In 2009 the Washington State legislature passed a bill (HB 2344) directing the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Committee (JLARC) to audit "Transparency in Higher Education Data." Based on the preliminary report, Washington's higher education system is in need of some serious sunshine.

According to JLARC:

"Currently, the Legislature and others cannot easily examine expenditure and revenue information in conjunction with performance information about the state's four-year higher education institutions. Legislators cannot easily compare the levels of state dollars they are investing, the institutions' expenditure choices, and information on what those investments are yielding in terms of results such as the number of degrees awarded and graduation efficiency.

This study discusses linking information at three levels of complexity:

* Reporting: Bringing together expenditure, revenue, and performance information for a single institution;

* Comparing: Bringing together information about expenditures, revenues, and performance in a manner that allows for comparing the institutions to one another and/or to peers; and

* Identifying Relationships: The most complex of the three levels, this involves identifying how expenditures, revenues, and performance influence, and are influenced, by each other.

In general, comparable expenditure, revenue, and performance information is currently available for each institution, although the information is collected and stored in numerous different locations. Linking this information for the purposes of reporting on and comparing institutions would require an agency or other entity pulling together existing data from all the various locations and providing access to it in a way that allows users to select the information they wish to review in the three different categories.

More work would be required to identify the more complex linkage of how expenditures, revenues, and performance influence one another."

JLARC makes eight recommendations on how to improve higher education transparency as well as highlighting two legal violations, including this one:

"Some institutions did not provide accurate and/or complete reporting to students on the amount of state support students receive.

Recommendation - Central Washington University, the University of Washington, Washington State University, and Western Washington University should comply with statute to correctly disclose the amount of state support their students receive."

The JLARC higher education transparency report will be discussed by lawmakers at a public hearing on October 20.

Filed Under : Higher Education, Transparency

Comment(s)

University of California Berkeley comes clean - transparency. Until action is applied by the University of California (UC) Board of Regents to chancellors, like Birgeneau at University of California Berkeley, UC shouldn’t come to the Governor or public for support for any tax increase.

(The author has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at UC Berkeley (Cal) where he observed the culture & way senior management work)

Cal. Chancellor Birgeneau ($500,000 salary) has forgotten that he is a public servant, steward of the public money, not overseer of his own fiefdom (these are not isolated examples): recruits (uses California tax $) out of state $50,000 tuition students that displace qualified Californians from public university education; spends $7,000,000 + for consultants to do his & many vice chancellors jobs (prominent East Coast university accomplishing same 0 cost); pays ex Michigan governor $300,000 for lectures; in procuring a $3,000,000 consulting firm he failed to receive proposals from other firms; Latino enrollment drops while out of state jumps 2010; tuition to Return on Investment drops below top 10; Birgeneau all employees meeting – only 50 attend; visits to Cal down 20%; NCAA places basketball program on probation, absence institutional control.

It’s all shameful. There is no justification for such violations by a steward of the public trust. Absolutely none.

Birgeneau’s violations will continue indefinitely. Governor Brown, UC Board of Regents Chair Lansing, President Yudof must do a better job of vigorously enforcing stringent oversight than has been done in the past over Chancellors like Birgeneau who use the campus as their fiefdom.

posted by : Milan
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 10:49 PM  | Permalink

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