Penn State Experts: PA is More Susceptible to Job Offshoring | GantDaily.com
Posted by Kevin Mahoney | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 21-07-2010
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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.


