October 8-14, 2013
Oct 08 14:54 Glenn Reynolds' two Americas Oct 09 08:12 ISELF the vision vs. ISELF reality Oct 09 22:11 Conventional wisdom was wrong, gov't shutdown edition Oct 10 06:22 Fresh from MnSCU Oct 11 05:44 Affordable Care Act in danger? Oct 11 07:21 Daytonomics off to terrible start Oct 11 10:47 McFadden rakes in the $$$ Oct 12 07:32 St. Cloud Times: SCSU's stenographer Oct 14 05:35 St. Cloud State Enrollment Crisis, Part IV
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Glenn Reynolds' two Americas
Glenn Reynolds' latest USA Today column is delightful reading, starting with the opening paragraphs:
There are two Americas, all right. There's one that works, where new and creative things happen, where mistakes are corrected, and where excellence is rewarded. Then there's Washington, where everything is pretty much the opposite. That has been particularly evident over the past week or so. One America can launch rockets. The other America can't even launch a website.
In Washington, it's been stalemate, impasse, and theater the kind of place where a government shutdown leads park rangers to complain, "We've been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It's disgusting." Well, yes. The politics don't work, the websites don't work, even for the people who manage to log on, and the government shutdown informs us that most of government is "non-essential." Instead of correcting mistakes or rewarding excellence, it's mostly finger-pointing, blame-shifting, and excuse-making.
Simply put, DC is where incompetence and cruelty (see shutting down the World War II Memorial) aren't criticized. The heartland is where wealth and jobs are created without a sneering politician criticizing companies for making too much money.
President Obama has taken political nastiness and incompetence to unprecedented levels. His economic policies are a total disaster because they're contrary to the rules of time-tested rules of capitalism. Three part-time jobs are created for every full-time job that's created. Still, the administration insists that we're on the right path.
Americans know better.
Russia laughs at us. Syria blows us off. Al-Qa'ida in Libya and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt attack our embassies and consulates with little fear of reprisal.
In short, we're the global joke.
Politicians don't care about that; like two-year-olds in an ice cream parlor, all they want is more. But the rest of us should think long and hard about how many resources we should allow politicians to control, given their track record lately. Because Washington is clearly a world that doesn't work.
Ronald Reagan spoke to this way back in the 1980s. Here's what he said :
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Lois Lerner violated TEA Party activists' First Amendment rights. Instead of getting prosecuted, she got a cushy retirement pension. Hillary Clinton ignored Christopher Stevens' repeated requests for more security forces. As a result, 4 American patriots needlessly died. Now she's gearing up for another run at the White House.
Where's the Democrats' outrage over these disgusting incidents? Lois Lerner didn't hesitate in using the full force of the US government on people simply wanting to exercise their First Amendment rights. Hillary was nowhere to be found prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2012. Christopher Stevens repeatedly told the State Department hierarchy that terrorists were pouring into Benghazi and that the compound wasn't safe. Please beef up security, he urged.
Instead of listening to him, Hillary chose to proceed as if Benghazi was as safe as downtown St. Cloud on a Wednesday afternoon. During the 2008 campaign, Hillary ran an ad questioning Barack Obama's qualifications if a call came in from overseas at 3 am. Clearly, 4 years into his administration, he wasn't prepared to deal with a crisis. Apparently, Hillary wasn't prepared for that type of crisis either.
Posted Tuesday, October 8, 2013 2:54 PM
Comment 1 by Gretchen Leisen at 09-Oct-13 09:03 PM
Sorry I only got around to reading this column today. Gary, you really nailed it. Hilary's rallying cry in 2008 about the 3 am call and who will answer it is "like the chickens coming home to roost", to quote the Rev. Wright, Obama's pastor. Now that question can be asked directly to Madame Clinton, "Mrs. Clinton, what did you do when the telephone call came into the State Department from Ambassador Stevens requesting more security forces? And what did you do when the embassy asked for more cover on Sept. 11, 2012?"
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 09-Oct-13 10:18 PM
Gretchen, That's a tough question for her, especially considering the fact that the call came at 5:00 pm, not 3:00 am.
