February 18-20, 2015
Feb 18 02:01 SCSU's part-time students myth Feb 18 02:40 Jeb Bush's kiss of death Feb 18 03:50 The Times' flawed thinking Feb 18 15:47 "Supposed lawlessness"? Feb 19 01:42 LTE Alert Feb 19 13:26 MnSCU's fake fight Feb 20 01:11 The DFL's immoral pay increases Feb 20 13:55 Obama fiddles while ISIS expands Feb 20 15:08 My I-told-you-so moment
Prior Months: Jan
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
SCSU's part-time students myth
The Truth About Part-Time Students!
by Silence Dogood
In St. Cloud State University's FY15 Financial Recovery Plan to the Campus Community dated January 28, 2015, President Potter in his Executive Summary states:
Let's look at this statement, first to see if it is true and, secondly, if it can be blamed for the financial meltdown at SCSU.
"SCSU's student population includes more part-time students than many of its peers : ".
If you look at MnSCU's FY2017-FY2017 Legislative Request to the Minnesota Legislature, each university has a page, which contains data specific to that university. Reproduced below is the page for SCSU.
On each university's page, the percentage of full-time and part-time students is listed. The percentage of part-time students is shown for each MnSCU University in the following figure:
From the figure, it is clear that there is a wide range in the percentage of part-time students at the various MnSCU Universities. Metro has a very large number of part-time students because of the large number of evening classes and programs designed specifically for part-time students.
For the sake of simplifying this discussion, I'm going to limit our consideration to SCSU, Mankato, Winona and Southwest, which are the three largest universities in MnSCU as well as the smallest.
The definition of a part-time student is any student who takes less than 12 credits in an academic term. Additionally, because the number of part-time students is always significantly greater in the summer than during fall and spring semesters, summer will be excluded from consideration so that it will not bias the results.
The following table contains the total number of Full Year Equivalent (FYE) enrollment for FY14 (subtracting summer) as well as the number of FYE generated by Concurrent Enrollment (CE).
When President Potter wants to blame SCSU's financial difficulties on the increasing number of part-time students, all he has to do is look at the growth of Post Secondary enrollment at his university under his watch. Since President Potter's arrival in Fall'07 until Fall'13, the CE enrollment has only grown by 120%. From its peak in Fall 2010 to Fall 2013 the overall FYE enrollment during fall semester has dropped by 15.4%, which represents the three-year drop in fall enrollment.
Until now, with President Potter's blessing, CE grew at an almost exponential rate. The latest financial data released shows that CE accounts for approximately 8% of the FYE generated at SCSU and at the same time generated a total of $400,000 in profit from tuition. The return on investment (ROI) for CE is probably not outstanding but it did make money and generate FYE.
Ultimately, CE students generate a positive cash flow to the university of $400,000 and helped increase the overall FYE by 580 in Fall'13. At 5.9 CE students per FYE, 580 FYE represents approximately 3,422 students. Consequently, with it taking nearly six CE students to equal a traditional on campus student FYE, in growing the CE program, the percentage of part-time students simply has to increase.
The simple question to President Potter: If a higher percentage of part-time students is a problem, in order to lower the percentage of part-time students, do you really want to give up $400,000 and 580 FYE? Unfortunately, the $400,000 is needed to help pay the $1,300,000 being lost this year on the failed Coborn's Plaza Apartments so the answer is probably no. The other obvious solution is to grow the number of new entering freshmen and new entering transfer students, which would lower the percentage of part-time students AND increase the overall FYE enrollment.
If a proper data analysis is done and the effect of the CE students (and summer) is removed, I'd just about give odds that the percentage of part-time students has not changed significantly over the past ten years. However, as SCSU's ship is sinking, it seems that it is more important for the administration to find someone or something to blame rather than admit to having run the ship up onto the rocks themselves. The path out of SCSU's financial meltdown is to recruit and bring in more NEF and NET students to replace the 927 NEF and NET lost between Fall 2010 and Fall 2013. "Innovation" may sound good but it really seems more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than anything else.
Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2015 2:01 AM
Comment 1 by Crimson Trace at 18-Feb-15 09:30 AM
Full time new entering freshmen and transfer students are the bread and butter of any university when it comes to revenue.
