I write to address two important issues related to the proposed vote of no confidence in the president: the erosion of academic quality and who to hold accountable.
I have learned much about our institution and our faculty over the course of this debate, and I have been impressed, inspired, and humbled. It is therefore with great trepidation that I enter this discourse, fully aware that my own flaws and limitations leave me little right to challenge those who stand as heroes in our community, those who stand as role models to a generation, and those whose dedication and commitment to Kutztown University and to higher education I find so awesome.
Yet I submit we are confronted by a situation in which we must answer two questions. First, does Kutztown University now face a serious and substantial challenge to its academic quality and reputation? Second, who shall be held accountable?
As to the first question, the evidence is troubling. The U.S. News rankings, one of the leading indicators of academic quality available to prospective students and the general public, have dropped KU into the lowest category, the fourth-tier (of Northeast “Master’s Universities.”) As such, we fall well below PASSHE sister schools Millersville, West Chester, and Shippensburg, all of whom can be found among the “ranked” schools of the top-two tiers. More ominously, however, KU also falls below our PASSHE sisters who rank in the third-tier: Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Lock Haven, Mansfield and Slippery Rock. Only California and Cheney join Kutztown in the fourth-tier. I cannot see how any damage done by our recent campus debate can prove as perilous as these rankings.
The administration’s response to this turn of events, frankly, has not been encouraging. We have been told that KU may have provided erroneous data to U.S. News, though apparently revised data have been provided and our ranking has not changed. In his e-mail response to the faculty of January 24, 2008, the president suggested that such rankings were problematic because they were in part based on “subjective information.” While the president did not elaborate, it is true that one-quarter of the U.S. News rankings are based on “peer assessment.” It is not clear, however, that this fact offers any consolation. Nor are any of the other components of the ranking subjective.
Clearly one of the proximate causes of KU’s precipitous drop in the rankings has been the policy of enrollment increases coupled with little to no growth in faculty, especially tenure-track faculty, leading to ever larger class sizes. Even the approval of “93 additional or new tenure track lines since 2006” would seem to leave us only about where we were several years ago. Once again, the administration’s response has been underwhelming. The January 24 response indicates that by the administration’s own account, the percentage of classes taught in the Academic Forum in the Fall of 2007 was twice as large (6.5 percent) as the administration had indicated just last Spring (3 percent)! The president quite rightly notes this is far less than the 20 percent stated in the APSCUF document, but that is only because of a typographical error listing “classes” rather than “students” in that document.
Perhaps more to the point, consider the administration’s own data on the impact on class size during Fall, 2007 from the response of January 24:
Campus wide, the data indicates a corresponding increase in small undergraduate class sections from Fall 2006 to Fall 2007. In Fall 2006, there were 48 classes with 5 to 9 students, compared to 67 in Fall 2007. Class sections with 10 to 19 students increased from 250 to 320. The number of large class sections varies between fall 2006 and fall 2007. For instance, the number of class sections with 50 to 99 students has dropped from 99 to 87, while class sections of 100 to 149 have increased from 26 to 57.
I find this response most revealing. It emphasizes class sections, and the perspective of the manager’s spreadsheets, not the perspective of the students and faculty that must struggle in those sections. Let’s “do the math.”
The table below documents the administration’s course section numbers, the percentage changes they represent, as well as estimated student enrollment numbers and the percentage changes they represent, under the circumstances most favorable to the administration’s case (maximum enrollments in small classes and minimum enrollments in large ones).