ISELF the vision vs. ISELF reality
When Gov. Dayton signed the bonding bill that funded the building of the ISELF building, aka the Integrated Science & Engineering Laboratory Facility, on St. Cloud State's campus, it was a big deal. Here's the key part of the statement St. Cloud State issued about ISELF :
The 100,000 square-foot research and teaching facility will be built at 8th Street South and 2nd Avenue on the site of the 801 Building. Classrooms and labs are slated to serve mostly upper-level and graduate-level science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medical technology and radiology classes.
Research in ISELF will support Minnesota companies that are global leaders in medical devices, pharma/biologics, animal science, bio-agriculture and renewable energy. St. Cloud State faculty and students will be able to do more collaborative research with businesses and earn more National Science Foundation grants, said David DeGroote, dean of the College of Science and Engineering.
" ISELF is about putting people in the same physical space to interact and collaborate around projects that are cross-disciplinary," DeGroote said. "That's how work gets done in the real world ."
Dr. DeGroote was fired this winter and replaced by Dan Gregory, who is now the interim dean of the College of Science and Engineering, aka COSE. I guess that's "what happens in the real world."
Fast forward to today. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in mid-August. Here's what Minnesotans got for their "$44.8 million dollars":
That looks impressive. Let's take a walk inside. What do we have here?
Wow. I wasn't expecting a big, empty room. Surely, someone's using the facility. Let's check another room:
Another empty room. What's with that? Maybe I'll find people in a conference room:
Seriously, Minnesota taxpayers got ripped off. Spending $45,000,000 on an empty building is outrageous. I don't fault the legislators who voted for ISELF. I fault President Potter and Dr. DeGroote for selling legislators a grand vision that they didn't think through.
There's little doubt that President Potter and Dr. DeGroote put together a dazzling presentation for the legislators. There's no doubt that they didn't do the work to turn their vision into a functioning facility. There weren't any departments that moved into the building. It isn't anticipated that any departments will move into the facility any time soon, either.
President Potter's time as president is littered with the building of shiny new buildings. Five Alive, Coborn's Plaza, ISELF, a major remodeling of the National Hockey Center and a new parking ramp at the north end of campus were built during President Potter's time as president. Meanwhile, the school's enrollment dropped dramatically. Finance directors have come and gone. St. Cloud State is losing between $1,125,000 and $1,500,000 a year on Coborn's Plaza.
What has President Potter touched that hasn't turned into lead?
UPDATE: I just looked at the scheduling webpage to see if ISELF was being utilized. According to the spreadsheet, the only room utilized in ISELF is Room 110. Also, a loyal reader of LFR sent this picture of the exterior of ISELF:
Obviously, the shiny exterior hides from the public the reality of an empty building.
UPDATE II: A commenter noted that the flier that St. Cloud State used to advertise the ribbon-cutting ceremony for ISELF was actually a picture of the National Hockey and Event Center. This picture shows the flier:
Clearly, the administration got this badly wrong.
Originally posted Wednesday, October 9, 2013, revised 10-Oct 11:49 AM
Comment 1 by Patrick at 09-Oct-13 08:40 AM
Wonder where the new money will come for the operating costs? According to publicly available documents, the project was sold on the basis that tuition and fees from new degree programs would be adequate to cover future expenses! I offer another "grand design project" as an example of ISELF's possible future - CVTC Nano Center. http://tinyurl.com/k8mkyf2
See also http://tinyurl.com/mqj76hn "...SCSU is responsible to pay debt service (principle and interest) on approximately $7 million over 20 years."
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 09-Oct-13 09:02 AM
Patrick raises a great point that shouldn't be ignored. SCSU still has to pay the interest on ISELF. There's another point that can't be ignored. Had President Potter & Dr. DeGroote proposed adding onto the Wick Science Building to do the things that ISELF was supposed to do, that project would've cost $8,000,000. ISELF cost $45,000,000 and it isn't functional. $8,000,000 & functional vs. $45,000,000 and dysfunctional. That isn't a difficult decision. (Except with this administration, apparently.)
