Grade: incomplete
Report on ailing State System schools falls short
Aconsultant’s report may have some reasonable ideas, but it would appear to fall far short of what is needed to revive the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. Battling enrollment declines and revenue problems, the system was supposed to undergo a stem-tostern evaluation by the Coloradobased National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. However, the study left open the thorniest questions about campus restructuring, focusing more on problems with the system’s governance structure.
A lack of a clear path forward isn’t the system’s only new challenge. Chancellor Frank Brogan has announced his retirement as of Sept. 1, creating a leadership void that could hamper whatever turnaround effort is mounted.
Mr. Brogan had said the monthslong, $400,000 study would be conducted with “no preconceptions and no limits,” meaning the 14 member universities might be identified for closure or consolidation. However, the consultants recommended neither, saying a merger “is a recipe for escalating strife and added shortterm costs.” NCHEMS proposed greater cooperation among the universities, but it provided few ideas apart from “sharing of services and academic programs” and “regional and statewide consolidation of administrative and support operations to achieve greater economies and cost savings.”
Similarly, the report recommended “immediate action” to restructure the most financially challenged schools but provided little guidance on how to do that and gave few hints as to what the system would look like after the reconfiguring occurred. Since 2010, enrollment at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, a historically black institution, has fallen by more than half. How would it be restructured while keeping its historic mission intact? No specific recommendations were provided for Cheney or any school, and there was no analysis of why some institutions do better than others.
The report suggested employee buyouts to bring staff size in line with enrollment trends, recommended that other education groups be invited onto campuses as “tenants” and proposed that individual institutions have greater flexibility in setting tuition and collective bargaining. However, there was no estimate of the potential impact on the system’s bottom line or that of any university. The consultant’s strongest recommendations involved an overhaul of the system’s governance and management structures, saying one is too politicized the other too bureaucratic.
In seeking consultants, officials said they wanted to know, “What would ‘success’ look like for the system and the universities?” The completed report doesn’t give completeanswers.
“I’m sure that we disappointed folks that we didn’t get more radical,” the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Dennis Jones, emeritus president of NCHEMS, as saying. “The reality is … you don’t have silver bullets in higher education.”
In its report, NCHEMS said the system faced a “bleak fiscal future” and that, absent significant changes, “it is just a matter of time before all of the universities become financially unsustainable.” From enrollment losses to inadequate state funding, the system has taken enough bullets. It needs betteranswers.