03/06 - MinnPost article by MetroState Faculty Member

You may be interested in this MinnPost article by Metro State Faculty member Matt Filner
, Co-Chair of the IFO Government Relations Committee.

"Why Higher Taxes on the Wealthy is Good for Business."  

 

http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2013/03/why-higher-taxes-wealthy-are-good-business

 

Legislative Update April 22, 2009: House Passes Higher Education Bill

Legislative Update April 22, 2009
By Russ Stanton, IFO Director of Government Relations

House Passes Higher Education Bill
Moments ago the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Higher Education Bill by a vote of 86-46.

The bill would appropriate $665.8 million each year in FY2010 and FY2011 for MnSCU. This would include $65.2 million each year in federal stimulus money. This is the same funding level proposed by the governor. Where the House bill differs from the governor’s proposal is in the funding base for 2012 and 2013; the governor proposes $606.6 million for each of those years, whereas the House proposes $654.5 million for each year.

The House bill clamps down on MnSCU central office funding and prioritizes campus funding for instruction. It creates a separate line item for central office funding and then shrinks that amount. It says allocations to the campuses cannot be less than this biennium. It cuts funding for central office technology and eliminates funding for central office initiatives such as awards for excellence, salary competitiveness (IPSEL grants), technology initiatives outside the allocation model, and Board and Chancellor’s initiatives.

The bill also changes the process for selecting the MnSCU Board of Trustees. Instead of having the Governor appoint trustees, the bill would have the legislature elect the trustees in the same way they elect the U of M Regents.

The bill allows a waiver process from the policy limiting associate degrees to 60 credits and baccalaureate degrees to 120 credits. The waivers would be for emerging and innovative programs.

Amendment Attempts
The House voted down several attempts to limit student fees.

Rep. Steve Gottwalt (R-St. Cloud) offered an amendment that would have forced all higher education employees that make over $100,000 to take a 5% pay cut. After being informed that his amendment would put federal stimulus money in jeopardy, and that it violated the U of M’s constitutional autonomy, Gottwalt withdrew his amendment.

Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R-Wabasha) then offered an amendment to cut higher education employees making more than $100,000 by 10%. He specifically went after provisions in the IFO contract, such as the final year two step increase, supplemental retirement, and the $6000 performance bonuses (which no one has received). Drazkowski said anyone making more than $100,000 should contribute to solving the state’s budget shortfall; to which Majority Leader Tony Sertich responded, “You’ll get an opportunity to vote on that when we take up the tax bill”. Drazkowski’s amendment was defeated 130-2. Only Drazkowski and Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) voted in favor of the pay cut.

Campus Legislators’ Votes
Here is how campus area legislators voted on the final bill: Rep. John Persell (DFL-Bemidji), yes; Rep. Larry Howes (R-Walker), yes; Rep. Morrie Lanning (R-Moorhead), no; Rep. Paul Marquart (DFL-Glyndon) yes; Rep. Larry Haws (DFL-St. Cloud), yes; Rep. Steve Gottwalt (R-St. Cloud), no; Rep Marty Seifert (R-Marshall), no; Rep. Kathy Brynaert (DFL-Mankato), yes; Rep. Terry Morrow (DFL-St. Peter), yes; Rep. Gene Pelowski (DFL-Winona), yes.
All of the legislators representing Metro State campuses voted yes.

Conference Committee
The Senate passed their Omnibus Higher Education Bill last week. Now the House and Senate versions of the higher education bills will go to a ten member House/Senate conference committee that will work out a final compromise bill.

Minnesota Audit Commission: Finalists for audits

More information on one of nine topic finalists: MnSCU System Offices and Expenditures Audit
The full list can be found here: http://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/ped/ped4.htm

Steve Drazkowski WDN article 4/1/09 -

Steve Drazkowski: Legislature gets an F on MnSCU negotiations
http://www.winonadailynews.com/articles/2009/04/01/opinion/otherviews/guest.txt

MinnPost Article : Jeff Kolnick, MSU-Southwest

http://www.minnpost.com/community_voices/2009/03/26/7635/raise_my_taxes_--_us_tried_the_low-tax_way_and_it_didnt_work

A Summary of WSU Department Chairs Assessment of the Effect of Cuts to Faculty Staffing on Student Education

A Summary of WSU Department Chairs Assessment of the Effect of Cuts to Faculty Staffing on Student Education

Prepared by Kurt Hohenstein, WSU Action Committee Chair

As part of an effort to gain information, the WSU Action Committee solicited from WSU Department Chairs their assessment on student education of cuts to their adjunct, fixed term, sabbatical replacement and overload teaching loads for next academic year. The following is a summary of how cutting those positions will affect WSU’s capacity to teach our students.