Comment 2 by Patrick at 09-Oct-13 09:55 AM
Here is the SCSU web page where one can find how "busy" things are in ISELF... https://scsu.scheduling.mnscu.edu/BrowseForSpace.aspx
One could also peruse the course scheduling system for the Departments that are/were supposed to take advantage of this space. http://www5.stcloudstate.edu/registrar/courseschedule/Search.aspx
Comment 3 by James Rugg at 09-Oct-13 10:41 AM
It is clear that periodic full and transparent audits of current and proposed operations of college systems in Minnesota is necessary. Transfer of academic knowledge, the roots to future student success, has been minimized in favor of social and political interests. The advancement of society is at risk.
Comment 4 by Jason T at 09-Oct-13 11:40 PM
The building in the last photo is the remodeled Herb Brooks Hockey Center, not ISELF.
Response 4.1 by Gary Gross at 10-Oct-13 12:01 AM
It's the picture on the flier for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for ISELF. If that's the NHEC, then it's the administration that made the mistake.
Comment 5 by Jethro at 10-Oct-13 04:51 PM
The back side of this flier also has another picture of the hockey center. Makes me wonder if this truly was a simple promotional mistake. Looking at the SCSU online scheduling link Patrick provided shows an almost empty building. At this rate, it appears that ISELF may be in competition to lose over a million dollars a year like SCSU's Coborn Apartments. http://www.letfreedomringblog.com/?p=14759
Conventional wisdom was wrong, gov't shutdown edition
According to Newt's article , it's apparent that conventional wisdom was wrong...again. Based on the latest CNN poll, it's apparent that the American people blame Republicans, Democrats and President Obama equally for the shutdown:
When asked in the CNN poll whom they are angry at, 63% said Republicans, 58% said Democrats and 53% said Obama. That is a 10-point margin for the president and only a 5-point margin for Democrats, compared with a 23-point margin in November 1995. Independents said they blamed all three equally (60% GOP, 59% Democrats, 58% Obama). This is so clearly within the margin of error that it is for all practical purposes a tie.
After weeks of the media focusing blame on House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Ted Cruz and the House Republicans, it is clear the American people are not buying it.
Earlier in the article, Newt talked about polling during 1995 shutdown:
A CNN poll at the time showed Americans blamed Republicans over President Bill Clinton for the first shutdown by almost 2-to-1, 49% to 26%. Republicans fared only a little better in the second shutdown of the mid-'90s. A CNN poll after it began showed the American people preferred Clinton's approach to that of the Republicans by 52% to 38%.
Sixty-two percent said they had negative feelings about the Republican leaders during that conflict, compared with only 49% about Clinton.
It's pretty apparent that the American people are perfectly capable of understanding the different dynamics at play in this shutdown vs. the 1995-96 shutdown. In 1995, Gingrich's troops didn't hide the fact that they a) took seriously the fact that they controlled the purse strings and b) that they wanted to change the direction of the country. They didn't hide the fact that they were will willing to shut government down if that's what it took to win the longterm fight.
President Clinton understood that. He didn't hesitate in negotiating with Republicans. By doing that, he looked reasonable. Fast forward to today. This time, it's Boehner's Republicans who look reasonable compared with President Obama's mean-spirited character.
After weeks of the media focusing blame on House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Ted Cruz and the House Republicans, it is clear the American people are not buying it.
There have been too many days of the president saying, "I will not negotiate." The country believes him. They can see he's a big part of the reason the government is shut down.
That's why it's impossible for me to believe the Gallup and Rasmussen polling that shows President Obama with a job approval rating near 50%. There's no way to square up the CNN and AP polling with Rasmussen's and Gallup's polling.
If House Republicans continue to pass targeted, clean continuing resolutions to fund parts of the government and Senate Republicans demand day after day for the right to vote on these popular measures, the margin of blame may begin shifting from virtual parity to a solidly Democratic problem.
If the Republicans repeat every day their willingness to negotiate and Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repeat every day their refusal to negotiate, this may become catastrophic for the Democrats.
I don't expect President Obama to take that hardline approach much longer. He's got to be seeing polling that shows his popularity tanking. That's why it's impossible to believe President Obama will stick to his guns.
That said, House Republicans have done their Senate colleagues a ton of good during this fight. They've forced Mark Begich, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor to take votes they'll regret next November. Voting against funding of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and voting to keep the national parks closed just isn't popular. It's too early to predict that the entire group of Democratic senators will lose in November, 2014. Still, they might want to start drafting an outline for their concession speeches.
