I wake this morning with my Irish up as strong as it was before I went to bed.  Here is the Chair of Accounting and Finance, Keshav Gupta’s, account of what the Chancellor said last night at the open faculty meeting @ KU:

At today’s meeting with PASSHE Chancellor, Dr. Cavanaugh, I asked the following question:

It is well known that colleges of business are cash generators.  E.G. for the fiscal year 1998-1999 Accounting and Finance Department generated almost $2,000,000 in tuition and fees revenues with only $950,000 in expenses.  That resulted in $1,050,000 in cash contribution, after expenses, to KU.  In view of this why would you want to shut down the college of business, if it were unable to get AACSB accreditation, and what will be its impact on KU?

Dr. Cavanaugh’s response was something like this:

Thank you for giving me a chance to dispel a rumor.  I have never said that.  There are Pros and Cons of AACSB.  AACSB’s AQ-PQ requirements are very stringent.  AACSB focuses more on faculty qualifications than perhaps any other accrediting body.  Unlike some other disciplines, AACSB accreditation is not absolutely necessary.  From the studies I have seen, AACSB is probably helpful in recruiting faculty and MBA students.  Impact of AACSB on recruitment of undergraduate students is less clear.

KU needs to debate pros and cons of going for AACSB accreditation and pros and cons of not going for AACSB accreditation.

Later on in a brief private conversation, Dr. Cavanaugh stated that closing down college of business would be stupid.  He also said that when he took office he saw all these accreditation mandates from the previous chancellor and that he did not agree with them.  Finally, he said that if we go for AACSB accreditation we have to make sure that we get it.

Cavanaugh’s statement flies in the face of everything we have heard up till now.  Here’s what I wrote to our APSCUF-KU Executive Committee this morning:

I want to put my two cents in on this.  I agree with Paul that managements plans for splitting the College of Business needs to stop immediately without conditions.  Frankly, I am livid.  Here’s just a little summary of why:

• Up until this point, we have been operating under the assumption there was a MANDATE for AACSB accreditation.  A Board of Governors’ policy was the source of that mandate and the former Chancellor had made it perfectly clear that any College or program offering a degree in business that was not AACSB accredited would face closure.  The effect of that would be the retrenchment of a significant number of faculty members.
• The ONLY reason Paul demanded that the administration produces a coherent plan and present that plan to the union was to save the jobs of a significant number of our faculty.
• It was clear if we HAD NOT forced this issue, the CoB Dean and the administration would have violated the contract, and potentially the law, which would have ended in a failed proposal for AACSB and the potential closure of the program and hence the loss of faculty jobs.
• As a union–particularly those of us who met with the administration to review and critique their proposals, Paul, Ruth, and myself–we have taken some hits for being involved in the process at all.  Personally, I was willing to absorb those blows and deal with the trash talk in the rumor mills because I thought we could save faculty jobs.  A couple of years ago we did the same thing when it came to saving the Early Learning Center.  We knew that we would take hits from some people who didn’t see the value of the Early Learning Center, but we got involved with discussion with administration because we thought we could save the ELC.  And we did.
• The chancellor’s announcement last night that there was no mandate for AACSB accreditation and than any decision to pursue accreditation should be a university wide discussion of strategic priorities–i.e. part of a shared governance process–raises several fundamental questions:
  • How is it possible that our administration did not know about this?  If they truly didn’t know about this, then that raises serious questions about what exactly President Cevallos has been doing this past few months when not in China.  If they DID know about this and hid this from us, all bets are off.
  • Given the significant cost of the accreditation process and the divisive nature of having a disproportionate amount of money being allocated to the College of Business in support of accreditation, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that the administration–Cevallos in particular–not have someone in CONSTANT CONTACT with State PaSSHE regarding the process of AASCB accreditation and PaSSHE policy?
  • Why has the administration not released a clear statement today putting a halt to the reorganization of the College of Business given this new information?
  • Why did the CHANCELLOR not explicitly communicate this change of policy to all university presidents? From what we’ve been able to find out in a short period of time, this information is news to many of our colleagues across the state system.

I have to stop or I am going to get even angrier than I am at this point.  If we get additional corroboration of the Chancellor’s statements (there is a question as to whether the Board of Governors’ has actually approved this change of policy), then I think it’s time open the grievance flood gates.

This is a game changer folks.

Bread and Roses,

Kevin