Another PASSHE university given notification of possible retrenchment.

Layoffs possible for faculty at IUP – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

I cannot resist the temptation of pairing the above article with this posting on the Indiana University web page on the same day:

PASSHE Board Recognizes Former President

You may recall that this particular former president, Tony Atwater, was given a strong vote of no confidence by the faculty.  PASSHE’s response at that point?  Give Atwater a sweetheart deal.  Here’s a bit from a June 20 article posted on the Pittsburgh Tribune Opinion page:

The embattled Indiana University of Pennsylvania president, smacked with a recent no-confidence vote by faculty, will walk away with a full year’s salary ($253,428, less payroll deductions), reimbursement for COBRA medical-coverage premiums through June 2011, payment for earned but unused leave, plum retirement contributions and up to $15,000 in moving expenses.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Editorial Board titled the article, “Atwater’s Sweet Deal: Outrageous!”  I’ll say.  But apparently that editorial and disgust at the hypocritical behavior of a PASSHE administration that claims “budget crisis” while handing over sweet deals to their buddies at the top didn’t have an impact on what they do.  Just another sign that the behavior we saw on Wall Street is not limited to stock brokers and traders.  We’ve got plenty of them right here in Pennsylvania. Enough of the deceit.

In my March 29th post, “On Group Think and Catastrophe,” I reproduced a very pointed argument made at our local APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss table made by former APSCUF-KU Vice President, Ken Ehrensal.  His argument called out KU Administration budget officials’ problematic use of “worst-case-scenario” logic, in particular, the logic of a budget catastrophe.  Here is an exert from that post:

Second, Ehrensal argued that the budget presentations given by Ken Long, Assistant VP of Administration and Finance, assume every catastrophic scenario.  For example, KU’s budget projections assume a 2.5% annual increase in tuition.  However, the Chancellor has been talking about a 4% increase.  If the Chancellor’s numbers hold, our “budget crisis” will be cut in half.  Long also built-in a 3.5% increase in salary for all union employees (including faculty).  However, all contracts are up for negotiation this year.  New contracts for all university unions will be in place starting July 2011.  If the salary increases are lower than 3.5%, the “budget crisis” could be cut in half (I didn’t write down the percentage that Ehrensal was working with).  Further, Long built-in to h

is analysis that the PA Legislature will not fix the problem with PSERS (PA State Employee Retirement System).  Failure to fix the problem, while possible, is not likely.  In short, the budget presentations represent a catastrophic scenario…not a likely scenario.

Despite our best efforts at the table, the administration continued to use these “catastrophic” budget projections in its presentation to faculty, staff, KU’s Board of Trustees, the Chancellor of PASSHE, and, of course, the media.  Just about every local news story about Kutztown administration’s move to retrench faculty and staff was willing to print the administration’s story of a dire budget crisis without question.  I personally reached out to a few reporters, pointed them to this blog, emailed them, and spoke to them on the phone about the problems with the Kutztown administration’s argument.  But, frankly, the adminstration’s narrative was compelling, especially since it seemed to echo that of the broader “economic crisis” narrative in the U.S. today.  In some ways, I can understand why our arguments, Ehrensal’s arguments in particular, did not gain traction.  It’s not easy to swim against the current of a dominant cultural narrative, especially when that narrative takes the form of a torrential downpour.

But just because a cultural narrative is compelling doesn’t mean that it’s accurate or true.  As a scholar and teacher of rhetoric you are taught to be very critical of cultural narratives that seem to “sweep people up” into them.  Such narratives are the ones that allow governments, businesses, con-men, and cult leaders get masses of people to do things that in “normal” times they would never do.