Posted Wednesday, October 9, 2013 10:11 PM
No comments.
Fresh from MnSCU
It's been awhile since we talked about St. Cloud State's enrollment crisis. Frankly, there wasn't much to write about after the 10-day report. By the way, President Potter still hasn't reported those figures. We're a month into the fall semester so it's time for the 30-day report.
Right from MnSCU's database, here's what's happening:
According to MnSCU's figures, St. Cloud State's enrollment is down another 5.6% this fall. That's following a 4.5% drop last year and a 6% drop the year before that. I don't have the exact percentage of the enrollment drop from 2010-2013 but it's close to 16%.
For those keeping track at home, that means St. Cloud State has literally lost millions of dollars of tuition revenue the last 3 years. They've lost lots of student fee revenues, too.
Talk to a professor and they'll tell you that enrollment is the lifeblood of a university. When enrollments increase, tuition revenue obviously increases. According to the person I've talked with about enrollment, money appropriated by the legislature for higher education has a 2-year delay.
First, a university's FYE enrollment determines what percentage of the Higher Education omnibus bill appropriations it gets. Next, a university's enrollment figures from 2 years ago determine how much money they get from MnSCU. Since SCSU's enrollment had just suffered its first drop, they won't get hurt as much with this year's Higher Education appropriations as they'll suffer in 2 years.
Still, St. Cloud State is feeling the sting. While the MnSCU budget appropriations don't hit hardest until 2 years from now, the tuition revenues are affected immediately. At Thursday's Meet & Confer meeting, SCSU Provost Devinder Malhotra told the Faculty Association that they're cutting $2,900,000 from the budget. Those cuts will most likely be to cut fixed-term and adjunct professors.
That's a shoddy way of doing business in most places. At SCSU, it's just business as usual.
Posted Thursday, October 10, 2013 6:22 AM
Comment 1 by Nick at 11-Oct-13 07:49 PM
Potter will be nothing more than a footnote when he either gets fired or retires from St. Cloud State. And it looks like neither the Democrats or Republicans want to fund Aviation at the post-secondary level. Why is not Dayton not stepping in to prevent SCSU's Aviation program from completely going away?
Comment 2 by walter hanson at 13-Oct-13 11:57 AM
Nick:
This is Mark Dayton. AFSCME hasn't complained. His ex-wife hasn't complained. They will have to complain to get Dayton to act!
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Affordable Care Act in danger?
Thanks to a lawsuit filed by Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's Attorney General, the Affordable Care Act might be on life support :
Political pundit Dick Morris believes that a suit brought by Oklahoma against Obamacare could be what ultimately knocks down the president's healthcare law.
"Why didn't anyone else think of it?" Morris wrote in The Hill . "Unlike the suit brought by 26 state attorney generals, this suit does not make a constitutional objection to the Affordable Care Act. Instead, it uses the language of the law to challenge the elaborate system of subsidies, tax credits, and individual or employer mandates and fines the act has spawned."
The suit, filed by Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General Scott Pruitt , was published in the Case Western Reserve School of Law Journal. The article contends that the wording of the Affordable Care Act allows a subsidy for health insurance only for those who got their coverage through state exchanges rather than the federal exchange.
I've had this lawsuit on my radar for awhile because it uses the Affordable Care Act's clear language against itself:
"The IRS has ruled that the language of the statute should be 'interpreted' to extend the subsidies to those enrolled in state or federal exchanges, but that's not what the law says," Morris explained, adding, "Section 1041 of the act, according to their article, 'authorizes premium-assistance tax credits and makes them available only through state-run exchanges.'"
It also says tax credits can be given only if the taxpayer has a plan that was enrolled in through an exchange established by the state under section 1311 of the Affordable Care Act. Jonathan H. Adler and Michael F. Cannon, who did the research, "argue that 'by its express terms, this provision only applies to exchanges 'established by a state' and 'established: under Section 1311,'" Morris pointed out.
The bill's clear language emphasizes the fact that subsidies were only available to people who bought their insurance through state-run exchanges. That was the Democrats' way of bribing states into setting up exchanges. When states said no to the Democrat's bribery scheme, this administation tried ignoring the Affordable Care Act's own language.
