Higher Education Receives More Than $1.5-Billion in Stimulus Awards

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

A nice chart from The Chronicle of Higher Education, with footnotes, explaining which institutions got more than $1M each, for a toal for 32 institutions of $1.5B+, in stimulus funds.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tuscon, AZ - Step II and Step III

Winners & Losers: HHS Grants Announce

It wasn't so long ago that many SCUPers were burning the midnight oil to make the HHS grant deadlines. The grants have just been announced.

The over $750 million in HHS grant awards Secretary Sebelius announced today are part of a federal initiative to build capacity to enable widespread meaningful use of health IT. This assistance at the state and regional level will facilitate health care providers' efforts to adopt and use electronic health records (EHRs) in a meaningful manner that has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of health care for all Americans. Of the over $750 million investment, $386 million will go to 40 states and qualified State Designated Entities (SDEs) to facilitate health information exchange (HIE) at the state level, while $375 million will go to an initial 32 non-profit organizations to support the development of regional extension centers (RECs) that will aid health professionals as they work to implement and use health information technology - with additional HIE and REC awards to be announced in the near future. RECs are expected to provide outreach and support services to at least 100,000 primary care providers and hospitals within two years.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

From SHEEO: Stimulus Helped But State Schools In Trouble

SCUP–45 has NASBA CPEs for CPAs!

SHEEO, the State Higher Education Executive Officers organization, has released its State Higher Education Finance FY2009 report. We have four pertinent links for you:

• A story about it by Eric Kelderman from The Chronicle of Higher Education, titled Enrollment Growth Amid Recession Creates Long-Term Challenges for States;
• A story about it by Jack Stripling from Inside Higher Ed, titled Fading Stimulus Saved Colleges;
• The SHEEO press release covering the report; and
• The official SHEEO web page with links to all versions of the report.

From Stripling: "As enrollments soared and state dollars dried up, the temporary fix of federal stimulus money staved off significant financial losses for higher education that are still yet to be fully realized."

From Kelderman: "[S]tates will have a harder time restoring spending on higher education after this downturn than they have in past recessions. Per-student state appropriations have generally recovered after past recessions, but the current economic situation presents greater hurdles"

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Recession, Recission, and Recovery: Resource Planning and Problem Solving

The following information was copied from the SCUP–45 Preconference Workshops Page on February 1, 2010. Always go to that page for the very latest information.

Also, the first iteration of a complete PDF of the entire SCUP–45 Preliminary Program is now available here (PDF).

Sunday, July 11, 2010, 8:00 AM–1:00 PM

Recession, Recission, and Recovery: Resource Planning and Problem Solving

Presenter(s): Thomas Anderes, Senior Vice President, Administration & Fiscal Affairs, University of Wisconsin System

Audience: Planners who wish to increase their ability to use financial analysis tools to better align resources on campus.

Every indication is that a continued reduction in fiscal resources will be experienced throughout higher education for the foreseeable future. How do you rebalance and learn new approaches to using fiscal strategy to meet your mission? This session provides hands-on, collaborative experience in applying a multidimensional framework that integrates the analysis of key issues and stakeholder expectations, in determining the realignment of resources within alternative scenarios. Working in small groups, participants will assess complex problems in balancing program and budgetary objectives with tools that can be used immediately on their campuses.

Learning Outcomes:

• Utilize data to determine the program and resource implications of the economic downturn on your campus and how they affect the delivery of programs and services.
• Identify sources of information (evidence) that drive resource decison making.
• Describe organizational and committee processes/interactions and outcomes that contribute to resource planning and allocations.
• Connect evolving financial conditions with program expectations.
• Develop plans to realign resource allocations and adapt to a changing economic environment.