Well, that’s where we are folks.  KU’s administration has used the “catastrophe” narrative to cut jobs, removed fired administrators and staff from their offices with police escorts, reorganize programs, eliminate majors, all under the cover of media reports that reaffirmed what many people feared: “there’s nothing we can do.”  Well, the narrative hasn’t held.  As a matter of fact, in turned out that Ehrensal underestimated the degree to which KU’s administration was padding its numbers in order to create the appearance of crisis.  Here’s and article from yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pa. system approves 4.5% hike in college tuition

Undergraduate tuition at Pennsylvania’s state-owned colleges will increase $250, or 4.5 percent, under a $1.5 billion budget approved Thursday by the system’s board of governors.

Annual tuition for full-time resident undergraduates beginning this fall will be $5,804, which the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education said was the lowest among all four-year colleges and universities in the state. The system said it would receive $503.4 million in state and federal funding to support the current-year operating budget.

Resident graduate school tuition in 2010-11 will be $6,966, an increase of $300. Nonresident graduate tuition will increase $480, to $11,146. - Inquirer staff

You with me here?  Recall Ehrensal’s argument:

For example, KU’s budget projections assume a 2.5% annual increase in tuition.  However, the Chancellor has been talking about a 4% increase.  If the Chancellor’s numbers hold, our “budget crisis” will be cut in half.

Put simply, KU’s “budget crisis” has just been trimmed over 50% without a single faculty member losing her or his job, no program consolidation, no outsourcing of vehicles (yes, KU is now outsourcing to Enterprise Rent-a-Car at a cost of $41 a day.  I have heard, but haven’t yet confirmed that this is a PASSHE initiative).  So, there’s half your budget crisis.  It also looks like the PA Legislature is going to resolve the “crisis” in PSERS.  That “crisis” was supposedly going to put KU back by around $6 million.  Assuming that crisis have been averted, as predicted by Ehrensal, that cuts the “crisis” back even further.  You still following?

What this basically means is that KU’s administration and the administration at other PASSHE universities are not simply carrying out German-style austerity measures.  They are restructuring the State University system under the cover of the “budget crisis.”  As if citizens of the Commonwealth haven’t already experienced more than their share of “belt-tightening.”  Now, KU’s administration is given us all a spooky story right before bed in order to decrease citizens access to higher eduction–the very thing we’re told that is required to lift us out of this downturn.  Unjust desserts for the majority once again.

As the fall semester quickly approaches and more PASSHE universities have announced plans to retrench over the summer, it is going to become increasingly necessary to continually ask the question: what’s the plan?

As several faculty members at Kutztown have pointed out, the administration’s retrenchment moves have seem haphazard at best.  The only organizing principle for their decision to close the Nursing program, for example, seems to have been made by rather crude accounting that the program was not currently “making money” for the university.  Yet, it would be wise for all of us  to place these “local” decisions into a a broader context.  Take, for example, this article from yesterday’s GantDaily.com.  The article discusses a recent report, “Offshorability of Pennsylvania Jobs,” issued by Penn State’s Workforce Education and Development Initiative:  Here’s a link to the article:

Penn State Experts: PA is More Susceptible to Job Offshoring | GantDaily.com.

The report points out that Pennsylvania jobs are more susceptible to offshoring compared to the rest of the nation.  That is because that many of the jobs–most of the jobs in some areas of the Commonwealth, actually–are in jobs that are considered high risk for offshoring.  What are some of the jobs that are NOT as susceptible to offshoring?  If you guessed health care jobs–in particular nursing–you’d be on the right track.

And yet, Kutztown chose to cut the nursing program.

The administration’s decisions have shown a persistent pattern of making decisions based upon short-term thinking, immediate cost-cutting, or what the magic 8-ball said.  Pennsylvanians deserve more than being treated like a number in an accountant’s ledger.  We need to demand that those people tasked with “managing” our educational lives (and lives in general!), plan for our future, not simply look for ways to wield their hatchets.  In the case of PASSHE, this means university administrations, university Boards of Trustees, the Chancellor and his staff, the PASSHE Board of Governors, our State Legislators, and the Governor (current and future).

