February 16-17, 2015
Feb 16 01:56 President Potter's blame game Feb 16 02:36 The virtues of strategic patience? Feb 16 10:23 Bakk, Dayton both showboating Feb 16 22:01 A fool & his money... Feb 17 01:51 US inaction hurting Europe, Africa Feb 17 02:03 SCSU's fuzzy math
Prior Months: Jan
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
President Potter's blame game
Let's Blame Part-Time Students!
by Silence Dogood
In SCSU's FY15 Financial Recovery Plan to the Campus Community dated January 28, 2015, President Potter, in his Executive Summary , blames four factors for SCSU's financial predicament. One of these factors is part-time students:
"Thirdly, SCSU's student population includes more part-time students than many of its peers and their percentage is increasing. These students are more vulnerable to economic ups and downs and are significantly more likely to not return or to stop in and out on their path to a degree."President Potter wants us to believe that SCSU is running multi-million dollar deficits because of an "increasing" percentage of part-time students.
This was echoed in an article, which appeared in the St. Cloud Times on February 9, 2015 that went even further to justify blaming part-time students:
"Declining enrollment means less tuition and fees are coming in. This school year saw a 5.1% decrease from the previous year. But while the number of full-year equivalents has declined, the actual number of students has not dropped in the same way. From 2011 to 2014, the number of FYE students dropped 17.3 percent compared with a 10.9 percent decline in actual students. That means there are more part-time students now, St. Cloud State's Vice President for Finance and Administration Tammy McGee said."
The reason for SCSU's enrollment decline has almost nothing to do with the number of part-time students. In fact, blaming SCSU's budget woes on part-time students is like complaining about your acne when you are dying of cancer. The following figure shows the number of New Entering Freshmen (NEF) and New Entering Transfers (NET) from Fall 2007 through Fall 2014.
This data shows that SCSU has a budget issue because the number of NEF and NET has declined by 1,158 students and represents a decline of 30.0% since Fall 2007! Perhaps it is interesting to note that President Potter came in the Summer of 2007 and he reorganized the university in 2010 to be more efficient. Efficient? Yes! Since Fall of 2010, SCSU has efficiently shed 927 NEF and NET, which corresponds to a four year drop of 25.6%! Efficient indeed!
At the same time, the number of NEF and NET has declined, the number of students involved in Concurrent Enrollment (CE) has grown dramatically. CE is where high school students get college credit for taking classes in their high school prior to graduation from high school. The following figure shows the growth in CE enrollment from Fall 2005 through Fall 2014.
Since Fall 2005 to Fall 2014, CE has grown by 2,293 students representing a growth of an amazing 254%!
When the CE is plotted on the same graph with the NEF/NET numbers, the origin of SCSU's enrollment problem is quite clear:
When combined together, the sum of the CE, NEF and NET enrollments, the trend in the total number of students is increasing. Unfortunately, it takes nearly six CE students to equal one NEF/NET student. It's like exchanging money where someone gives you a half-dollar and you give them $3.00 and you do this repeatedly and then wonder why you're going broke.
It's amazing that President Potter seems to think that these high school students:
"are more vulnerable to economic ups and downs and are significantly more likely to not return or to stop in and out on their path to a degree."These CE students are in high school. They are not stopping in and out on their path to a degree. The huge numbers of CE students swamps out any effect of the "economic ups and downs." Unless President Potter can explain why the enrollments at the other six MnSCU are not following the nose dive that's going on at SCSU, he might need to come up with a different explanation.
Even Vice President McGee is on the Potter bandwagon when she cites the data:
"From 2011 to 2014, the number of FYE students dropped 17.3 percent compared with a 10.9 percent decline in actual students. That means there are more part-time students now."Again, this is a no brainer; there are more part-time students simply because there are fewer NEF/NET and more CE students. However, this analysis by VP McGee and President Potter seems demonstrate that they do not understand the origin of the increase in the number of part-time students and its impact on FYE enrollment. For every NEF/NET that is lost it takes six CE students to just stay even on FYE. Additionally, when you lose one NEF/NET they are not there to take classes in years 2, 3, 4 and possibly years 5 and 6. As a result, the loss of FYE can be substantially greater when you are replacing an NEF/NET with a CE student than the simple loss of headcount.