While I won't make predictions about the Affordable Care Act because of Chief Justice Robert's disastrous ruling, it's difficult to see them giving this administration another victory. If the Roberts Court did that, they'd become a laughingstock. Ignoring the bill's plain language isn't the way to build credibility.
It isn't that winning this lawsuit would cause the Affordable Care Act to disappear. It would just make buying health insurance an expensive proposition, too expensive for most people.
Posted Friday, October 11, 2013 5:44 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 11-Oct-13 08:27 AM
There's another suit out there that builds on the Roberts ruling, and may have an even better chance of success. Since the Roberts court ruled that Obamacare is a "tax," then the Origination Clause of the Constitution requires it to have originated in the House. It did not.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 11-Oct-13 10:24 AM
That's a tricky one since the Senate did a delete all amendment of a bill that started in the House. I agree that the taxes should've originated in the House Ways & Means Committee. I just don't think that's what SCOTUS would rule.
Comment 2 by walter hanson at 11-Oct-13 04:34 PM
Gary:
Keep in mind a couple of things about Judge Roberts even though I'm not happy with the decision.
One, he did say in the opinion that we get what we voted for you and the court shouldn't police that. A lot of people who thought Obama was cool or that this will lower insurance preiums, etc are getting what they voted for.
Two, Roberts said it was a tax even though Obama and his group kept trying to lie through oral arguments that it wasn't a tax. Under the stretch previous courts have done technically that is correct.
And three, Roberts and his court on at least one occassion that I remember said we couldn't rule until there was an actual case. I think this issue along with a couple were dismissed as part of the ruling at the time because there was no actual damage done yet!
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Daytonomics off to terrible start
Yesterday, the office of Minnesota Management and Budget, aka MMB, reported that revenues fell short of expectations for the first quarter under the Democrat-passed budget for Fiscal Year 2014-15. Here's Rep. Jennifer Loon's response to the news:
"Governor Mark Dayton and Democrat majorities' budget, effective July 1st, forces hardworking taxpayers to pay more when they can least afford it for excessive government spending. The simple fact is our state spending is far-outpacing our state's economic growth. Today's news is a departure from the positive trajectory state revenues have been on for the last two years," said Rep. Loon.
Thursday's announcement from MMB comes just ten days after the state closed the books on the Republican-passed budget for Fiscal Year 2012-13. According to MMB, the Republican-passed budget ending June 30, 2013 exceeded projections by more than $3 billion.
"Despite the positive results from the Republican-passed budget of the last two years, Democrats decided to take the state in the opposite direction this legislative session. Between Democrats' damaging tax increases already in effect and the upcoming impact of Governor Dayton's warehousing tax and health insurance exchange, the road to a healthier economy in Minnesota just got steeper."
That wasn't the only bad news for the Dayton administration. The Tax Foundation released its 2014 annual report . Here's the key takeaway from their report:
The 10 lowest ranked, or worst, states in this year's Index are:
41. Maryland
42. Connecticut
43. Wisconsin
44. North Carolina
45. Vermont
46. Rhode Island
47. Minnesota
48. California
49. New Jersey
50. New York
This is what report said:
Minnesota, by contrast, enacted a package of tax changes that reduce the state's competitiveness, including a retroactive hike in the individual income tax rate. Since last year, they have dropped from 45th to 47th place.
Ben Golnik, the Chairman of the Minnesota Jobs Coalition, issued this statement on the Tax Foundation's report:
"This new study is the latest evidence that Mark Dayton's massive, job-killing tax increases are hurting Minnesota. It's obvious that raising taxes by nearly $2 billion to cover a budget deficit one-third that size was excessive."
The only reason Minnesota's economy isn't tanking is because of massive amounts of government spending. Put differently, taxpayers are artificially propping up Minnesota's economy. Real economic growth isn't possible when government punishes profitmakers, aka job creators.
The contrast between the budget that the GOP legislature passed and the budget that's now in place couldn't be more stark. The GOP budget generated enough revenue to fill Minnesota's rainy day fund and pay off all but $238,000,000 of the school shift. The Dayton/DFL budget is already falling short of their revenue projections.