So, if the plan involves only a hatchet with little consideration of long term planning, then maybe it’s time to “offshore” the administration and our State legislators to give all of us and our families a chance to live our lives with dignity and hope.

Earlier this evening I received the official list of academic program action recommended from the Chancellor’s office to the PASSHE Board of Governors from our State Meet and Discuss Chair, Mark Cloud.  In his email, Mark indicated that “discussion of these program changes will be this Thursday, 9am during the Academic and Student Affairs Committee session in Harrisburg.”  He also indicated that Ken Mash will be addressing the BOG on behalf of APSCUF and that some faculty members will be present as well.

I wanted to share this list so that we can all get broader picture of what is happening system wide and to situate the reorganization at Kutztown with what looks like a broader PASSHE reorganization.  For example, Medical Technology has been placed in moratorium while at the same time the Medical Technology program at Bloomsburg has been reorganized as a BS in Health Sciences with Clinical Lab/Med Tech as a concentration.  While this information doesn’t by itself mean something, it does provide a useful starting point for critical inquiry.

Here is a copy of the document:

BOG Acad Program Actions July 2010

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been spending time with my family, refinishing my deck (for which the weather has NOT cooperated), doing house repairs, and, basically, reflecting upon this past year as I prepare to enter my 8th year at Kutztown.  I have to admit that this past year has taken a significant toll on me, in particular, my notorious deep reserves of hope.  In my post back in the end of June, I was poking away at some of reasons for this:

While the tendency to criticize an issue and wait for “someone else” to take up the labor is certainly not limited to Kutztown University, I have always been part of groups at other institutions who had a kind of DIY ethic.  That is, I’ve generally been surrounded by people who, when faced with a problem, tended to immediately begin to generate creative solutions without waiting to be given permission.  In those contexts, we always felt a sense of ownership of the issue–and a kind of core belief that “if you want to get something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.”…

…What’s amazing about that DIY ethic is that it is hopeful–a basic belief in the creative labor of self-organizing groups–affinity groups, if you will.  While our frustrations were deep, we tended to gravitate toward possibilities–whether those possibilities included putting on shows, carrying out “guerrilla art” campaigns, building shanty towns on university campuses, occupying administration buildings, living collectively, or starting our own independent zines and newspapers.  And we did these things.  They weren’t just ideas.  Wecreated and built and produced.

This past weekend I was at a Writing Program Administration conference in Philly and met up with some friends and their kids.  It was the first time that my friends and their families met my son, Rowan.  These were some of the friends I had in mind when I wrote that post.  I told them about some of my frustrations about Kutztown–in particular issues with my union work.  I have to admit that it was somewhat comforting to hear that I was not alone in my frustrations of doing organizing work in academic institutions.  One of my friends talked about her frustration with academics who all have great ideas, but are unwilling to do the work of organization to make those ideas concrete. One of my other friends talked about how important it was to take a leave just to reevaluate one’s relationship to her academic institution.  I shared stories about moments of opportunity amidst “crisis” in which faculty had a chance to take the initiative and reconstitute their working conditions, but chose, instead, to play the role of victim/critic (I think these two terms can operate too frequently as a debilitating binary).

Earlier last week, I met up with one of my oldest friends and his family who live in Northern Ireland.  They were back in Central New York visiting family, so we headed up for a one day visit.  He and I got on a similar conversation…or, I should say, I got us on to a similar conversation.  We were talking about how the political work we did back in Syracuse was not only engaging, it was FUN.  That’s right, FUN.  We enjoyed the work of political organizing and our community was strengthened by such work.  Why was it then, I asked, that this relationship is so absent at KU?  He shrugged his shoulders as did I.  ”Beats me,” we both seemed to say.

All of these questions came back to me front and center upon my lukewarm return to work and preparation for the coming semester. I read through a chain of emails posted on the faculty listserv doing some bashing of our union leadership.   Some of the issues raised in these emails are not without merit–especially when it comes to communications processes over the summer.  It is true, as one faculty member wrote in regard to significant organizational changes being pursued by KU’s administration, that the union should provide members with a “continuing update” about what is going on (while, at the same time, questioning whether or not the union leadership is doing anything at all).

