Questions Virginia Tech’s Board Should Be Asking
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5 responses to “Questions Virginia Tech’s Board Should Be Asking”
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What is the cost of having a passport office in Squares Student Center? And why is it there? When the US Post Office is less than a mile from campus has one?
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EXCELLENT questions.
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I’d support some kind of comparative financial reports for higher ed in Virginia.. but the idea that anyone would get a level of detail sufficient to the questions that are asked is likely never going to go anywhere.
And that’s because the folks who are asking for the info – really don’t want to know WHY the costs are what they are – instead they want a way to attack higher ed for not “controlling costs” or providing “affordable” tuition.
Imagine doing something similar to that – to go after VDOT… or METRO ..or the DMV… or State Police, etc.. even the SCC or other state agencies… I just don’t see any of them serving up ammunition for those out to hammer them…
I support some level of financial disclosure… on a comparative basis so higher ed costs can be apple-to-apple compared on some reasonable scale… but the minions looking for every nook and cranny that then can be “exposed” like some kind of a college version of a $600 toilet seat.. nope.. that’s just never going to happen.
If higher ed costs are the issue – then none of them are going to go alone with them being individually selected to to be whipped and beaten..
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These are good solid questions, Jim. Perhaps the overarching question is will the Board and Administrators at Virginia Tech answer these questions?
As a matter of legal obligation, and morality, it would seem that the Board should answer these questions truthfully, completely, and transparently.
After all, the members of the Board of Virginia Tech are not the people paying the bills that fund these costs on the promise that these funds will be used to pay for proper education of their children. Nor do the members of the Board own Virginia Tech. They cannot do anything their want with Virginia Tech’s assets. Its quite the reverse. The members of the Board hold their power over Virginia Tech and its assets, including student tuition, in trust for the benefit of those the university is chartered to serve, its students.
Thus, board membership does not create an unfettered right to the exercise of power without accountability to the state, its taxpayers, and its students. It creates fiduciary obligations on the part of each member of the board to serve responsibly the university’s mission to educate its students. This raises an number of important questions?
Is hiding from parents information necessary for them to know how their tuition money is being spent, particularly where their tuition payments do not go to pay the costs of their student’s education, but instead are spent on activities of professors that actively detract from their student’s education. How is hiding this facts of students and parents who pay the bill for their educations ever justified? Why would any Board member actively hide such a fact? Or refuse to answer such a question when asked. Is there any legitimate reason that justifies such covert activities?
Given these fiduciary responsibilities imposed on Board members, why might we expect the massive resistance by Board members to answering these questions publicly, completely, and honestly, with full transparency? The public’s mistrust for public servants and a system that refuse to answer such questions grows not from circumstances unique to Virginia Tech. It is how many public universities are run today, a chronic legacy of deceit and secrecy born of opaque operations and hidden intentions among Board members, administrators, faculties, state politicians, and other stakeholders.
Institutions and people without accountability can never be trusted. This is particularly true for people acting in secret who refuse to be held accountable.
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Notes to a tragedy –
As well documented on this blog, today’s tragedy in higher education hangs between two central pillars of dysfunction – research and teaching, specifically:
Research inflates the status of professors. It drives up their pay, reputation, security and tenure. Thanks to ill-conceived rankings based on false values, this research also drives up the status and prestige of their university. This enormous increase in status drives professors and universities to do ever more research, irrespective of quality of outcome, and to do ever less teaching that drives down their status, power, and salary.
These powerful forces, working in combination, also breed junk research that undermines good science. And it forces universities to subsidize out of its own pocket ever more research. Since the cost of most research far exceeds the revenues it generates, this drives up the cost of tuition, while it drives down the quality of the teaching of students as the university diverts its tuition monies from paying teachers to paying research costs for ever more equipment, labs or researchers salaries. It’s a death spiral, forcing costs ever higher until the system collapses. For example, it forces ever more students to saddle themselves with ever more debt they need to try to get a degree whose value declines year by year.
Why? Consider this contrast:
Teaching deflates the status of professors. Teaching drives down their pay, reputation, security and tenure. And, as tenure and tenure track professors flee teaching for research, the universities are forced to hire more and more low wage and low benefit, short-term teachers to teach ever more students in ever fewer classrooms, for cost efficiencies at the expense of learning. This forces these low wage low security teachers into a nomadic existence, often traveling between universities weekly, to earn enough to live on.
This also puts these teachers increasingly at the mercy of student evaluations. Grades inflate and junk courses spread as demands for study, testing and learning all plummet. And, as tenured and tenured track professors flee the classrooms, entertainment venues spread to fill the vast gaps of empty time that open in the students’ day, given the lack of serious resources and energy and demands then devoted to teaching. Here we see binge drinking, partying and sex hook ups, and students plunging into virtual realities. This breeds bad lifestyles in students, causing them harms of all kinds, damage done to them at universities that can easily last a lifetime, as our universities strip their students of their culture, education and character.
In these situations, the harm spreads and compounds as research and teaching war with one another. And, all involved suffer, save for the few elite who run and benefit from this system at the expense of everyone else as costs go through the roof to keep this Ponzi scheme running to enrich those few rulers.
Boards of Trustees who fail to act to fix these problems become complicit in these Ponzi schemes.
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