Commission of Higher Education is Destroying Indiana Economy:
Indiana's brain drain and lack of economic development can be laid directly at the feet of the Commission of Higher Education, its Commissioner Stan Jones, and the overall structure of higher education in the Hoosier State.
The structure of higher education in Indiana has not kept up with the Twenty-First Century, leaving it structurally focused on the 1950s, and it continues to promote the racist policies of that time, although not as overtly nor as openly, but the consequences to Hoosier minority communities is the same.
The fault lies in three places. First is the Commission of Higher Education and its Commissioner Stan Jones. Second, is the Board of Trustees of Indiana University and Purdue University who together have no idea about higher education and are generally so overwhelmed by the administrators of their respective institutions as to be incapable of asking any appropriate questions. Finally, the fault lies with the Governor and the State Legislature for allowing for this mis-structure and for not requiring any accountability on the part of the Trustees or the Commission of Higher Education.
Commissioner Stan Jones is at Fault:
Commissioner Stan Jones is a true example of the "peter principle". He was promoted to this position some twenty years ago by then Governor Evan Bayh. He had no previous experience, except for functioning as a State legislator and staff aid to Governor Bayh. The problem is that the section of the State he represented was West Lafayette. Therefore most of his time was spend protecting the West Lafayette campus of Purdue and indirectly the complementary large campus of Indiana University at Bloomington. The man literally has no idea of what is required to have higher education support a state's development economically and culturally. He only knows what he was told for years by a succession of presidents of Purdue University's large campus.
Further it needs to be remembered that Mr. Jones has never held a serious job. He went straight from his undergraduate degree at Purdue, West Lafayette to the State Legislature. So his whole career has been spent living off the public dole and not in in position that requires management or critical creative policy decisions.
Mr. Jones as Commissioner of Higher Education in Indiana over the past twenty years has achieved two questionable goals:
Indiana Fiftieth out of the Fifty States:
First, he has achieved the dubious distinction of having Indiana ranked number fifty of the fifty states by the National Center for Educational Statistics of the Federal Government for having the most inequitable distribution of State higher education funds between the large campuses and the rest of the State. This is not just a small mal-distribution, this is fifty out of fifty, the bottom of the heap. It basically means that he has kept his former "clients" happy as commissioner; but destroyed any ability of the State of Indiana to develop economically as a whole and to stop the drastic brain drain from which it suffers.
By the way the only place that does not suffer from a brain drain is the areas surrounded by the large university campuses. There is no surprise there.
The second disaster attributed directly to Mr. Stan Jones is the creation of a "junior college" system for Indiana in the first decade of the Twenty-First Century. Now that is truly a day late and a dollar short. In the process, Indiana neither has a legitimate junior college system nor a legitimate regional campus system. This new junior college that combined Ivy Tech with Vincence University was a disaster and that agreement folded. We now have a half-assed junior college, Ivy Tech, that everyone realizes is lacking of any academic quality while simultaneously the State of Indiana through its Commission of Higher Education has left the regional campuses without a well defined mission, or any real mission at all, and no serious funding to carry out that none existent mission.
End Indiana University Regional Re-Organization:
We now have the strange situation that Indiana University President, after a vote of no confidence by the real universities at Bloomington and Indianapolis, is focusing on "restructuring and re-organizing" the regional campuses. These are the only ones who cannot fight back. It has resulted in the strange situation where Indiana University Northwest's Chancellor Bruce Bergland has decided to emphasize excellence and quality in such programs as ethnic studies which by definition cannot be of quality without a graduate program and graduate students (which IUN is not allowed or funded to have). There are so many such programs across the country that it is a meaningless exercise for IUN, except for the fact that the Chancellor Bergland wants to punish the campus for exposing his sweetheart deal with his wife's gardening contract and the "outing" of his attempt to get a presidency position at another institution. He is further creating a new School of "Health". That is completely meaningless without the graduate component of research that Indiana University asked for before and was rejected for NWI. This again would require graduate education and graduate students. By the way where is the public law school for three-quarter of a million Hoosier citizens in NWI?
What is most pitiful is that SPEA at IUN, the one school with a national reputation and one that is not duplicated anywhere is not, I repeat NOT, being designated as a source of excellence for NWI for IUN. Now if NWI does not need improved public affairs and quality public officials, I do not know what does.
Commission and Boards of Trustees Destroying Northwest Indiana:
But the reality is that the programs that have been put forth by the Commission of Higher Education, lead by Mr. Stan Jones, with the cooperation of the Board of Trustees of the two major universities in Indiana, has specifically targeted the demise of economic development and advancement in the northern part of the State. The specific places that have continued to be damaged are: Hammond, East Chicago, Gary, South Bend, and Fort Wayne (plus all the cities and towns in between). Essentially all the northern part of the State. This are the areas of the State that ONLY have regional campuses and now they have only a half way effort at smoke and mirrors to make it look like something is moving when it is not One cannot, no matter how much mumbling one does, equate campuses getting $7,500, or $5,500 per student per semester with the campuses in the northern part of the State that are only getting $3,500.
They are also Racists:
It is also representative of institutional racism. It is discriminating against Black, Hispanics, and first-generation whites who are the majority of those attending the northern regional campuses.
The only solution for this problem is for the Governor to first remove Stan Jones as Commission, for incompetence if he has to. Second, the northern regional campuses need to have their mission re-defined to the equivalent of a metropolitan university such as IUPUI is designated. Third, the governance of the regional campuses, especially in NWI, needs to be reorganized with new chancellors, not the current ones enslaved to Bloomington or West Lafayette, reporting directly to the Board of Trustees or the creation of a NWI University Board of Trustees for these campuses. Finally to achieve this financially, Bloomington and West Lafayette need to zeroed out for any increase in the 2007/8 and 2008/9 budgets and those funds need to be utilized for the intensive unprecedented improvement of the regional campuses in accordance with their new mission of metropolitan universities with full graduate programs and graduate professional programs.
New Program Requires New Governance:
The State of Indiana must immediately put in place a new governance system for its regional universities especially in the north and NWI whose fiduciary duty is those campuses and the Hoosier citizens that they serve. This will overnight end the brain-drain in Indiana and result in economic growth and population increase unheard of in the history of the State. If this is not undertaken during the next session of the State Legislature there will be no hope for Indiana recovering its place economically in my life time. The brain-drain will continue and Indiana will continue to suffer a slow economic demise through a attrition of qualified population.
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