Point taken.  There is no doubt that it’s been a challenge keeping updates coming, especially over the summer when not all members of our Executive Committee are one campus everyday as they would be during the academic year.  And yet I think most of us on our Executive Committee would agree that there needs to be better communication networks over all.  That is true for ALL aspects of our union’s work.

What becomes a bit disenchanting for me is that on several occasions I’ve asked some of the same people who are so pissed off now to help with some of the work.  In response to personal emails providing sketches of analyses and rhetorical questions, I’ve asked people to step up and contribute–not as some kind of challenge, but because we genuinely need more members with expertise in particular areas to help combat the administration’s moves to retrench faculty and eliminate or change programs. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.  But, more often than not I receive, instead, a host of reasons why they are unable to do that work.  I’ll never understand why there is always more than enough time to write lengthy emails filled with detailed criticisms, but always insufficient time to contribute to building a stronger union.  But, this is where we are.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am the last person who will sit here and tell you that our local or statewide union is above criticism.  In many ways, I might surprise many people in our union with the sharpness of my own critiques.  However, my approach as been to look for ways to get involved and change things.  It’s that’s old DIY principle again: If you don’t like something, doing something about it by doing the work to fix it.

Despite the temptations, I’ve consciously tried to avoid engaging in personal critiques or fanning the factional flames in public forums that can potentially weaken our union. But as the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year approaches–a contract negotiation year to boot–I think it’s necessary for “new ideas” and “criticisms” to be accompanied by a willingness to do the work to either make those ideas concrete or correct problems.  Maybe this is just too much to ask for.  We shall see.

Anyway, I’ve got more to say on a couple of other things, but I’ll do so in separate posts so as not to extend this already-too-long post further.

Last week some, but apparent ly not all, faculty were sent a draft copy of PASSHE’s list of all the programs under review at the 14 PASSHE universities.  While the document may not be new to Kutztown’s faculty, I wanted to make sure that I put it up so it is available publicly for anyone who wants to check it out.  The document is dated June 14, 2010:

List of Lower Enrolled Programs Under Review:
June 14 2010 actions

One of the things that you’ll begin to notice is that several majors, such as French, Physics, and Philosophy are under review in some capacity across the state system.  I think it makes sense to look at this document as an artifact for some PASSHE’s plans for remaking Pennsylvania’s education system.  While most of us at PASSHE institutions have been primarily focused on the administration’s attack on faculty jobs and academic programs, it seems critical to situate our local struggles within the entire PASSHE system as to not miss the forest for the trees.

As PASSHE moves to remake the state university system we have been pushing to make local and state administrators be transparent in their decision-making process.  If you have been following discussions here you already know they have been inconsistent at best in doing so.

A few days ago I was handed an interesting document concerning PASSHE’s plans.  The document is a 1993 PASSHE Board of Governor’s “System Directive” concerning “Academic Program Moratorium and Termination.”  From what I understand, this document is still in force.  It’s interesting in that it is a DIRECTIVE from the Board of Governors for how program moratorium and termination is supposed to proceed.  The document may prove useful in holding our university administrations to their own rules.   Locally, we have already found evidence that our local administration has not followed the Board of Governor’s directive in some instances.  I’ll try to keep you up to date on how this plays out.

In any case, here is the document:

PASSHE BoG Directive on Moratorium and Termination 2-15-93

So, that’s my info for the day.  Stay cool in this heat!