With Sen. Bakk already threatening to not repeal the warehousing services sales tax, the farm equipment repair sales tax and the telecommunications sales tax, Minnesota's employers have less incentive for staying in Minnesota. Cargill has already moved two of its operations to other states. Red Wing Shoes is seriously considering moving its warehousing operation to Wisconsin. Other iconic Minnesota companies like DigiKey and Polaris are thinking of moving across the border.
As Rep. Loon said, the Democratic legislature chose to take Minnesota in a different direction. The early results of their change of direction are ominous. I'm not surprised.
Posted Friday, October 11, 2013 7:21 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 11-Oct-13 04:29 PM
Gary:
I think you might want to do a post to highlight that Scott Walker and Wisconsin (the state that Democrats say doesn't know what it's doing) is able to offer a $100 million tax cut because it's budget is under control.
I mean if Walker can afford a tax cut and not raise taxes shouldn't the MN House, MN Senate, and governor Dayton have been able to do that since they claim to know how to govern better than Republicans.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
McFadden rakes in the $$$
GOP Senate candidate Mike McFadden had another strong fundraising quarter , which establishes him as a top-tier candidate and not just because of his fundraising figures:
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden's campaign said on Thursday that he had raised $700,000 in the last three months and has $1.2 million cash on hand in his quest to oust Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken. The haul gives McFadden, an executive on leave from Lazard Middle Management with no political background, two steady quarters from which to launch his campaign. He raised about $700,000 in the first part of this year.
If Mr. McFadden is the GOP candidate that faces Sen. Franken next November, he'll still be fighting an uphill fight. That doesn't mean Sen. Franken is guaranteed victory. In the shutdown showdown, Sen. Franken voted against a) opening the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, b) repealing the medical device tax and c) for keeping a substantial special subsidy for health insurance that's only available to Congress.
Sen. Franken has voted the way Sen. Reid has told him to. It's noteworthy that Sen. Reid has proven to be a tyrant this past week. He told CNN's Dana Bash that he didn't want to open the NIH . He's refused to fund any part of the federal government unless Republicans essentially give Democrats everything they want.
With the money he's raising, Mr. McFadden will be able to highlight how Sen. Franken sided with DC's special interests and his woefully misguided party rather than fighting for Minnesotans' best interests. That's only part of Sen. Franken's worries. I've heard Mr. McFadden's interviews. He's quick, to the point and sincere, qualities that Sen. Franken doesn't have.
Posted Friday, October 11, 2013 10:47 AM
No comments.
St. Cloud Times: SCSU's stenographer
This St. Cloud Times article is insulting. First, the statistics aren't accurate. This graph is from MnSCU:
According to this graphic, headcount enrollment for FY2010, which is for the 2010-2011 school year, was approximately 18,300 students. That dropped to approximately 17,200 for the 2011-12 school year before dropping to 16,400 for the 2012-2013 school year. Here's what the St. Cloud Times reported:
For fall 2013, enrollment is at 16,245. Last year, it was 16,457. That's a 1.3 percent drop. It dropped 4.8 percent from 2011 to 2012. St. Cloud State had enjoyed five years of growth previously.
The graph showing MnSCU's data shows that enrollment dropped from a high of 18,300 in 2010-11 to 16,400 in 2012-13. That's a drop of 1,900 students. That's a 10.4% drop. That's before factoring in this fall's 30-day numbers. I don't have the official statistics for this year's enrollment but it was significantly less than 16,000 on Sept. 14, 2013. That's a drop of approximately 13%.
Let's examine the accuracy of this statement:
St. Cloud State had enjoyed five years of growth previously.
In terms of headcount enrollment, there was a drop of 1,100 students between the fall semester of 2010 and the fall semester of 2011. There was another drop of approximately 800 students from fall 2011 to fall 2012. There's been a drop of approximately 400 students from the fall of 2012 to this fall.
What's noteworthy is that headcount enrollment is mostly irrelevant for policymakers. What's important to policymakers and budget people is the FYE enrollment. Malhotra knows that because FYE enrollment is what budgets are based off of. Headcount enrollment might as well be called show and tell enrollment because it's what spinmeisters like Malhotra show the public to tell them their sinking ship is just fine.
FYE enrollment, as I've reported at LFR, isn't fine. According to MnSCU's numbers, St. Cloud State is down another 5.6% this year from last. Last year's enrollment was down 4.5% from 2011. Those are bad enough but they aren't the biggest drop. The biggest drop, in FYE enrollment, was 5.9% from fall 2010 to fall 2011.
