News and Updates

Interesting report released on Tuesday of this week from Moody’s Investors Service and a follow-up story in the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday.

For years now, higher education leaders have decried the steady decline in the percentage of higher education funding supported by state tax dollars and the corresponding shift in funding to tuition, private fund-raising campaigns and public-private partnerships.

The Moody’s report concludes that public universities are actually economically stronger today because of these changes, but, must now learn to actually operate less like governmental entities and more like large, complex nonprofit organizations.  Most importantly, states need to give them the flexibility to do so.

The Moody’s study finds that as state support has dropped as a percentage of overall higher education funding, many institutions have out of necessity become “fundamental economic engines” with deeper ties to local businesses and the surrounding community.  Moody’s praise this diversification but also calls for more professionalism among the membership of higher education governing boards who have the business background to make market-driven decisions.

State’s can help higher education insitutions take full advantage of these economic transformations by giving governing boards authority to set tuition and financial aid policies that will permit their institutions to attract the most students.  Moody’s contends that although legislators often want to keep tuition low for state residents, it makes better financial sense to attract students nationally and internationally and help local students with larger amounts of financial aid.

Food for thought for all state higher education officials, particularly as the state’s six four-year universities enter into discussions with the state on performance agreements later this year.

Today’s Everett Herald reports that Rep. Hans Dunshee (D-Snohomish) is recovering after being hospitalized for five days last month for a serious staph infection.  According to the article, Dunshee cut his leg getting in and out of his kayak and the cut became badly infected.

Dunshee is the Vice Chair of the House Appropriations Committee and a candidate to replace the retiring Helen Sommers as chair of the committee when the 2009 legislature convenes in January.  He was a major proponent of the UW North Sound campus in Everett the past two sessions, although legislation to create the new school failed to pass this year.  He’s running for his 7th term in the House of Representatives this fall from the 44th district which includes the communities of Snohomish, Mill Creek, Lake Stevens and Marysville.

Lots of news in the local paper’s recently about university presidential compensation which I’m sure most of you have read by now.

Here’s another story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that looks at presidential compensation from the viewpoint of a state that’s beginning to think it might have become a farm team for training everyone else’s university leaders.

Bruce Shepard, the new incoming president at Western Washington University is getting a salary bump of more than 55% from what he was being paid at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, leading some in America’s Dairyland to wonder if the state should be doing more financially to retain it’s top higher education leaders.  The story points out that Shepard is the third Wisconsin system chancellor to leave this year for a higher paying position at another school outside the state.  Shepard himself is quoted as saying “We end up running a farm club for executive leadership.”

A number of other Wisconsin higher education leaders are leaving for reason’s having little to do with compensation, but the article also points out that the state perhaps does not value higher education the way it once did and that faculty salaries at Wisconsin colleges and universities also lag significantly behind their peer schools nationally.

Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board Executive Director Ann Daley has co-signed a letter along with dozens of other national higher education leaders to presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain urging them to address the nation’s major higher education challenges.

The letter states that by the end of the next President’s first term, the U.S. will have created three million more jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree with not enough graduates to fill them and that global competition will require research and innovation on a scale that even the U.S. is not prepared to sustain.

The letter further calls for the next President to increase by one million the number of postsecondary degrees and certificates and to increase investments in basic research.  A white paper which provides more details on the proposal was also sent to the three major candidates.

UPDATE: This editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer talks about this letter from national higher education leaders and calls on the major presidential candidates to focus more on higher education.

Here are a few items of note from the state capitol that made news this past week.

• TVW, the state’s public affairs network has a new President.  Greg Lane, former deputy chief of staff to Attorney General Rob McKenna assumed the helm of Washington’s “C-SPAN” station on May 1.  Lane succeeds former TVW President Cindy Zehnder who left last fall to become chief of staff for Governor Christine Gregoire.  Lane also becomes my new landlord as the UW Office of State Relations Olympia office is located on the second floor of the Jeanette C. Hayner Media Center (TVW’s office) here in the capitol city.
• Rep. Geoff Simpson (D-Covington) was arrested this past week on a charge of fourth degree assault and interfering with a domestic violence report.  Simpson is chair of the House Local Government Committee and is currently serving his fourth term representing the 47th legislative district which is in southeast King County from the Renton Highlands, to Kent and Black Diamond.  Simpson has denied any wrongdoing and House leadership has not yet taken any official action.  UPDATE:  Seattle Times chief political reporter David Postman reports this afternoon that after meeting with Speaker Frank Chopp, Simpson has relinquished his chairmanship of the House Local Government Committee.  No word on his replacement although the Vice Chair is Rep. Dean Takko (D-Longview).
• The race for Superintendent for Public Instruction (SPI) is getting more crowded.  Former state legislator and House Education Committee chairman Randy Dorn has announced his candidacy for state schools chief.  Dorn is currently executive director of the Public School Employees of Washington.  He joins Richland superintendent Rich Semler (who was recently endorsed by the Washington Education Association) as the two chief challengers to incumbant Terry Bergeson who is seeking her fourth term this fall.
• Tim Eyman has taken out a second mortgage on his home to finance his latest statewide ballot measure.  Recently, Eyman’s initiatives have been bankrolled primarily by Woodinville investor Mike Dunmire who apparently has other uses for his money.  Eyman’s latest proposal is Initiative 985 which among other things would open up carpool lanes to all vehicles in off-peak hours and direct monies from red-light fines to go towards congestion relief projects.

