Comments About the North Dakota University System

Published January 15 2010

RALPH KINGSBURY: Not a way to run a school

While I was a member of the North Dakota Board of Higher Education, a North Dakota State University official — not former President Joe Chapman — caught me during a break at one of our meetings. He accused me of being anti-NDSU and provincial.

By: Ralph Kingsbury,


1.



Ralph Kingsbury

While I was a member of the North Dakota Board of Higher Education, a North Dakota State University official — not former President Joe Chapman — caught me during a break at one of our meetings. He accused me of being anti-NDSU and provincial.

I might have to accept that I can be provincial, but I never have been anti-NDSU. Not even at UND-NDSU football games, at which I was only pro-UND. Now, I don’t even have the chance for that.

As for being provincial, my only defense is when I mentioned to another official what had been said to me, that official said there is a place for provincialism, and I need not back down if I was using it correctly.

Anyway, this column concerns some of the latest news about higher education spending in North Dakota, news that includes UND but more so NDSU. Part of the news involves the cost overruns on both university presidents’ houses.

In my view, we first need to consider that most of the money spent at both schools was donated by the Marcil family, who own this newspaper and many other media in the Upper Midwest. Their donation was generous. It was good for both schools, and the residents of North Dakota need to thank the Marcils.

The balance of the money for both projects — including parking lots and heat tunnels, as well as other related spending — comes from the “profit” the schools make from renting dorm rooms, selling meals and conducting other activities. None of it was money received from taxes.

Second, even though board policy didn’t require it, both schools should have come to the board to notify the members of the changes leading to more spending. That is just good politics. Mayville State University officials in Mayville, N.D., knew enough to do that on a recent project. Let’s hope UND and NDSU officials have learned an important lesson here.

To add to the embarrassment, now we have a partial collapse of a century-old building undergoing a renovation project on the NDSU campus. It is too soon to draw any conclusions as to the cause, but I do know that construction projects next to current standing buildings require serious structural support. That adds to the cost of the project, but it prevents collapse. I’m no expert, but judging by the news coverage and photographs, this apparently was not done.

Now for what I think is the more critical problem: the announcement that NDSU must freeze faculty hiring because of inadequate growth in tuition, a trend that has led to a budget deficit.

Everyone, including college administrators and board members, should know that tuition pays only part of the direct cost of a student’s education. We also knew that NDSU aggressively gave tuition waivers in order to attract more students.

With essentially the same enrollment, NDSU in 2007-08 gave students $11 million in tuition wavers, and UND gave $7 million. At the assistant professor level, that $4 million difference is about the full cost of another 70 faculty.

So, who is responsible for this deficiency? When I was a board member, I raised that issue in informal discussion with several officials. I also recall raising it during formal board discussion of institutional budgets, although I couldn’t tell you at exactly which meeting.

In any case, some people acknowledged the validity of my concerns, but too many others simply said that the situation would work itself out.

It seemed to me then — and the facts today have verified — that a little common sense and basic accounting would have shown that a deficit such as we have today was the more likely result. Tuition waivers are one part of higher education that the 1999 Roundtable Report never adequately addressed.

In my view, because the higher education community in North Dakota — including board members, college presidents and the board staff — as well as the state Legislature and administration did not address this issue early on, today we have a new chancellor (because this issue is why former chancellor Robert Potts resigned), and soon there will be a new president at NDSU.

More important, we have a school that is underfunded and understaffed. We have an underpaid faculty and students taking classes with too large of a student-teacher ratio. These things eventually could lead to the hiring of less-qualified faculty members and the offering of programs that will not meet academic requirements.

What’s happening at NDSU is the result of the decision to grow enrollment without first having a solid budget plan in place. It is no way to run a school.