The reason the numbers of part-time students at SCSU is increasing is clear. It's the mathematical consequence of declining NEF/NET numbers while increasing the number of CE students. The financial consequences are also clear. The university makes a lot more money on an NEF/NET than a CE student.
Blaming SCSU's financial meltdown on the increase in the percentage of part-time students illustrates a lack of understanding of the enrollment consequences of dramatically increasing the numbers of CE students at the same time the number of NEF/NET are tanking. Until the administration understands the origin of SCSU's financial problems, it is unlikely that they will come up with a strategy that will be successful in overcoming them.
Posted Monday, February 16, 2015 9:03 AM
Comment 1 by Crimson Trace at 16-Feb-15 09:09 AM
President Potter ran out of excuses long ago. I just heard that a company near Rogers will not hire SCSU graduates.
The virtues of strategic patience?
This article highlights the virtue of President Obama's policy of strategic patience:
A video purporting to show the mass beheading of Coptic Christian hostages was released Sunday by militants in Libya affiliated with the Islamic State group.
The killings raise the possibility that the Islamic militant group - which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq in a self-declared caliphate - has established a direct affiliate less than 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the southern tip of Italy. One of the militants in the video makes direct reference to that possibility, saying the group now plans to "conquer Rome."
The militants had been holding 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians hostage for weeks, all laborers rounded up from the city of Sirte in December and January. It was not clear from the video whether all 21 hostages were killed. It was one of the first such beheading videos from an Islamic State group affiliate to come from outside the group's core territory in Syria and Iraq.
What's amazing is what Susan Rice , President Obama's NSA, said recently at the Brookings Institute:
"As a nation, we are stronger than we've been in a very long time."
Here's what Ms. Rice said later in that speech:
Ms. Rice said that the Obama administration had "brought home almost 170,000 American troops, responsibly ending 2 costly and long ground wars and re-purposing our military's strength so we can better respond to emerging threats and crises."
The Middle East and north Africa are being controlled by ISIS. Meanwhile, Americans were evacuated, hurriedly, from the US embassy in Yemen by al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, aka AQAP. Coptic Christians are being ruthlessly slaughtered in Libya.
A year ago, President Obama called ISIS a JV team after ISIS had captured Fallujah. This year, ISIS controls one-third of Iraq and Syria and is branching out into Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Libya. Anyone with a modest understanding knows that Libya is only a few hundred miles from Rome.
Egyptian President el-Sissi is more courageous than President Obama:
The Egyptian government declared a seven-day mourning period and President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi addressed the nation late Sunday night, pledging resilience in the fight against terrorism.
"These cowardly actions will not undermine our determination" said el-Sissi, who also banned all travel to Libya by Egyptian citizens and said his government reserves the right to seek retaliation. "Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals."
President el-Sissi knows what ISIS is. He's fighting them with everything he's got. Meanwhile, President Obama preaches that doing nothing to stop the rapidly metastasizing threat from ISIS is the right strategy.
I'd rather trust el-Sissi than trust the occupant of the White House. That's because President Obama insists that doing nothing is making America safer. Ask Bill Clinton if taking a holiday from history made America safer in the 1990s.
Posted Monday, February 16, 2015 2:04 PM
Comment 1 by Shoebox at 16-Feb-15 06:49 AM
If it were connected to any religion but Islam, he would have droned them out of existence by now!
Peace in our time!