Jeb Bush's kiss of death
Wherever Vin Weber goes, the kiss of death comes with him. This Washington Post article says that Weber has signed onto Jeb Bush's "all-but-certain bid for the Republican presidential nomination":
Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman and top policy adviser on Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, is assisting Jeb Bush's all-but-certain bid for the Republican presidential nomination, adding yet another high-powered strategist to the former Florida governor's political circle. Weber confirmed his move Tuesday, as did a Bush aide, after several GOP officials said Weber was working behind the scenes to win Bush support among influential donors and conservative intellectuals.
'My message to conservatives has been: this is the conservative Bush,' Weber said in a phone interview. 'I remember when his brother first ran, and he was a fine president. But at the time, most conservatives around the country said it's too bad because Jeb is the real conservative in the family. I'm reminding my friends about those conversations.'
Jeb might be the most conservative of the Bushes. As Florida's governor, he implemented some genuinely conservative reforms. Since going national, however, Jeb's taken on a leftist tilt, starting with his support for Common Core, which most movement conservatives consider the ultimate deal-breaker for GOP presidential candidates.
In recent weeks, Weber said he and other Bush allies have been informally meeting with skeptical leaders on the right to talk through Bush's gubernatorial record, touting his work on 'educational choice and taxes and spending.' Their goal is to scrape away the notion that Bush is a political moderate, a notion that has become a barnacle on his potential candidacy.
Vin Weber knows that Jeb Bush's chances at being the nominee shrink rapidly if he's tagged with the moderate label. Bush's stand on Common Core is close to a deal-breaker. Bush's position on immigration isn't noticeably different from John McCain's or Lindsey 'Gramnesty' Graham's position on amnesty. Bush's statement at a CEO conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal that Republicans have to be willing to " lose the primary to win the general election " turned lots of people off. John McCain threw conservatives, especially Christian conservatives, under the bus in 2008. His defeat was the worst defeat a Republican presidential nominee has suffered since Barry Goldwater's defeat at the hands of LBJ in 1964 .
Jeb Bush's disastrous statement won't help his cause. Frankly, it's a miscalculation. You can't tell conservatives they're wrong, then expect them to support you in the general election.
During Romney's campaigns for the White House in 2008 and 2012, Weber served as a senior policy hand, organizing meetings with think-tank specialists on foreign and domestic issues, and keeping tabs on conservative concerns.
There's the proof that Weber is the GOP's kiss of death, the GOP's equivalent of Bob Shrum or Bob Beckel.
Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2015 2:40 AM
No comments.
The Times' flawed thinking
The first time I read through this Times Editorial Board editorial , I didn't catch this bit of flawed thinking by the Times:
Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System Chancellor Steven Rosenstone has tried to make dramatic changes with his "Charting the Future" proposal. However, with a series of missteps in rolling out the program, the effort was bogged down in harsh words between the chancellor, faculty leaders and some students on many of the MnSCU campuses. Some of that antagonism has spilled out at St. Cloud State. This isn't the time to have a conflict of personalities. It is time to work together.
The university's challenges are affected by many things: uncertain funding from the Legislature, reduced state aid for athletics, pressure from some local officials to explain the enrollment decline and budget gap.
That's antiquated thinking and then some. First, the Times assumes that Dr. Rosenstone and President Potter are willing to listen. Ample proof exists that indicates they aren't willing. They're perfectly willing to blame others for their mistakes but they aren't willing to listen to others' ideas.
After the Faculty Association's Budget Advisory Committee representatives suggested saving millions of dollars by renegotiating SCSU's lease with the J.A. Wedum Foundation, President Potter didn't waste time considering that as a worthwhile option. Instead, he taped an interview with ... the Times' Editorial Board. There, he told them that the Coborn's Plaza contract was successful. Of course, the Times Editorial Board didn't ask President Potter how he defined success.
Considering the fact that SCSU has lost $7,700,000 on the lease thus far and with SCSU facing a $9,542,000 deficit this year, thoughtful, honest people wouldn't attempt telling a major newspaper that losing millions of dollars represents a success.
Further, the enrollment decline isn't a recent thing that happened last week. It started in the fall of 2010. That's the start of FY2011. For much of this time, President Potter and then-Provost Devinder Malhotra insisted that declining enrollment was part of their right-sizing plan. It wasn't until last year that President Potter admitted that SCSU was in financial trouble.
It's impossible to work with someone who isn't willing to tell the truth and admit that there's a problem. It's impossible for the faculty to suggest solutions when President Potter insists that everything is fine. That's what President Potter did for the 3 years prior to SCSU's financial difficulties became too big to hide.