Malhotra isn't being straight with the public either. If things are just fine, why did the administration confirm at this week's Meet & Confer that they'll be cutting the budget by $2,911,000? Universities don't just cut spending by $3,000,000 for chuckles. They do it because their ship is sinking.
St. Cloud State has closed one dorm entirely. The occupancy rate at the other dorms is 70%. Healthy universities don't have that much empty space in their dorms. If not for LFR, the public wouldn't be getting this information. The St. Cloud Times' stenography service certainly won't tell people what's really happening there.
St. Cloud State put out these numbers because the important numbers are frightening to them. If the FYE enrollment numbers for the past 3 years were given to the Times, people would know that St. Cloud State was in financial and systemic difficulty.
Posted Saturday, October 12, 2013 7:32 AM
Comment 1 by Patrick at 12-Oct-13 12:37 PM
and to think President Potter is off traveling the world while the crisis continues at home. Ya know closing the Aviation program, cutting homecoming and decreasing office administration support in favor of centralizing scheduling and curriculum processing only starts to explain the enrollment decline.
Comment 2 by walter hanson at 13-Oct-13 11:54 AM
Gary:
Here is where you expose the outright lie in the SCSU.
You write (not to mention call the editor):
Dear Editor:
according to a story you wrote on enrollment at SCSU that SCSU had five years of previous enrollment increases. That will be for the years 2006-2011. Um since enrollment dropped in 2010 from 18,300 to just 17,200 in 20111 that statement isn't accurate!
Can you please list for me and all your readers the other lies you told on purpose since you didn't want to tell the truth to your readers!
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
St. Cloud State Enrollment Crisis, Part IV
GREAT NEWS: Enrollment Decline Less than Expected?
by Silence Dogood
At 6:19 p.m. last Friday evening, Dave Aeikens published an article in the online version of the St. Cloud Times stating that SCSU announced that fall semester enrollment is down only 1.3%! This is amazing news since only two days earlier on Wednesday, at Meet and Confer between the Faculty Association and the SCSU Administration; the administration distributed a budget document planning for a 5% decrease in enrollment and a budget reduction of over $2,800,000. If the news that Dave Aeikens reports is true, this is truly incredible news since it means that SCSU can avoid making painful cuts after two years of significant enrollment declines.
Remember, at the Meet and Confer on September 5, 2013, the SCSU Administration stated that they had been planning on a 4% decline in enrollment; at least that was the number they told the faculty that they used to build their budget last spring. From the data presented by the administration at the Meet and Confer on September 5th, it looked like the enrollment would be down significantly more than 4%. At this time, President Potter emphatically stated that the enrollment was going to be down 5% and that this was only 1% more than they had projected. Just for the sake of accuracy, while it is true that the September predicted enrollment decline was only 1 percentage point greater than their predicted number from last spring, it is actually a 25% error in their prediction. At the September Meet and Confer, the administration also distributed a budget document showing a 5% enrollment decline and the corresponding decline in the budget resulting from the enrollment drop.
While reviewing the budget impact of an enrollment decline of 5%, there was a collective gasp in the room on the part of the faculty. Certainly, these kinds of cuts could not be made without mentioning the R-word (retrenchment). The administration was asked and they said that they were not considering retrenchment at this time (see Meet and Confer minutes of 9/5/2013). However, the administration did not indicate how they would cut the more than $2,800,000 in expenditures from the budget - only that it wouldn't come through retrenchment. The faculty breathed a collective sigh of relief!
So, if the information reported by Dave Aeikens is correct, CONGRATULATIONS to President Potter and his management team for nearly turning the enrollment ship around! After drops in fall enrollments of 5.9% and 4.5% to go to a drop of only 1.3% is nothing short of amazing! It is also now clear that the administration's planning last spring for a 4% decline was quite insightful in light of the now actual 1.3% decline. Anyone familiar with budgets appreciates just how difficult it is to plan for one number and then need to cut the budget in a panic when the enrollment (think revenue) declines more than planned. Again, congratulations to President Potter!