Where clear estimates could be made, cuts to those positions would create a minimum class space deficit (meaning seats per students) of 3300. Not all of the Departments could provide clear estimates, and their comments appear below. What this means is that there would be at a minimum, 3300 fewer spaces for students at WSU in those course most in demand by new and existing students.

Since each department is unique, there are a number of other consequences to the cuts. Among them are the following:

• There will be a substantial lack of capacity to offer University Studies courses. Most Departments would first take care of their majors, and the classes offered by the affected positions are commonly USP classes. The cuts would devastate the ability to offer those courses across the campus.
• Incoming freshmen and transfer students would be especially hit hard. Seats for them could not be reserved, and they would face an array of issues finding open sections.
• For majors, departments would attempt to deal with the cuts by offering upper division courses less frequently. This is likely to have the effect of delaying graduation because majors need certain courses to graduate, but those courses would not be offered as often as the majors would need.
• In specialized programs, accreditation problems would occur, putting the continued status of those programs in jeopardy.
• Minors would become nearly non-existent in many programs.
• Majors would see a reduction in certain upper division course necessary to complete the requirements for graduation, delaying their academic progression, and costing more in tuition.
• Rochester courses would be cut substantially in those departments who offer them but who are not housed at that campus.
• In the most severe cases, the cuts would result in the elimination of entire programs, or major parts and functions of departments.
• The solution of increasing class sizes to alleviate the cutting of numbers of courses would work in some areas, but would be very detrimental in areas where there are substantial writing, oral communication, performance, or hands-on student-teacher classroom engagement.
• For WSU, the cuts would change the character of the institution. We would not be able to differentiate our university, which now offers a wide variety of programs that appeal to new and transfer students. Cutting the identified category of faculty will substantially change the unique nature and appeal of WSU, which has been a major driver of our increased enrollment and retention of students.
  
  This summary has been prepared by Kurt Hohenstein, WSU Action Chair, based on a survey of WSU department chairs who have years of experience handling curriculum, scheduling, hiring, and student development issues. They are in the best position to assess how cuts to their own programs will affect our institution’s capacity to serve our students, innovate and incubate the best ideas, and develop active, thinking, and productive graduates that will drive the economic development and growth for Minnesota.

Michael Bowler's "A Simple Question": WDN

Check out Michael Bowler's Letter to the Editor in the Winona Daily News.

MnSCU's Marble Boat - Guest Editorial

Guest Editorial: MnSCU's Marble Boat
IFO Update Newsletter: October 2007
By Professor Darrell Downs, Winona State University

In the late 1800s, China's Empress Dowager built a boat of stone. In a desperate attempt to gild the declining Qing Dynasty, the Empress diverted funds aimed for the navy and built a faux marble boat at the Summer Palace-a nice place for a picnic, but not really a boat.

In 1995, the state universities, community colleges, and technical colleges were merged into a centralized system of higher education known as the MnSCU (Minnesota State Colleges and Universities). By its own account, MnSCU has reduced and/or merged community colleges, universities, and technical colleges from 45 to 32 separate institutions. The savings produced a new administrative apparatus and multi-million dollar central edifice to higher education reform. Some would prefer something more tangible.
For the full editorial click here: MnSCU's Marble Boat

As Chinese school children learned of the Empress Dowager's fabled ploy to use the Dynasty's passion for the latest in maritime technology to obscure her more craven interest in summer palace remodeling, we stand in awe of an equally misdirected trick if "technology" becomes the raison d'être of the Imperial Guard at MnSCU. If MnSCU ever had any clear reason for being, it was to serve the educational needs of the campuses. Technology is part of that picture, but technology should never rise above the more basic instructional needs of students. Nor should technology become an excuse for central administration to impose control over the varied academic disciplines of the state's colleges and universities. If that happens, even the most strident efforts by the legislature to rebuild the state's higher education system will be fruitless . . . and such is the case today. On the heels of the legislature's 12 percent increase in appropriations for MnSCU's two-year budget, the legitimacy of MnSCU's management of these new dollars is disappearing faster than the Peking Duck at a tourist vendors' convention.

Consider MnSCU's Central's latest fetish for instructional technology. Of the $151 million increase in funding for the biennium, $62.8 million is slated for technology. If a budget is an expression of agency priority, the clearest priority of MnSCU Central is instructional technology. Of course, MnSCU has declared that instructional technology dollars are headed for the campuses. But how do those technology dollars help the students who can't afford the tuition to attend class, or how do those dollars help campuses hire faculty to offer classes to meet the student demand? On-line courses you say? Perhaps to a small degree, but $62.8 million is no small degree. Virtual learning you say? Perhaps actual learning should be a higher priority. A new multi-million dollar experiment in leading edge curiosities leads me to wonder how we're helping the campuses in any tangible way for the majority of students. Undoubtedly, a few of the system's 170,000 plus students will salivate at the thought of taking courses via Second Life or other avatar friendly virtual worlds. Most students and faculty, however, live in an actual world that relies on classroom assignments, non-avatar professors, and they must pay actual and unfortunately increasing tuitions.