Bakk, Dayton both showboating
There's little doubt that the feud between Tom Bakk and Mark Dayton is personal. When Gov. Dayton picked Tina Smith as his running mate, he essentially told Sen. Bakk that he was picking her to be the next governor. That's a job Tom Bakk has coveted for years. He'd checked all the boxes. He's been loyal to Gov. Dayton. That loyalty and water-carrying apparently didn't mean much to Gov. Dayton of the Metrocrat Party. When pushing turned into shoving, Gov. Dayton shoved the Iron Range aside and picked Smith.
This editorial is right that it's personal. It's wrong in stating that Sen. Bakk took a courageous stand:
And that's why the Iron Range and all of Greater Minnesota are extremely fortunate at this time to have Sen. Tom Bakk of Cook as Senate Majority Leader. He took a politically courageous stand to get an amendment tacked on to a stopgap spending bill to delay a bad political blunder by the governor - extremely high commissioner raises in one chunk, not even phased in.
Sen. Bakk didn't make a courageous decision. It was a political decision that did nothing. It sounds courageous to delay the commissioners' pay increases. It's the option Sen. Bakk chose instead of taking a principled stand against overpaying these commissioners.
Friday night on Almanac, they aired a segment with an HR type talking about how justifiable it is to pay these commissioners their new salaries. When this HR type said that commissioners were "like presidents, vice presidents and CEOs", I got irate. When I wrote this post , I highlighted Myron Frans' incompetence:
For those that don't remember, Commissioner Frans was the person who accepted as Gospel fact that e-tabs would produce enough revenue to pay off the state share of the Vikings stadium. He was off by a paltry 95%.
In the private sector, Commissioner Frans would've gotten fired within minutes. In the Dayton administration, Frans received a $35,000 raise. Yesterday on At Issue, Tom Hauser highlighted the fact that those $35,000 a year raises were more than some Iron Range families make in a year. That's on top of the fact that these commissioners were already making six-figure salaries.
On that same program, former DFL Chairman Brian Melendez said that these commissioners have lots of responsibilities and, therefore, deserve their salaries. What he didn't say, though, was that these commissioner did a good job.
If Sen. Bakk wanted to do something truly courageous, he should've submitted an amendment that repealed those pay raises. This was Sen. Bakk's attempt to look like he was doing something without doing anything.
That doesn't take courage. That just requires fawning media attention.
Posted Monday, February 16, 2015 10:23 AM
Comment 1 by RexN at 16-Feb-15 07:14 PM
I think Bakk actually showed good sense, possibly even saving his Majority Leader status. Much as the media obediently downplays the public outrage, the Senate Democrats know a millstone when they see one, as the 63-2 vote shows. Bakk has given them time to find some sort of compromise with Dayton. So now it's raise or all to the Governor. If Tina Smith can't talk him out of a veto, Dayton could instead find himself the new odd man out.
Comment 2 by RexN at 16-Feb-15 07:17 PM
And another thing the press is once again so incurious about: Tina Smith's role. Surely the paperwork for Dayton's action had to flow through her office.
Comment 3 by walter hanson at 17-Feb-15 12:07 AM
I sort of have to agree with Rex. In 2016 the entire Senate will be up for reelection and this is something that can easily be hung on each DFL senator and lead to their defeat in the close districts. He was trying to protect his majority since they are trying to be smarter than the Democrats in the US Senate about why they are opposing the Homeland Security Bill.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
A fool & his money...
It's apparent that the SC Times editorial board has bought into President Potter's propaganda . Listen to this BS:
This new world requires bold thinking. It requires a vision for what St. Cloud State will be for the next 10 years and beyond. It requires bold initiatives. It requires all stakeholders to come to the table in good faith. They need to find solutions that may cause pain but the pain has to be shared. The highest priority must be to provide the highest quality education. What better place to spawn innovation than a major university? Put the collective brainpower to work on these challenges.
During the height of the Great Recession, in 2008, one of the community members on the Times Editorial Board said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. That advice could easily be applied to the situation at St. Cloud State.