Of course, congratulations are all dependent on whether or not you believe the administration. The MnSCU website on the thirtieth day classes showed enrollment at SCSU to be down 5.6% in FYE (full-year equivalent). The number SCSU is reporting to the SCTimes is headcount where a student taking one class is counted the same as one taking 15 credits. Headcount has nothing to do with budgets. It is just a number that allows the administration to say that we are 'bigger than Mankato'. In terms of unduplicated headcount, SCSU is indeed bigger than Mankato. However, other than for presidential bravado, headcount is largely meaningless!
From MnSCU's website as of Tuesday morning, the thirtieth-day enrollment numbers showed Mankato has 6,699 FYE compared to SCSU's 6,006 FYE. Simply put, Mankato is 10.4% larger than SCSU where it really counts - REVENUE. So much for being "the largest school in the system."
In an earlier article, titled lying with statistics, I demonstrated the way statistics could be used to obfuscate the truth. The truth will become clear when the administration begins to talk about making changes in the budget. Will the changes be made to reflect more revenue? Or will the changes reflect more than a 1.3% drop in tuition revenue? An astute reader already knows the answers to these questions.
The administration planned a budget based on a 4% drop in enrollment (revenue), using the administration's enrollment numbers you might think there will be no need to cut expenditures since revenues dropped less than anticipated. It appears, based on a 1.3% decline in enrollment that SCSU will have approximately $1,500,000 more cash that can be spend than had been anticipated and spending won't need to be cut. So at least it looks like the spending to cover the anticipated nearly $1,000,000 short fall on Coborn's Plaza, the new contract ($240,000) with the City of St. Cloud for the additional police officers patrolling the campus, the $150,000 for the Confucius Institute, and the latest $50,000 for a campaign to "make SCSU a great place to work" won't break the bank.
All of the preceding apparent good news is dependent on you believing the almost tornadic spin being generated by the University's PR machine and everything is great right here at the 'River City's University.' But spin does not pay the bills. As anyone who knows how to balance a checking account knows, less money coming in means less money to spend. When you see that spending has to be cut and the surplus created by statistical slight of hand disappears, the reported 1.3% drop in enrollment will be outed for what it is and the truth will be known. You can then decide if the SCSU administration was lying with statistics or if they were just plain lying.
Originally posted Monday, October 14, 2013, revised 18-Oct 6:46 PM
Comment 1 by Patrick at 14-Oct-13 06:02 AM
It appears to me that the SCSU Administration has attended the Jay Carney School of Spin.
Comment 2 by Yeager at 14-Oct-13 07:28 AM
It's too bad that the vitriol and rhetoric won't allow for a fair evaluation of the whole story. Ruminations like this, and like Gary's previous posting on the St Cloud Times, leave so much out that of course one would reach the conclusion that things are falling apart at SCSU!
(one needs only to consult the Meet and Confer notes to gather the information shared below)
Confucious Institute? Originated within the faculty, and it appears to be a grant that forced the university to have to match the funds in order to participate.
Enrollment declines? A large part of this was managed and predicted - just like has been pointed out - with nearly all of the FTE reduction coming from the ACE program. Even silence's compadres seemed to like this, calling it getting rid of the truck and buying the sports car. This was discussed in the Student Success Committee, led by a faculty member.
Police contract? Yeah, if your Mayor Kleis would properly support city services then there wouldn't be a need for this expense.
I also would take issue with the conclusion that a reduction in the budget automatically means retrenchment. There are so many other factors to consider - take the very simple starting point that nearly all of this reduction was anticipated and therefore incorporated into budget planning for this FY - that the only way that you can get to the point fostered in these accusational postings is that the administration is so incompetent that they would simply spend freely without any regard to planning. I just don't see it. Again, read the notes.
Comment 3 by Jethro at 14-Oct-13 04:03 PM
On the Fujita scale of administrative tornadic spin, this would be so off the scale that could be ranked as an F6. Even a Business 101 student could figure out that a -1.3% student decline would not equate to cutting close to $3 million from the budget.
Comment 4 by Patrick at 15-Oct-13 10:25 AM
Yeger
Do you work for the SCSU Administration? because it sure sounds like spin that you want us to believe.
By-the-way anyone who starts out with "It's too bad that the vitriol and rhetoric won't allow for a fair evaluation of the whole story" has no credibility in the given subject.
