I believe Barry's campaign is to address the governance, educational and financial shortcomings of the BOT,
Not to promote or improve the win-loss record of the f'en "Farm football Team" which we will shortly own.
@PSUJam - the BOT thumbs it's nose to Harrisburg.
The BOT has been trying to privatize The Penn State University for the last two decades.
The stars may finally be in motion and starting to aline in that direction.
Below is a link to the PA Auditor General's Report
LINK:
The Pennsylvania State University - Performance Audit Report for the Period January 1, 2013 to March 31, 2017 (paauditor.gov)
Our performance audit of PSU presents nine findings centered on the following three issue areas
as explained further in Appendix A – Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
1) Governance, which includes a follow-up to the weaknesses highlighted in our 2012
special report on PSU’s governance.
2) Campus security, to include specifically PSU’s compliance with the federal crime
reporting law, known as the “Clery Act” and PSU’s compliance with conducting
certain required background checks under state law.
3) Tuition affordability, and the extent to which PSU is appropriately identifying and
controlling tuition cost drivers.
o
Size of PSU’s Board. In 2012, we recommended reducing the size of PSU’s
Board from 32 voting members based on best practices recommended by higher
education experts. PSU has since taken the opposite position and increased its
Board size to 36 voting members (with an additional two nonvoting members for
a total of 38 members). We continue to believe a smaller board would benefit
PSU’s governance, as would an improved constituency selection process for
“business and industry” representatives on
PSU’s Board. PSU disagrees.
o Transparency and accountability to Pennsylvania’s taxpayers. We strongly
believe that PSU and the General Assembly must work harder to eliminate the
special dispensations given to PSU, its Board, and its affiliates. Specifically, PSU
should not be exempted from the good governance safeguards of the
Commonwealth’s Right-to-Know Law and the Public Official and Employee
Ethics Act (Ethics Act). These exclusions were present in 2012 and should be
removed as soon as possible.
PSU disagrees with our findings and believes it is
already sufficiently transparent and accountable.
PSU’s tuition has grown at rates that exceed common economic indicators, such as the
consumer price index (CPI). PSU’s tuition is the highest of its Big10 peer public
research universities. PSU’s Board is responsible for setting tuition rates, and tuition is
one of the primary revenue sources for the University.
In our review, we found that PSU’s expenses are outpacing its revenues. As expenses
continue to outpace revenue, PSU will need to find additional revenue to meet its
expenses. The most likely source of this revenue will be from tuition because state revenues are flattening out.
Our analysis of PSU’s acceptance rates at University Park showed that in 11 of the last 16
years, including the last seven consecutive years, nonresidents had higher acceptance
rates than Pennsylvania residents. PSU stated that it has never intentionally favored
nonresident students over Pennsylvania residents in the recruitment and acceptance
process in order to increase revenue or otherwise. While we concur that PSU has no
specific policy or strategic directive that favors nonresident students in the acceptance
process, this condition could be a consequence of not adequately controlling expenses.
The trend of increasing acceptance rates for nonresidents should be a concern for PSU’s
Board because any admission preference should be to residents, whose taxpayer-provided
support is intended to benefit.