Could it be that MnSCU doesn't know how to estimate needs? Certainly, this is not easy for 32 separate institutions, but there is no better indicator of campus needs than the students and faculty of these campuses, or the elected representatives that voice their needs. Last year, the MN Senate appropriation bill allocated $10 million for technology for the biennium. The MN House bill similarly allocated $30 million. In the end, the legislature decided not to micromanage technology spending, and granted MnSCU the flexibility to serve the campuses in the best way possible. A reasonable person might think that MnSCU Central would consider the spirit of the final appropriation bill to aim for somewhere between $10 and $30 million for technology, and if in doubt it would ask the campuses about their priorities. Unfortunately, nobody on the campuses really believed that MnSCU Central would double the amount and, in doing so, ensure yet another unnecessary and divisive battle over scarce higher education funding. But then again, I suppose nobody really believed the Empress was building a marble boat.
Someday soon, we'll look at the MnSCU Imperial Palace and agree that it's a nice place for a picnic, but it has done little for education. Darrell “non-avatar professor” Downs.

Bruce A. Svingen's Testimony

Chair Pelowski, members of the committee.

My name is Bruce Svingen. I am the Faculty Association president at Winona State University. On behalf of our faculty I thank you for hearing our concerns.
With a $7 billion state deficit spread evenly across all state agencies, WSU would be facing at minimum a $6.2 million cut to base funding, this includes an expected enrollment increase by 200, a 4% tuition increase and the faculty’s proposal for a “no across the board” salary increases for the next two years.
At a $6.2 million deficit, the impacts are catastrophic:

1. The first impact is not filling positions needed to teach courses. If we took the $6.2 million entirely out of faculty positions, this would be a loss of 83 faculty and as much as 332 courses per semester, leaving all of our students a course short of a full load each semester. This would delay their graduation by one year at the same time we see a record high demand for our courses.

2. Secondly, as total course offerings decrease, departments will be driven to increase the number of lower division, less costly, courses in relation to upper division courses. If we’re not able to offer enough upper division classes, juniors and seniors will face further delays to graduation and entering the workforce. This uncertain sustainability of programs will jeopardize the University’s ability to recruit and retain students. Combined with the loss of $3 in tuition and fee revenue for every $1 in cuts under the projected deficit, this programmatic instability takes us toward the “death spiral” of the University.

3. The third impact is that higher tuition will limit accessibility and affordability at exactly the time our economy needs higher education to help rebuild our economy. Students have already faced an 85% tuition increases since 2001 and their average debt load upon graduation has blossomed to $24,000. With about 80% of our students staying in MN, burdening these students with more debt is another yoke on the state economy. According to Wilder and Associates, the positive regional economic impact of WSU is $194 million per year. This regional economic impact is now at great risk.

4. The fourth impact of large and destabilizing cuts will be more control over academic programs by the MnSCU System Office. This will not be guided by the academic needs of our students, but by the initiatives of the System Office and the Governor. We do not need trendy fixes, temporary reorganizations, or mandates for on-line education to create a student market – we already have a student demand for what we do. What we don’t need is a System Office spending $136 million/year that does not directly sustain the mission of the campuses, while spending only 40% of their budget on instructional support.

· We can sustain our mission without $20 million plus in System Office technology.
· We can sustain our mission without $20 million plus in the Chancellor’s office.
· We can sustain our mission without $20 million plus in administrative services.
· And we can sustain our campuses without 400 System Office employees.

We know this because we've done it before.

In closing, we are willing to make sacrifices. We have sacrificed wage increases for two years, we are pulling back operating budgets, and we are sacrificing positions.

But cuts alone may not be enough. We hope you will also consider “revenue enhancement” to help the campuses and other essential state services – one source of revenue to soften the blow to the campuses may be found in the MnSCU System Office. We would also ask that you consider tax reform as part of the solution. Coupled with this, we would suggest using one-time federal stimulus money to help soften the blow. And finally we suggest using the savings that come to the state via the PELL grant increases to reduce the cuts to public higher education. And if not that please uncouple the PELL grants from the state grant program so that are students can benefit directly from in the increased support.

Sincerely,

Bruce A. Svingen
President, WSUFA

WDN: Time for a miniscule MnSCU office

The Winona Daily News "Our View" opinion page article on MnSCU Central (2/11/09):
Our view: Time for a miniscule MnSCU office