State System faculty union assails consultant’s final report
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The union representing faculty at the 14 state-owned universities took issue Monday with a consultant’s final report on the State System of Higher Education and accompanying recommendations for change.
But the union also called work by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems “a useful starting point for dialogue.”
In a statement, the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties reiterated its concerns about the study’s design, the consultant’s ability to construct a comprehensive review of the system within a few months and the “implicit bias of consultants who were hired by those to whom they were to deliver the report.”
In March, the State System contracted with NCHEMS to examine financial, enrollment and other issues at the 14 universities and office of the chancellor. The contract was worth nearly $400,000.
It yielded an array of findings and recommendations, among them that weaker campuses should share administrative services and academic programs, that the system’s board of governors be replaced by a less political body and that a statewide entity coordinate all of Pennsylvania higher education institutions.
It also recommended less competition and more collaboration between the universities and suggested changes inareas from tuition policy to collective bargaining.
NCHEMS issued a final 63-page report Friday. On that day, Board of Governors chairwoman Cynthia Shapira said the system “will use it to help shape an action plan for the future.”
The union, though, said some solutions seemed unworkable and not adequately grounded.
“At points, the report reads more like an amassing of certain regularly expressed grievances than it does a systematic study,’’ the statement read. “Further, there are assertions in the report that are not supported within the document, and there are other places where conclusions are drawn without an indication that it was within NCHEMS’ realm of expertise to draw those conclusions.” Still, the union expressed willingness to work with the State System.
“APSCUF’s position remains that the central core of the problems confronting the system and our universities is the Commonwealth’s decision not to properly fund publichigher education.”