Reviving a long-ignored topic: Minnesota policy on higher education

 

A Long Ignored Topic: Minnesota Policy on Higher Education

John W. Palmer Ph.D. Professor Emeritus

November 30, 2023

Recent developments (enrollment decline, financial challenges and departure of the current President) at St. Cloud State University (SCSU) and discussions with past and present SCSU faculty prompted me to look for an electronic version of a twenty four year old task force report published as part of the Center of the American Experiment’s Minnesota Policy Blueprint. As co-chair of the task force, I have fond memories of the work done to provided guidance for the future of higher education in Minnesota.

Although my search did not find an electronic copy of the task force report, I did find some interesting information regarding higher education in Minnesota and the nation. This information is reported in the next paragraphs and will be followed with a summary of the task force’s statement of principles and recommendations.

A Minnesota State website page offers some history and background on the last effort to reform the governance structure of the non University of Minnesota public higher education institutions. The web page reports that:

In the 1991 session, Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe introduced legislation to merge the seven state universities, 34 technical colleges and 21 community colleges under one board. Senator Moe suggested that the merger of these institutions would increase institutional accountability, improve student transfer, coordinate program delivery and improve facility planning. The general expectation was that the merger would not save money in the short term, but that efficiency and effectiveness would be increased over the long term.

A subsequent House-Senate conference committee let the merger stand, but extended the original two-year transition period for the new system to four years, to become effective July 1, 1995. Dr. Judith Eaton, was selected on June 12, 1995, and assumed the position on August 15, 1995. With concurrence from the board, she developed a new organizational framework for the MnSCU system office, reflecting four system priorities: policy development, governmental liaison and advocacy, strategic planning and budget.

The new proposal for system office staffing focused on the elimination or relocation of some functions and the reduction of staff from a force of 210 to 110. Further cost efficiencies have been achieved over the last two years by consolidating 28 community and technical college campuses (involving 22 institutions) into 11 comprehensive community and technical colleges. Now in its second year of operation, MnSCU serves the state with 53 campuses in 46 communities, plus the Akita campus in Japan. The system stands as the largest provider of higher education in the state.

Today Minnesota State, the new name for MnSCU, consists of 26 colleges and 7 universities with 54 campuses throughout the state. The system office staffing has grown from 110 in 1995 to about 370 employees in 2021. With a 336% increase in system office staffing, it is clear the hoped-for efficiencies that the merger would achieve have not occurred in the first quarter of a century following the merger.

In a January 2020 report titled “A New Course For Higher Education” published by the Bipartisan Policy Center it is reported that:

Higher education is becoming increasingly expensive. Since the 1999–2000 academic year, the average price paid by students for tuition, fees, room, and board (adjusted for inflation) has increased by 70% at public four-year schools,… federal programs designed to promote higher education access and affordability are often poorly designed and complex. For example, higher education tax expenditures flow primarily to high-income filers, and federal campus-based aid programs…High prices, lackluster student outcomes, and a lack of data transparency plague the U.S. higher education system.

A year after the Bipartisan report Vivekanand Jayakumar, associate professor of economics at the University of Tampa, and Brian Kencha, professor of economics and dean of the Pompea College of Business at the University of New Haven wrote an article titled "Does US higher education need fundamental reforms to survive and thrive?"

Jayakumar and Kench answer in the affirmative writing "Even as they deal with the short-term difficulties arising from the pandemic shock and the resultant decline in enrollment figures, many regional public universities …will need to reevaluate their underlying economic model. They must also consider reforming their basic approach to revenue generation and expenditure allocation in order to survive and thrive in an increasingly challenging environment. Institutions of higher education have long faced a problem of rising prices and declining quality as flawed incentive structures have encouraged rapid cost escalation and poor financial management. See this link.

The final thing my search for an electronic version of the Task Force on Higher Education from the 1998 version of the Minnesota Policy Blueprint yielded was the lack of any similar work reported on the World Wide Web in the last 25 years. In fact when the Center for the American Experiment launched a similar undertaking to their original 1998 effort in 2014 they did not include higher education as a topic. Realizing it might be a Don Quixote-like undertaking to share a 25 year old set of principals and recommendations for reform of public policy regarding higher education in Minnesota. Hopefully what followings will shed some light on how to reform Minnesota Higher Education policy.

Decentralization within private industrial enterprises has helped ignite the economic prosperity the nation has enjoyed during the past several years. We believe that decentralizing processes in higher education would have a similarly beneficial impact. We believe the discretion to make decisions regarding governance, operations, and programs should be bestowed on officials as close to students as possible. In turn, student’s needs, as expressed by the market forces students exert, should drive those decisions.

Guiding Principles

We believe the State of Minnesota should encourage market forces in higher education to maximize choice and customer services. In a recent interview on public television’s Almanac program, University of Minnesota President Mark Yudof declared that the mantra public universities should chant is: "Service. Service. Service" We are glad to use Yudof’s mantra as a springboard for our recommendations, which are based on the following principles:

• The state should bestow more financial power on students and should support their choices-whatever they might be-as consumers of post secondary education services.
• Support is most effective if it is significantly directed by individual students, rather than by campuses of systems of higher learning.
• More competition must be injected into the higher education delivery system.
• Institutions of higher learning should be in the business of building student patronage rather than building political constituencies…
• The public has an interest in ensuring the best possible governance over Minnesota’s public systems of higher learning.
• The classic research and development functions undertaken at the state’s postsecondary campuses are vital to achieving the technological advantages needed to navigate successfully into the evolving "information age.

Recommendations:

• Invert the state’s higher education appropriation formula. Specifically, we recommend that the current general fund higher education appropriation-90 percent to campuses, 10 percent to students as financial aid-be inverted incrementally over five to ten years.
• Resist rescuing financially floundering campuses.
• Provide financial aid to all Minnesota students attending any Minnesota campus.
• Give students incentives to attend Minnesota campuses.
• Expand reciprocity agreements.
• Preserve classic research and development functions.
• Inform consumers about funding allocation changes.
• Track all Minnesota high school graduates.
• Choose regents and board members for ability to govern.
• Decentralize MnSCU (now Minnesota State)

Mitch Pearlstein's book might be helpful on this subject. Hopefully this excepts from the ten-page report spark some discussion leading to a desire to reform higher education in Minnesota and perhaps the country.

You can contact Dr. Palmer at: palmertss@cloudnet.com.