|
Class |
No. of sections |
Difference in |
% Change Sections Fall 06/Fall 07 |
Difference in No. of Students |
% Change |
|
5-9 |
48/67 |
+ 19 |
+ 40 |
+ 190 |
+ 3% |
|
10-19 |
250/320 |
+ 70 |
+ 28 |
+1,260 |
+ 21 % |
|
50-99 |
99/87 |
- 12 |
- 14 |
-1,188 |
-20 % |
|
100-149 |
26/57 |
+ 31 |
+119 |
+ 3,100 |
+ 54% |
If we subtract the change in the number of students enrolled in smaller classes (plus the decrease in students enrolled in the 50-99 range) from the increase in the number of students in large classes, the data suggest that a net minimum of 17.5 percent more students were enrolled in large classes than in small classes in 2007 compared to 2006. And this is under the scenario most favorable to the administration’s claims, where the small sections are fully enrolled (benefiting the highest number of students possible) while the large sections are enrolled at the minimum of their range. If fewer than 9 students enrolled in 5-9 student courses, or more than 100 enrolled in 100-149 student courses, the increase in the percentage of students in large classes would be even higher! Meanwhile, all this is fully consistent with an increase of roughly 77 percent in small sections.
Further, analysis by APSCUF-KU’s executive committee noted that no data are provided for classes with sizes between 20 and 49, where much of the impact of increased class size is being felt, with classes designed for 15-25 increasingly taught to 35-40. Nor did the administration provide data on classes over 149 students. Some faculty members teach three such classes per semester themselves!
More to the point, the framework for analysis provided by the administration seems to miss the key point. The real questions are not numbers of sections or even the number of students. Instead, they revolve around issues such as the impact of large classes on first-year and at-risk students, and on the developmental progress of students within particular majors. Some students may begin their academic career with a semester in which most or all of their classes are large ones.
I must ask: are you confident that the administration is asking the right questions? If they are not asking the right questions, how much confidence do you have that they will find the right answer?
This brings me to our second question, accountability. I believe most members of the faculty would acknowledge that the problems we face have roots in both our local bureaucracy and with our PASSHE overlords. Faculty, however, are not in a position to identify who in the bureaucracy is doing their job well and who is not. That is the president’s job.
Nor is the faculty in the pivotal position vis-à-vis PASSHE. Once again, the president is. After the recent contract was adopted, Aaron Walton, a member of the PASSHE Board of Governors was quoted in a report by the Associated Press:
Walton said that as far as he could tell, the university presidents have been able to reduce spending without harming their academic programs. "If we get to the point where we're affecting quality, I think it's incumbent on the presidents and their staffs to tell us," Walton said.
Our president has been unwilling to do this. The president’s response of January 24 was particularly telling:
The rankings … are not in line with the accountability plan initiatives established by PASSHE.
We can all feel for the pressures on the modern university president. Once, presidents were the chief independent advocates for their campuses. In PASSHE institutions today, their role appears (at least from this distance) to be that of fundraiser-in-chief and deputy lieutenant to the Supreme Chancellor. Perhaps this has something to do with why the search for a new president of West Chester was halted by the Chancellor on the grounds that “the initial candidate pool was neither large nor outstanding in the overall depth of candidates one might expect for a university such as West Chester” (Chancellor Hample’s letter to the WCU community, 1/23/08).
To those who say “it’s Harrisburg,” I ask, what about WCU, Ship, and Millersville, all in the top two-tiers? What about Lock Haven, East Stroudsburg, Clarion, Edinboro, Mansfield and Slippery Rock, all above us in tier three? Don’t they labor under the same oppressive PASSHE yoke? And if PASSHE is the problem, does it not fall upon our administration to voice its objections, loudly and clearly?
In any event, here we stand. What other can we do than to raise the question of confidence in the direction we are going? Faculty can neither direct the administration’s bureaucracy locally nor answer the Board of Governor’s call. Only our president can. What answer do we give our students and others who ask, "what did you do when Kutztown became a fourth-tier university?" Our call for a vote of confidence may be precisely the type of political pressure the president needs to join the battle over KU’s future at the level it must be joined. I fervently hope this can be so, and that we can come together not as a university with some strong departments and some not so much, but as one Kutztown, united in pursuit of the academic quality that is and must be our ultimate mission.
Respectfully submitted,
Glenn W. Richardson Jr.
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
APSCUF-KU Delegate