First, it's disgusting that the Times didn't get the dates of the Great Recession right. It started in late September, 2008. But I digress.
Next, President Potter has spoken for over a year about the need for innovation and creating niche programs. When Silence Dogood wrote this post , Silence wrote briefly about niche programs:
At the same time that the President distributed the data on the aviation majors, he brought up the need of the university to develop 'niche' programs. It is almost ironic that the aviation program was already a 'niche' program as the only accredited 4-year aviation program in Minnesota. The air traffic control program would have been the only program at a university in Minnesota giving it a 'niche' status as well.
It's frustrating to hear people stating that what's needed are "bold initiatives." That's BS. What's needed are great academics and solid financial management.
President Potter isn't interested in "the highest quality education." His actions have told the story that he's mostly worried about his image. That's why he spent $50,000 on becoming a member of the Great Place to Work Institute, aka GPTWI. That's years after he paid the Earthbound Media Group $400,000 to rebrand the University.
President Potter is mostly interested in his image. EMG's report to him said that SCSU's image was getting hurt by "outsiders who control the 'blogosphere'" because those "negative perceptions" aren't "grounded in reality." EMG wrote that because I was reporting the truth about President Potter's questionable decisions. There isn't a single thing that EMG or the administration can point to that I wrote that's inaccurate about SCSU's declining enrollment, the transcript scandal that the Times hasn't written about or the money that's been lost ($7,700,000 in 5 years) by President Potter as a result of the contract President Potter signed with the J.A. Wedum Foundation.
The thing that the Times hasn't written about and that President Potter won't admit to is that President Potter's decisions have imperiled SCSU. As a result of President Potter's inaction on SCSU's dropping enrollment, St. Cloud State has lost more than $32,000,000 in tuition revenue and state budget appropriations. As a result of President Potter's insistence that his contract with the J.A. Wedum Foundation is a success, SCSU has lost another $7,700,000 in the last 5 years.
Those aren't the only things affecting SCSU's gloomy financial outlook but they are the biggest items affecting SCSU's financial and academic health. If President Potter had made these decisions as CEO of a corporation, he would've gotten fired at least 3 years ago. Thanks to his being a government employee, though, he's instead gotten performance bonuses.
Here's an innovation worth implementing: how about the MnSCU Trustees and/or the legislature requiring university presidents to stop making financially foolish decisions? That thing alone would be a big step in the right direction.
Posted Monday, February 16, 2015 10:01 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 17-Feb-15 12:02 AM
Gary:
Keep in mind they believe Obama is doing good things so it is only natural that they think Porter is doing good things.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
US inaction hurting Europe, Africa
Last week, Susan Rice, President Obama's national security adviser, said that "as a nation, we are stronger than we've been in a very long time ." Egyptian Coptic Christians couldn't comment on Ms. Rice's statement because they'd been slaughtered by ISIL-affiliated terrorists in Libya. This article indicates that ISIS, aka ISIL, is rapidly expanding:
Since exploding onto the world stage as a conquering force in Iraq a year ago, the Islamic State has expanded its reach across the Middle East despite a U.S.-led bombing campaign that has killed thousands of militants and destroyed tons of their equipment.
It's insulting to hear people calling the air operations in Iraq a bombing campaign. The air war that Chuck Horner conducted in Operation Desert Storm was a full-fledged air war. According to Mark Gunzinger's and John Stillion's WSJ article , sorties flown per day against ISIS targets is pathetic. Here's a comparison of various air wars:
For instance, during the 43-day Desert Storm air campaign against Saddam Hussein's forces in 1991, coalition fighters and bombers flew 48,224 strike sorties. This translates to roughly 1,100 sorties a day. Twelve years later, the 31-day air campaign that helped free Iraq from Saddam's government averaged more than 800 offensive sorties a day.
By contrast, over the past two months U.S. aircraft and a small number of partner forces have conducted 412 total strikes in Iraq and Syria - an average of seven strikes a day. With Islamic State in control of an area approaching 50,000 square miles, it is easy to see why this level of effort has not had much impact on its operations.