As most XChange readers already know, this past spring I was elected as the next APSCUF-KU Vice President.  My term officially began on June 1st and I’ve spent a good portion of June working on the transition.  Over the course of this next year, I hope share some of my thoughts with you regarding what I think about the direction of our local, the importance of membership mobilization, and thoughts on the “health” of our local.  I also hope you will share your comments, suggestions, critiques as well.  However, given that my primary purpose in starting the XChange was to facilitate critical member-to-member discussion and to provide a venue for “unofficial” communication (that is, what’s posted here does not seek approval from local or State APSCUF or any other body), I will do my best to not turn this blog into a “voice of the local.”  Once again, what I post here reflects my position on issues.  While I would be a fool to believe that my perspective will not be influenced by my new role as APSCUF-KU Vice President, I will do my best to be conscious of that influence (and I hope all of you will assist me in that capacity).

Today our APSCUF-KU Executive Committee will meet to continue planning our strategies concerning retrenchment as well as mobilization for this contract negotiations year.  We decided to include members of the out-going Exec as well as newly elected members, some of whose terms do not begin until September.  I think it goes without saying that it is important to formally include as many people in leadership decisions of a union local as possible.  I also recognize that this is one of the greatest challenges any local faces–to keep members actively engaged in their union’s governance.

One of my hobby-horses this year will be to press this issue of member activism and participation in governance.  And, for that matter, to expand our local’s conscious understanding of leadership.  Over the past eight years of my involvement in APSCUF-KU, there are two issues that have continually frustrated me.  The first is that members–including members of APSCUF-KU Exec and Representative Council–think of our local leadership as  the APSCUF-KU President (and sometimes the Vice President).  While the president clearly has an important leadership role, the entire Executive Committee and the entire Representative Council constitute the local leadership.  In my mind, it is critical that these leadership bodies actively assume their leadership roles and not wait to be told what to do or serve simply to affirm or criticize the actions of the president.

The second issue has to do with the dominant patterns of communication among members and between members and the local leadership.  I have been in countless meetings (both union meetings and academic meetings) at which participants are skillful in raising issues, critiques, problems, or injustices.  However, many times those critiques just hang in the air waiting for someone else to do something about them.  Depending on the context, that “someone else” might be “the administration,” the “union leadership,” the “department Chair,” or just “someone else.”   I want to be careful as to not overstate my case, but I’ve found this dynamic especially frustrating at KU.

While the tendency to criticize an issue and wait for “someone else” to take up the labor is certainly not limited to Kutztown University, I have always been part of groups at other institutions who had a kind of DIY ethic.  That is, I’ve generally been surrounded by people who, when faced with a problem, tended to immediately begin to generate creative solutions without waiting to be given permission.  In those contexts, we always felt a sense of ownership of the issue–and a kind of core belief that “if you want to get something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

In the spring of 2009, I was in San Francisco for the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication.  Thanks to facebook and one of my old college friends, Andrew McFarland, I got together with a few of my punk rock friends from back in my Syracuse days who had migrated West over the years.  Andrew’s efforts to arrange a kind of reunion, also lead to several virtual conversations with old Syracuse friends over facebook and email.  What became so clear in those conversations was that every single one of us still carried that ethic–the punk DIY ethic through our lives.  We pursued vastly different “career paths,” but each of those people–each of us–still echoed the same kind of DIY spirit that we brought to the Syracuse scene in the late 80s and 90s.

What’s amazing about that DIY ethic is that it is hopeful–a basic belief in the creative labor of self-organizing groups–affinity groups, if you will.  While our frustrations were deep, we tended to gravitate toward possibilities–whether those possibilities included putting on shows, carrying out “guerrilla art” campaigns, building shanty towns on university campuses, occupying administration buildings, living collectively, or starting our own independent zines and newspapers.  And we did these things.  They weren’t just ideas.  We created and built and produced.

I don’t mean to turn this post into a nostalgic trip.  That’s not the point.  And, frankly, I’ve been part of groups of people like this since I was in high school.  I was part of groups like this in grad school in Southwest Ohio and during my three years working as an adjunct in Washington, DC.  Kutztown is the first place that I’ve been where I struggle to find this kind of community.  The odd thing about that for me is that we are unionized.  We have a democratic structure within which to fashion our working lives.

