RobPort

No, but the spending and budget numbers I cited to support those opinions are most certainly facts, as are reports about the UND's use of it's planes to spend thousands of dollars on flights to Bismarck as opposed to hundreds of dollars on gas.

I'm not asking you to take it at face value. I've provided you with facts. Huge increases in spending - to the point of making North Dakota spend more per capita on higher ed than any other state in the nation and more as a percentage of our overall budget than all of our neighbors - juxtaposed with university officials screaming about being underfunded. I don't think it requires an MBA to conclude that something is, clearly, amiss. Nor do I think a citizen need be anything other than a citizen to speak out about how his/her tax dollars are being spent.

That's certainly the talking point we hear coming from NDSU's leadership, but it doesn't pass the smell test for two reasons. First, the "peer university" metric is a poor one. Each university has its own unique set of circumstances when it comes to educating students. Just because another state increases funding to one of its universities doesn't automatically mean we have to increase ours. We should care about what NDSU really needs, not what some other university gets. Second, and more importantly though, is the fact that North Dakota spends more per capita on higher education than any other state in the nation. According to research done by Legislative Council, higher education spending is 18.3% of our state budget. http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/higher-education-spending-is-18-3-of-north-dakotas-budget/ That's a higher portion than Minnesota, Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Idaho (if you want to talk about peers). And which university gets the lion's share of that funding? NDSU. Though don't get me wrong. This isn't a NDSU problem. This is a higher education problem. They get too much money, and they spend it stupidly.

Well, the current formulation of the SBHE (which if you look at the state constitution sets it up as a 4th branch of government not terribly unlike the judicial branch) was put in place to isolate the university system from "politics." What we've seen since from the higher ed leaders is a push toward empire building. They measure their success by the number of buildings they build and the number of students they pack into them like so many cattle. Like it or not, politics is democracy. No other state in the union has a higher education bureaucracy that is this detached from the body politic and their arrogance on the Sioux nickname is just one example of the consequences for that. Other examples would be that the university system is telling us they're underfunded despite a 64% increase in appropriations since the 2003 - 2005 legislative session and a 38% increase in tuition revenues. Where is all that money going? NDSU alone has seen a 96% increase in total appropriations since the 2003 - 2005 session, and yet Brescani tells us his university is starving. And right now the only tool the governor/legislature has to address these problems is to cut off funding. That's hardly the most productive solution. Personally, I'd like to see the schools privatized and - if we're to subsidize higher education at all - we fund the students with vouchers and let them choose which schools get the money. But since that's likely a policy pipe dream, at the very least we could put what we have now under the direct control of someone who is elected by the people.

Well to be perfectly clear, the constitutional amendment wouldn't dissolve the SBHE. It would combine it with the Department of Public Instruction (K - 12 education) and make the director of the whole shebang serve at the pleasure of the governor. We'd still have a board of people giving input to the director, but ultimately the person in charge would be the governor. Which would be a change from the status quo where the board is accountable to...nobody.

Sorry, posting from my phone.

If you don't want the schools to be susceptible to politics then privatizr them. Otherwise, they are the peoples institutions and should be directly accountable to the representatives of the people.

For what it's worth, House Majority Leader Al Carlson has introduced a constitutional amendment to reform the board and make it accountable to the governor. I wrote about it here: http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/north-dakota-house-considers-constitutional-amendment-to-abolish-board-of-higher-education/ I would suggest contacting your legislators and telling them to support it.

Oh, and these fearless political leaders will get their full legislative pay the entire time they're gone too.