TAGS: Performance Measures, Finance, Budget, integrated planning, Resource allocation

COST: $250 USD

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

From Lumina: Fostering Economic Recovery Through Postsecondary Education

In a piece subtitled, Three Ideas for a National Strategy to Rapidly Train Workers for New Economy Jobs, Jamie Meritsotis addresses federal policy implications for higher education in difficult financial times by proposing three "big ideas": Accelerated Associates Degrees, Seamless and Transparent Credentials, and Credit for Prior Learning. He suggests ways that federal policy could encourage and support each one. His conclusion:

No single program or policy will solve America's current job crisis. But if implemented, these ideas could begin to pay for themselves very quickly. As postsecondary graduates enter or re-enter the job market, they'll do so at a higher income level—roughly 25 percent higher, according to 2007 Census figures. And each year, those increased earnings—earnings directly attributable to the investment in high-quality, workplace-relevant education—will add up. They will improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of Americans and their families. And that will benefit all of us.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

What If the Numbers 'Add Up' But Don't Make Sense?

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This Wednesday, November 11: Join senior SCUP leaders and Lawrence V. Weill, president of Gordon College in an audiocast that is free for SCUP members (thanks to support from WRNS Studio), titled "The President's Role in Cultivating Positive Town-Gown Relations." Register now!

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It sure looked like good news, so we shared with you in SCUP Email News" that the California State University system had saved 26,000 jobs with federal stimulus funds. Now it seems that it was too good to be true, but no one noticed. Federal reporting guidelines were followed, but they had not been developed in a way that made sense of CSU's employment circumstances: "California State University officials may have followed federal guidelines in reporting that stimulus money saved an inordinate number of campus jobs, but someone in the university system should have objected to reporting the numbers because 'they don't make sense.'" More, from the Sacramento Bee.

How Many Higher-Education Jobs Stimulus Saved Remains Unclear

Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Eric Kelderman analyzes the recent White House OMB report on jobs saved by the federal stimulus package. Kelderman also spoke with a number of higher education officials in various states. The Nevada System of Higher Education, for example, counts approximately 2,100 jobs supported by the stimulus.

Daniel J. Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said the public should definitely scrutinize how states and institutions are spending the stimulus money.

At the same time, however, he has little doubt that the increased federal support has largely done its job of preventing job losses.

"The recovery act certainly has done what was intended, by helping the institutions bridge the gap," Mr. Hurley said. "I don't think the money was actually a jobs stimulus, but it definitely has been a jobs-retention bill."

Economic Hits + Stimilus Funds, State by State: How Do They Add Up?

This graphic from The New York Times could hold your attention for hours.

Obama Community College Proposal May Not Be Enough

Will $12B in federal funds work to cause an additional five million students to graduate from community colleges by 2020? Experts say that increased state and local funding is also needed:

''It's great that people are coming back to community colleges to get trained, but a student only brings about a third of the cost of their tuition.''

Ivy Tech Community College President Thomas Snyder says his school can handle more growth in part by finding savings internally and relying on philanthropic and community donations. The school will not expand too much and find itself with empty classrooms if an economic turnaround slows future enrollment.

''We're cautious in making sure that we don't make expenditures on staffing, for example, or other critical areas that we can't sustain,'' Snyder says.

Using the Stimulus for Lasting Value in Higher Education

Paul E. Lingenfelter calls the federal state stablization fund a "tourniquet not a transfusion" and cautions that institutions need to think strategically about how best to invest in their futures. "The stimulus money is not a cure for fundamental problems. It is money to buy time, manage a short-term crisis, and build a foundation for dealing with the fundamental problems. Part of the stimulus is designed to prevent lasting damage; we should use all of it to create lasting value."

Federal Stimulus Bill: Chasing the Sun

This part of a continuing series of explorations of the economic consequences of parts of the federal stimulus package focuses on solar energy.

"The U.S. Department of Energy is still in the process of choosing the projects that will receive loans and deciding how other newly available subsidies will be spent. But the potential windfall is already jump-starting plans for wind farms in the Midwest, massive solar plants in the deserts of southwest Nevada and southeastern California, and geothermal power plants in the Northwest."