Here’s a story that popped up on the web a couple of days ago summarizing the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) most recent fiscal survey of the states.  SPOILER WARNING: you might get depressed if you read any further.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you know that budget misery is infecting many states in the U.S. and heightening the anxiety of most higher education leaders therein.  The spring 2008 survey by NCSL of state fiscal conditions makes it clear that bad budget times appear to be spreading, with almost half of the states predicting budget gaps by fiscal year 2009.

Of more concern is the general “mood” of legislative fiscal directors.  Although budget deficits and sluggish revenue growth seem to be common problems everywhere, only four states are downright “pessimistic” about the future.  Arizona, New York, Delaware, and yes, Washington fall into the most dire “pessmistic” category.  Most states seem “concerned” or “stable” with three states actually feeling “optimistic” including the oil and mineral-rich empires of Alaska and Wyoming.  You guys just wait until we invent that hydrogen-cell car!

While I know the Washington state budget outlook for next session is certainly not rosy, we do enjoy a pretty sizeable budget surplus that should come in handy next year when it’s time to tally-up the debits and credits.  So, let’s try and keep our chins up and reject that negative “stinkin’ thinkin'”  Let’s decide now to feel “melancholy about next session as we pine for the days of large budget surpluses way back in the olden days of 2007.

Now that session is almost a distant memory, I’ve had some time to attend to other duties, one of which is providing an update on what’s happening in other states that are home to the UW’s global challenge peer universities.

You may recall that since the passage of legislation in the 2007 session establishing the so-called “global challenge states” as the official comparison states for measuring Washington’s progress in improving education funding, we have tried to keep much closer tabs on budget and policy matters in those states, particularly the impacts on research universities.

Today, I have posted the Spring 2008 Global Challenge State Update to the Spotlight section of the website, providing information on California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland.  As you might expect, with the exception of Colorado and Connecticut, most states are experiencing various levels of fiscal distress and our peer universities are facing some potentially significant budget cuts, particularly in California and New Jersey.

We’ll check back in with these states later this summer to report on how their legislative sessions wrapped-up.  In the meantime, I hope you will find this report informative and useful.

Western Washington University is close to naming a new president.

Bruce Shepard, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay is expected to be chosen by the Western trustees as the school’s 13th president at their meeting this Friday.  Shepard, 61, has been chancellor of the Green Bay campus since 2001.  He came to the school from Eastern Oregon University where he was provost.  He also spent more than two decades at Oregon State University as a political science faculty member and as state government liaison and in other administrative posts.

Shepard replaces Western president Karen Morse who is retiring September 1.

Governor Christine Gregoire announced this morning that Valoria Loveland, Director of the state Department of Agriculture is retiring.  Loveland, a former state senator and Franklin County Treasurer, has served as agriculture director under both Governor Gary Locke and Governor Gregoire.

In a prepared statement, Gregoire praised Loveland for expanding the markets for Washington state agricultural products.  Today, agriculture exports are at record highs.

Loveland was elected to the state Senate in 1992 and became caucus chair in her second term.  In 1999, she assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Ways and Means committee where she presided for two sessions.  She was defeated for re-election in 2000 by Mike Hewitt who is currently the Senate Republican leader.

Loveland’s retirement is effective May 5.

Take a look at yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine which is dubbed “The Green Issue” featuring a bevy of articles to help all of us keep our carbon footprints that much smaller.

In the “Learn” section of the magazine, the first item is titled “How Green is My Campus?” and features the environmental stewardship policies of the University of Washington for which we earned an A- on the College Sustainability Report Card, published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The UW is one of only six schools to receive this mark, the highest given in the most recent survey.

Nice to get some national recognition for our collective efforts to improve the environment.