Over the next two years, I am going to devote myself to preaching (so to speak) this DIY ethic in hopes that as a union, we as members take up our “leadership” roles–given to us not by the outcomes of a vote, but by the fact of our membership.  On occasion, I return to the song “Direct Action” by Utah Phillipsn and Ani Difranco  for a reminder of the DIY ethic.  In it, he recounts the Spokane Free Speech Fight in 1910.  At one point he quotes Joseph Campbell on free speech:

“The state can’t give you free speech, and the state can’t take it away. You’re born with it, like your eyes, like your ears…freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.”

In my mind, the same principle applies to political organization.  That includes union organization.

I hope we can activate some of this ethic locally and at state-wide.

As usual, I am running out of time to write…I’ve got to get my materials together for Directed Self-Placement.  Today, I have the bonus of welcoming Amy Lynch-Biniek aboard for the ride.  She’s currently the director of KU’s University Writing Center and a true leader in our Composition program.  Welcome!

Talk to y’all soon!

Since my most recent post to the XChange containing the independent auditor’s report for KU for the year ending 2009, several people have gotten in touch with me asking if I posted this report because it was some kind of “smoking gun.”  The short answer to this question is “no.”  The more nuanced answer is, “but it might be.”  That is to say, I put these documents out because I think it’s better to have multiple eyes on them.  The more information we can put in members’ hands, the better.

Case in point: I received and email from an Accounting Professor at another PASSHE university who is doing a cross-institutional analysis of the accounting practices of different PASSHE universities.  The faculty member expects to present the findings at the Second Annual APSCUF/PSEA Conference on Labor in Higher Education this fall in Harrisburg.  As a side note, I can’t thank former APSCUF Vice President, Amy Walters, for getting this conference off the ground.  The conference encourages this kind of labor scholarship–scholarship that is immediately useful in our current struggles.  Bravo.

Access to this information is even more critical since there is VERY contradictory information out there regarding Kutztown’s and PASSHE’s “budget crisis.”  You may recall posts on the XChange earlier this year on some of the “budget crisis myths” being offered up by KU’s administration, KU’s questionable use of breakage funds, and PASSHE’s contradictory claims about the “crisis.”

The latest bit of info that points to serious contradictions in both KU’s and PASSHE’s claims about their budget crisis comes from the world of bond ratings.  Yesterday, Fitch.com released bond rating numbers for PASSHE: Fitch determined that

In addition, Fitch affirms the ‘AA’ rating on PASSHE’s $825.3 million of outstanding revenue bonds.

The Rating Outlook is Stable.

That’s nice to know.  You might also be interested in this little nugget:

Generally stable operating performance has allowed PASSHE to maintain an adequate liquidity cushion. Available funds of $958 million at the end of fiscal 2009 covered over half (53.7%) of operating expenses for that year and 103.1% of total pro forma system debt. Unlike many colleges and universities, PASSHE’s conservatively invested financial cushion increased during fiscal 2009, despite the global financial market turbulence.

Once again, there is a serious gap between the claims being made by the local and state administrations and what independent analyses suggest.  [click here to check out Fitch's full report].

OK, I’ve got to run off and do the next round of English placement for incoming students.  Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

Well, someone’s been slipping documents under my door again.  Yup.  I was on campus last Friday doing English Placement for incoming students and arrived back on campus this morning around 10am for the same reason.  This morning I arrived in my office to find another document had fallen out of the air onto my desk.  This time, it’s the Independent Auditor’s Report for the year ending June 30, 2009.

I have to walk across campus in a few minutes to continue English Placement for incoming students and I’ve only had about 20 minutes to scan the document. I am not sure exactly what it will tell us, but I thought it better to have as many eyes on the document as possible.  So, without out further delay, here is the report:

KU Independent Audit Report: Year Ending June 2009