Until the spring of 2014, President Potter's recommendation for solving SCSU's financial difficulties essentially was 'bury your head in the sand and call me in a week or two.'
Right now, the Times is part of the problem. If they want to be part of the solution, they need to start asking tough questions of President Potter about his solutions. That starts with rejecting President Potter's insistence that innovation will solve the problem. A part of the problem is insisting that President Potter stop making foolish financial decisions that've cost SCSU millions of dollars.
Another part of the solution is the legislature and the Department of Higher Education putting pressure on Dr. Rosenstone and President Potter. If they won't insist that these so-called leaders be held accountable to the students and to Minnesota's taxpayers, then this crisis won't get solved anytime soon.
Finally, this crisis won't get fixed without the media and some of the faculty stop being apathetic. Taxpayers are being told that they aren't spending enough money on higher education. That's BS. A major part of the problem is that President Potter and Chancellor Rosenstone are spending the taxpayers' money foolishly.
Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2015 3:50 AM
No comments.
"Supposed lawlessness"?
This NYTimes op-ed is long on accusations but short on constitutional logic. Here's an example of that:
Judge Hanen said the costs were the result of the federal government's 'failure to secure the borders,' and he noted the millions of dollars that states spend to educate 'each illegal alien child,' even though, as he knows, the Constitution already requires states to provide that education. He danced around the fundamental point, as the Supreme Court reiterated as recently as 2012, that setting immigration policy is the prerogative of the federal government, not the states.
Notice that the NYTimes tip-toed around the fact that Congress writes immigration laws and that a president only signs immigration bills he or she agrees with into law. The NYTimes didn't take time to define what each branch's role is in writing and implementing new laws.
That's the procedure for all laws, not just immigration laws. Presumably, a constitutional law scholar like President Obama knows the drill.
This is typical liberal BS:
However the appellate courts come down on the case, Mr. Obama is finding himself once again dealing with a familiar sort of Republican intransigence. With his humane and realistic immigration policy, he is trying to tackle a huge and long-running national problem: what to do with more than 11 million undocumented people who are living, working and raising families here, when the government cannot possibly apprehend or deport all of them.
This is more proof that President Obama isn't interested in negotiating with people who don't reflexively agree with him. Notice that the NYTimes doesn't criticize President Obama for being intransigent. That criticism is reserved exclusively for Republicans.
Notice that the NYTimes didn't criticize President Obama for all the times President Obama deployed a my-way-or-the-highway mindset, starting with his meeting with Republicans about his stimulus bill. That's when Republicans offered a number of improvements to the bill, only to be told by President Obama that "We won." That's intransigence personified.
Now Judge Hanen has reminded President Obama that presidents aren't emperors. President Obama's reaction to that reminder is to lash out, albeit in a calm tone of voice, that Judge Hanen's ruling is standing in his way.
The Founding Fathers built the Constitution the way that they did to guarantee that both political branches needed to negotiate with each other. That's the last thing President Obama wants. President Obama gave an entire series of speeches built around the refrain that "We can't wait." Thankfully, the judiciary didn't let this president do everything he and his Democratic Party allies wanted to do.
Finally, this administration isn't supposedly lawless. The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously against President Obama 13 straight times on issues of executive overreach. That's proven lawlessness. That isn't imagined lawlessness.
Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2015 3:47 PM
No comments.
LTE Alert
This morning, the St. Cloud Times published my LTE about the Bakk-Dayton fiasco. Post your opinions in the comments below.
Posted Thursday, February 19, 2015 1:42 AM
No comments.
MnSCU's fake fight
The fake fight that MnSCU has tricked newspapers statewide into playing is insulting to thoughtful people. With virtually every newspaper in the state insisting that the IFO has to return to the bargaining table with MnSCU Chancellor Rosenstone, it's difficult to a word in edgewise about what's actually important.
What's desperately in need of fixing at MnSCU isn't what's in Charting the Future, aka CtF. The things in CtF are things that universities are already working with tech and community colleges on. Lots of things in Chancellor Rosenstone's 'vision' are things that've been around for years.
That begs another question. If many of these things aren't new, why haven't they been implemented yet? That's a great question, one that points us to what desperately needs fixing. The powers that be, whether we're talking about Chancellor Rosenstone or others in MnSCU's Central Office or whether we're talking about some of the universities' presidents, aren't competent.
