dairy Queens? But I guess a man's gotta eat... Lunch at Big Ten?

No doubt more to come on the final report of Howard Bunsis when it becomes available.

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