That's the difference between warfare whose objective is to annihilate the enemy and photo-op pin prick airstrikes designed to provide President Obama political cover. It's impossible to deny that President Obama is the anti-war president. Thanks to President Obama's reticence to wage serious war against a dangerous terrorist nation, ISIS is growing :
The Islamic State is expanding beyond its base in Syria and Iraq to establish militant affiliates in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Libya, American intelligence officials assert, raising the prospect of a new global war on terror.
That isn't all. Here's more proof of ISIL's growth :
Mr Zeidan, who fled to Europe after losing a parliamentary vote of confidence, reported that Isis had a growing presence in some of the bigger cities and was trying to recruit fighters from rival Islamist groups.
Aref Ali Nayed, Libya's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, also said Isis's presence in Libya was increasing 'exponentially'. Its military gains last summer sparked a rush by other Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa to ally themselves with the group by pledging allegiance and changing their names. The jihadists behind the beheadings in Libya call themselves the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State.
President Obama is a bigger national security failure than Jimmy Carter, which is something I never thought I'd say.
The thing that President Obama calls "strategic patience" was called appeasement when Jimmy Carter was president. The spin has changed but the disastrous policies remain the same.
Posted Tuesday, February 17, 2015 1:51 AM
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SCSU's fuzzy math
More Weekly Admission Reports Data Questions
by Silence Dogood
As has been previously mentioned, Weekly Admission Progress Reports are typically circulated by the Office of Strategy, Planning & Effectiveness that give a picture about the ongoing admissions of New Entering First-Year Students (NEF) and New Entering Transfer Students (NET). These progress reports contain data about the numbers of applications (complete and incomplete), some demographic data (numbers of students of color and international students), as well as some information that might give an indication about the numbers that might actually enroll (making an advising appointment or completing a housing application). In order for a fair comparison, you need to compare 'apples with apples.' As a result, all of these numbers are compared to the data from the same date the prior year, which allows for a valid point of comparison.
The Final Spring 2015 Weekly Admit Report just came out and it reproduced below:
The Final Spring 2014 Weekly Admit Report, which was distributed last spring, is reproduced to the right of the Final Spring 2015 Weekly Admit Report for ease of comparison:
Specifically, compare the data for the Final Spring 2014 numbers with the Spring 2014 numbers in the Final Spring 2015 report. You will notice that there are 12 comparable items and 7 of the twelve have different numbers. I don't mean to imply that there is some conspiracy going on but that the data just does not match up!
Look at the number of applications in the Spring 2015 report - the number is listed as 376 for Spring 2014. When you look at the Spring 2014 report, you see 390. The difference is only 14. However, it changes the "% Inc/Dec '15 vs '14" from -0.8% to -4.6%, which is nearly six times larger!
Not all of the errors that are made make the data for 2015 look better. The number of transfer applications in the Spring 2014 report is listed as 1,028. In the Spring 2015 report, the number listed is 1,058. Using the number from the Spring 2014 report reduces the decline from being down 29 to being up 1. As a result, the percentage changes from being down -2.7% to being up 0.1%. Again, that's a significantly larger result! Further, it changes from a decline to an increase.
The values of the numbers in the Weekly Admission Progress Reports are small and the errors are even smaller so it really isn't going to make a significant difference one way or the other. However, when you see errors in things that should be easy to generate with high degree of reliability, it just makes one wonder about other data.
Consider this example. Last summer, at Meet and Confer in July, the administration announced that the deficit for FY15 was going to be $3,600,000. Later in the fall, the administration 'revised' their value to a deficit of $9,542,000. With such large differences between large numbers, I guess we shouldn't be too concerned about a few small differences in the numbers on the Weekly Admission Progress Reports!
Posted Tuesday, February 17, 2015 2:03 AM
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