There isn't a CEO that would hire a consultant for $2,000,000 to implement CtF. A competent CEO would put together a team of his/her people and tell them their assignment and the timetable to complete their assignment. That CEO wouldn't hide the consultant's contract, mostly because it wouldn't be possible to hide it from the board or directors but also because private companies put a high priority on accountability and profitability.
The MnSCU Board of Trustees haven't put a high priority on Central Office accountability. If they had, they would've insisted that St. Cloud State and the 10 other MnSCU institutions that need to submit recovery plans soon should've been called out years ago.
It's fiction that anyone, whether it's MnSCU or Nostradamus, can chart the future. MnSCU shouldn't attempt that because it's impossible. If they want to set specific goals, then implement them within a specific timeframe, that's fine. Then, at least, it's possible to verify whether they're meeting specific, quantifiable goals. Without that, all that will happen is some bureaucrats putting out a report saying that they're doing a fine job without a way to measure that statement.
Our students deserve better than that.
Posted Thursday, February 19, 2015 1:26 PM
No comments.
The DFL's immoral pay increases
If I were writing the title for my LTE on Gov. Dayton's pay increases to his commissioners, I'd title it 'The immoral Bakk-Dayton pay increase' because that's the perspective they should be viewed through. Here's my conclusion to the LTE:
Meanwhile, nobody is talking about how the DFL commissioners are overpaid. Myron Frans got a $35,347 raise after telling the Legislature electronic pull tabs would bring in $35 million of tax revenue per year for the Vikings' stadium. Last year, it generated $1.7 million. Frans was just off by 95 percent. In the private sector, Frans would've gotten fired. In the Dayton administration, he got a 40 percent pay increase.
Last week on Almanac, Mary Lahammer interviewed a gentleman who studies salaries. This gentleman, whose name I've forgotten, insisted that people with that many employees and that many responsibilities in the private sector would be "presidents, vice presidents or CEOs" and that they'd "get paid twice as much as they're making" in the public sector.
Let's examine that statement. The first assumption is that public sector commissioners get scrutinized like private sector CEOs, presidents and vice presidents. They don't. Once commissioners are confirmed, they're there until they leave for a consulting job or they screw up like April Todd-Malmlov .
That leads to the first unanswered question: where's the expectation that upper level management in the public sector are really good at their jobs?
That leads to a second assumption, which is that the incentive for doing a job right in the private sector exists to the same extent that it exists in the public sector. That's the wrong assumption. It's wrongheaded thinking. If a CEO makes a big enough mistake, the company he works for loses money, perhaps lots of money. There are consequences to making bad decision in the private sector.
Those consequences don't exist in the public sector. When Myron Frans totally botched it with the e-pulltab revenue estimate, the money didn't come from his pocket. It came from taxpayers' pockets. Not only didn't he get terminated, he got a $35,000 raise and a new job title.
Incompetence and corruption are tied to each other. In Frans' case, one led to the other. It's immoral for a commissioner that incompetent to not get fired. It's despicable that a commissioner that incompetent got a raise. If Frans were a moral man, he'd tell Gov. Dayton that he didn't earn the money.
Frans won't do that. He'll just keep collecting paychecks he didn't earn. Shame on Frans, Dayton and Bakk for being that disinterested in protecting the taxpayers' hard-earned money.
Posted Friday, February 20, 2015 1:11 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 20-Feb-15 12:34 PM
Gary:
Lets not forget in the private sector in theory the board of directors or a committee approved by the board of directors is suppose to create the salary amount before it's paid. Then it's possibly voted on the shareholders.
To use Myron Frans here there should be a bill in the house and senate to approve his pay raise where he would be expected to answer questions like how were you off by $33 million on your estimate for the etabs and why do you deserve your payraise?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Chad Q at 20-Feb-15 04:56 PM
The apologists for these pay raises keep talking about what people make in similar jobs in the private sector blah, blah, blah. If the State would quit trying to run and meddle in everyone's lives, there wouldn't be a need for so many commissioners with all theses so called responsibilities and we would be money ahead.