Read more:
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/22833/

The Education Stimulus: Insights into the ARRA for Educators

From the Carnegie Foundation, an archived (a month old, but free) webcast on the "stimulus package" as it relates to education: "Carnegie President Anthony S. Bryk and Teachscape President Mark Atkinson recently interviewed Joseph Conaty, acting assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education of the U.S. Department of Education. During the informative web conference, Conaty reviewed elements of the new federal stimulus package and discussed how to maximize its instructional impact."

Community Colleges and the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act

Job training money available through the federal government will double in the next two years, and many of the new law's provisions benefit community college growth and change:

While the intention of the provision is primarily to bolster training, it will undoubtedly strengthen the hand of community colleges in the workforce system; the No. 1 recommendation of the aforementioned Lumina study was, "relax constraints on contract training."

"We're very excited about the opportunity," says Michael Bankey, vice president of workforce and community services at Owens. Because of its close relationship, physically and otherwise, with the Toledo one-stop center, the community college is already the center's biggest provider of training. But right now, Bankey notes, the center refers students one by one to its various programs -- between 10 and 20 a month in truck driving, for instance. But the ability to enter into group contracts with the one-stop center, in the way that Owens now does to create specialized programs for local businesses or other organizations, opens up lots of possibilities for customized setups that directly respond to local, regional or state needs, Bankey says.

Universities Are Wary of Drawbacks to a Huge Boost in Federal Spending

Well, it didn't take long for that perspective to cycle through 360 degrees.

After a month of celebrating the largest boost in federal spending on scientific research that most of them have ever seen, university presidents are increasingly tuned to the possibility of a downside.

The new money—primarily from a $21.5-billion jump in research-and-development spending in the economic stimulus law—is certainly welcome, several university presidents and higher-education officials said on Tuesday during a lobbying trip to Capitol Hill.

Yet, the leaders said, many institutions struggled over the past decade to retain promising young researchers and their investigative projects through upward and downward spikes in the budget of the National Institutes of Health, And they’re now hoping to avoid repeating that pattern with the stimulus money.

Stimulus Law Offers Breaks for Public-College Bond Issues

A lesser-known part of the stimulus package:

Tucked into the economic-stimulus package signed into law last month by President Obama is a new financial tool, Build America Bonds, that could help public colleges and public academic medical centers save money when borrowing for capital projects.

The bonds, which are available to government issuers but not private colleges, would be taxable securities subsidized by the federal government.

The subsidy would come in one of two ways. In some instances, buyers of the bonds would receive a tax credit equal to 35 percent on the interest payments they received; in other cases, the issuers of the bonds would receive a subsidy from the federal government equal to 35 percent of the interest they are paying.

ACE's 'Economic Stimulus Resource Center'

This new resource from the American Council on Education collects a few valuable resource links in one spot. Probably the most timely-pertinent resource is the archived webinar of an event sponsored by ACE and NACUBO on February 23 on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: A Partnership for Economic Renewal. You can watch it, streaming, as a guest with the password "stimulus." It featured a top-level Department of Education spokesperson. There are also links to documents such as the Inititial Implementing Guidance for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 from the Office of Management and Budget, as well as to an Education Department set of resources.

Special Report: Higher Ed and the Economy

That's a good title for a good article from University Business magazine. Current SCUP president Sal Rinella is quoted extensively in it, from the Virtual Conversation we transmitted on February 4 about the federal stimulus package. [More Virtual Conversations are coming soon.

Rinella is among a dozen SCUP presidents who will be lending their presence to one or more of a new series starting March 20 and focusing on campus budget crises.] “We’ve been through recessions before, but I think this one is deeper and probably has more consequences than any one prior to this, and universities are feeling the brunt of it. It’s almost a ‘perfect storm,’ with state appropriations being cut back while people are losing their jobs and investment portfolios are dwindling,” says Sal Rinella, vice president of the STRATUS division of Atlanta-based Heery International. STRATUS, comprised of former senior university officers, helps institutions create competitive advantages by leveraging assets. Rinella, previously president of Austin Peay State University (Tenn.), also is president of the Society for College and University Planning. But he and others who work in or with the higher ed community see actions colleges and universities can take—and many are taking them—to mitigate the problems they’re experiencing while waiting for the economy to improve.