Comment 3 by walter hanson at 20-Feb-15 09:58 PM
Chad:
Lets not forget the left complains that people in the private sector are getting too much pay thus if you go by their logic then the government supervisors should be underpaid compared with the private sector.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Obama fiddles while ISIS expands
This week, we've been subjected to some of the most idiotic thinking about the expanding ISIS threat against civilization. While middle east nation after middle east nation is visited with treachery, President Obama and Vice President Biden hosted a conference on "violent extremism." Here's something President Obama said Thursday that's gotten my attention:
First, we must remain unwavering in our fight against terrorist organizations. And in Afghanistan, our coalition is focused on training and assisting Afghan forces, and we'll continue to conduct counterterrorism missions against the remnants of al Qaeda in the tribal regions. When necessary, the United States will continue to take action against al Qaeda affiliates in places like Yemen and Somalia. We will continue to work with partners to help them build up their security forces so that they can prevent ungoverned spaces where terrorists find safe haven, and so they can push back against groups like al-Shabaab and Boko Haram.
President Obama's words sound reassuring. Unfortunately, like his State of the Union Address, his words don't reflect reality. Saying that "the United States will continue to take action against al Qaeda affiliates in places like Yemen" is total BS. The US embassy in Sana'a was hastily evacuated. Top secret or classified documents were left behind.
This is foolishness:
The Syrian civil war will only end when there is an inclusive political transition and a government that serves Syrians of all ethnicities and religions. And across the region, the terror campaigns between Sunnis and Shia will only end when major powers address their differences through dialogue, and not through proxy wars. So countering violent extremism begins with political, civic and religious leaders rejecting sectarian strife.
When a house is burning, the first step is to call 9-1-1, not hold a discussion on the flammability of various building materials. In a crisis, putting out the fire first is more important than rewriting building codes so houses are less likely to catch fire.
Whether President Obama is using this summit as a way to not take the fight to ISIL or whether he's just acting like a professor because that's his nature, it's irrelevant. He'd be much better off applying President Reagan's strategy towards the Soviets. When asked what his strategy was towards the Soviets, President Reagan said
Since launching airstrikes against ISIS, the US has averaged 7 strike sorties a day against ISIL. That's proof that Obama is fiddling while ISIS continues its expansion.
Posted Friday, February 20, 2015 1:55 PM
No comments.
My I-told-you-so moment
I'm not the world's best predictor but some things aren't predictions. They're sure things. I wrote this post to lay out the statistics indicating that the Dayton-DFL cigarette tax increase would hurt Minnesota's convenience stores. That prediction took less than a month to come true:
'Petro Serve USA' CEO Kent Satrang says the shift to North Dakota was almost immediate. Satrang says the convenience store industry lobbied the legislature for a smaller tax increase.
I wish I could say that these businesses weren't getting hurt but I can't. Thanks to the Dayton-DFL cigarette tax increase, they're getting hurt. Don Davis' article highlights the situation:
Recent news reports of cigarettes being smuggled into Minnesota come as no surprise.
Dale Erickson, general manager of Henry's Foods in Alexandria, told Governor Mark Dayton in a March 2013 town hall meeting in Moorhead that a proposed cigarette tax increase would mean Interstate 94 'will become a black market highway' as cigarettes taxed at a lower North Dakota rate would show up in Minnesota. 'There is no way to trace the cigarettes,' Erickson said.
Erickson and convenience store owner Frank Orton told Dayton that they would lose business to Fargo, North Dakota stores that collect smaller taxes. 'Minnesotans could drive across the bridge to Fargo and buy their cigarettes for $18 less per carton,' Erickson said.
The Dayton-DFL 'solution' is as foolish as their tax increase is hurtful:
[S]tate officials say they need $1 million to improve their tobacco law enforcement. Officials say cigarette smuggling costs the state $2.6 million in tax revenues.
Repealing the cigarette tax would help these small businesses that are getting hurt. Unfortunately, that isn't an option with the DFL. Republicans should refuse to spend a penny on additional "tobacco law enforcement" by saying that we don't need to tie up the courts with these prosecutions.
Posted Friday, February 20, 2015 3:08 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 20-Feb-15 03:58 PM
Lets not forget that we're trying not to have a police officer trying to arrest the cig smuggler and accidentally killing him or her as part of the enforcement. That could cost the state lots of money.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Nick at 20-Feb-15 04:44 PM
Don't forget that the DFL wanted a statewide smoking ban and got it done in 2007. Many bars have shut down in Minnesota because of these fools. For information about the effects of the 2007 smoking ban, visit http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com. One more thing, BIG PHARMA LOBBIED for the higher cigarette taxes and the smoking ban that both hurt small businesses.