Obama's Higher-Education Goal Is Ambitious but Achievable, Leaders Say

By Sara Hebel and Jefrey J. Selingo in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Before President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, the White House compared the purpose of the event to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the Great Depression. But for higher education, Mr. Obama was more like John F. Kennedy when he issued the challenge in 1961 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

This president’s goal was equally daunting: for the nation to have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. “That is a goal we can meet,” he said to applause in the chamber.

But is it?

College and university leaders were clearly delighted that Mr. Obama dedicated so much time in his speech to higher-education issues, which had for years taken a back seat to elementary and secondary education in presidential addresses. But, by Wednesday, the enormity of the task that has long been on college administrators' wish list became evident again.

“It’s absolutely achievable, but it’s ambitious,” Hilary Pennington, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s postsecondary program, said in an interview. “It’s a stretch goal.”

In November, the Gates foundation announced that it would spend several hundred million dollars over the next five years to double the number of low-income young people who complete a college degree or certificate program by age 26 (The Chronicle, November 21). Recognizing the difficulty of the task, the Gates foundation set a slightly longer time frame for its goal than the president did for his—2025 instead of 2020.

Ms. Pennington said President Obama’s speech might have helped in one of the biggest hurdles to achieving the foundation's goal of doubling college-completion rates: first, recognizing that a problem exists.

“The American public thinks that if you go to college, you finish,” she said. “The president has the unique ability to make sure we break through the noise and make people realize that many more countries are taking this more seriously than we are.”

Beaker-Ready Projects? Colleges Have Quite a Few

There is lots and lots of money in the stimulus package for research, much coming through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. NSF will use its extra dollars to dig deeper into funding already proposed research. Not quite clear yet what NIH will do:

The acting director of the National Institutes of Health begged university administrators on Wednesday to avoid even applying for stimulus money unless the universities planned to hire people almost immediately. . . . 'It would be the height of embarrassment,' the official, Dr. Raynard S. Kington, said, 'if we give these grants and find out that institutions are not spending them to hire people and make purchases and advance the science the way they're designed to do.' . . . Not a problem, the administrators said, in interviews. After working under flat federal research financing for years, scientists are ecstatic. 'This is a miracle, I think,' A. J. Stewart Smith, the dean for research at Princeton, said. 'It is redressing this terrible problem where the success rate for excellent proposals was very low.' . . . 'We're grateful for the money, but it's not such a large number that anybody's going to have to look very hard for good projects to fund,' said Leslie Tolbert, the vice president for research at the University of Arizona

Dissecting Obama's Message: Every American Goes to College?

From Doug Lederman at Inside Higher Ed:

Is it feasible for every American to have at least one year of postsecondary education or training? What would have to happen to make that possible? Would federal financial aid and other policies need to change? Would the distribution of students among different kinds of colleges have to change? . . . Those were among the many questions that college officials and higher education policy makers traded Wednesday as they contemplated the implications of President Obama's unexpected call in his Congressional address Tuesday night for a campaign to ensure that every American has 'at least one year or more of higher education or career training.' . . . [T]he president gave few details about exactly what he was proposing, forcing those seeking to analyze it to engage in a fair bit of tea leaf reading. They differed somewhat in their views of how much Obama's remarks departed from previous presidents' calls for expanding college opportunity; whether federal priorities and policies would be likely to change to achieve it (a question that could be partially answered today when the administration releases a first glance at its 2010 budget blueprint); and whether focusing more aggressively on getting those who've never been to college to get at least a little would conflict with the other goal the president laid out Tuesday night: 'by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.' . . . The overwhelming reaction of college leaders and others interviewed was elation, though . . . in the context of a trillion-dollar federal deficit—it [had] seemed likely that higher education would take a backseat to other priorities.