For UA: The show that must go on (line)

A new report in the Chronicle of  Higher Education fills in a few more blanks in the University of Akron's plans to wipe out a  $40 million budget deficit.  It is a shift in educational culture that would grant much more emphasis to digital-age  technology, as in the decision to expand the school's academic  brand to "polytechnical".

More importantly, however, is UA President  Scott Scarborough's commitment to channel  more of the academic package  to on-line courses at the expense of the campus classroom.  Indeed, his own background is wedded to it with a close relationship with a wealthy for-profit Texas online  operator whose company provides the workings of such an arrangement.

It's Scarborough's  second attempt to reconfigure the in-the-flesh learning route offered by the school for eyes glued to the computer screen.  He proposed the same idea in his previous role at the University of Toledo but was rebuffed by a hostile faculty.

 It should be remembered that abolished jobs, yet to be specified, are merely another layer of dismissals that have been painfully underway for a couple of years.

His preamble to the changes were the new name followed by his announcement that 215 more jobs and the school's baseball team would be unloaded to erase two-thirds of a $60
million debt.  (Even that figure has been disputed by a respected former vice president who looked deeply into the books and estimated that the debt could be at least $70 million).

Scarborough,  a native Texan, is no stranger to the influential Texas businessman, Randy Best.  His company, Academic Partnerships,  has been exploding with profits through his  various private and political contacts.   The Chronicle reported:

"Mr. Best  has a track record  of building businesses that aim to disrupt traditional educational models.  A fund raiser for President George W.Bush, he collected some $380 million by  selling a company that produced reading-education programs designed to fit the requirements of Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind program.   For a subsequent venture - the American College of Education, which aimed to provide master's degrees to teachers - Mr. Best purchased the 'academic assets'  of Barat College, acquiring its accreditation in the process.  The seller was DePaul University, where Mr.  Scarborough   was then serving as chief financial officer.)"

Clearly the Scarborough team is counting not only on cost-saving with each online course, but also growth in enrollment, in which the noses are counted in Columbus for state revenue. It's impossible to overstate the dependency on the  legislature and  more engaging support from Gov. Kasich  for collegiate sustenance.  Besides,  Kasich will be preoccupied with his presidential run to be more than superficially concerned with higher education .

Still, the UA team was optimistic.  The Chronicle noted that Vice Provost  Todd Rickel  flatly predicted that the student population would grow from the current 25,000 to 30,000 in five years.

For now the changes would be a dream come true for Kasich, who declared in 2011 his support of "charter universities" - public universities in private hands (read: for profit) that would exempt them from Big Brother regulations.

Of course, there are critics, too. The Chronicle cited  UA sociology professor John Zipp, president of the AAUP  UA chapter, as  being among the dissenters.  He maintained that the budget crisis is a "problem of the University's own making" with an overbuilt campus as a result of "tremendous optimistic projections" of future growth.

Experience tells me that even when big institutions are worried or pessimistic, they somehow find a way to be optimistic.  That's exectly what's happening at the downtown campus.  And by keeping everyone guessing about the specifics, the school's leaders and trustees have only managed to lower the morale among students and faculty who are still there.

 Hardly a positive way to rebrand.  Have a nice day. .

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Will Kasich qualify for dual citizenship in New Hampshire?

I see that Gov.Kasich has scheduled five more visits to New Hampshire next week , one short of qualifying him for dual citizenship in that state. That will come.  Among other things, it will permit him to establish residence there to run for governor when his second term expires in Ohio.  It also serves as his Pearly Gates for his presidential campaign until something better comes along.

Speaking of Pearly Gates, it is part of his outburst to the wife of Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick, a wealthy Republican,  at a conference sponsored by the Koch Brothers in California in which she questioned his extension of medicaid.  Harshly referring to her as "lady", he said the pearly gatekeepers will know what he did for the poor.

And so do the Kochs, who haven't invited him to another event.  That includes  their star-spangled Defend the American Dream Summit  in Columbus on Aug.  21-22.  The Kochs reportedly were miffed by Kasich's well known distemper and decided he didn't belong in their mix for Columbus that features presidential candidates Rick Perry, Jeb! Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (as well as Ohio Sen. Rob. Portman).

(Reposted from Plunderbund)
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University of Akron: A failed business model

Like a wounded giant, The University of Akron is in a state of suspended animation..   People wondering whose names will be drawn for dismissal in the campus-wide lottery. Scuttlebutt.  Rumors. Telephone calls often unanswered. As one senior manager told me:  "I'm not permitted to talk.  Even if I could, I don't know anything."

Such was the fallout from UA President Scott Scarborough's announcement that 215 jobs will be eliminated from the university,  as well as  the death warrant for the school's baseball team and some direct hits on  the  campus food service.  Public programs at E.J. Thomas Hall no more.

It's a bleak picture, no matter the public relations push to resolve a $40 million budget deficit.   Did Scarborough really understand the mess he inherited when he arrived at the University last year?

Folks, it didn't just happen.

Years ago, when a financial expert looked at the books,  he  warned former president Luis Proenza that there was a lot of red ink.  He was later forced out of his position.

So,  begin with Proenza's 15 years as the school's  chief executive who,  with perfect timing,  exited last  year with a $500,000 salary cushion and promises that he would return after a year's sabbatical.    Don't bet on it.

And consider the board of trustees with a voice-over by Summit County Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff.   Forever in a non-contentious collegial mood,  trustees seemed happy enough with the President's upbeat reports  to them as he laid out a $620 million  building program to lure students with a modern setting.

Trustees and president worked as a close unit in which a discouraging word was seldom heard.   According to former trustee, Jane Bond, then-board president Richard Pogue, a well-connected  Cleveland lawyer,  insisted that "we all agree on everything;  there could be no dissent.  "  It served as a corporate formula.

 And don't forget the bumpkinish legislature in the trifecta that never quite understands why universities should be here to stay.

 Gov. Kasich, with a chip on his shoulder as big as Gibraltar, summarily warned university presidents to make spending cuts  or risk his own hand in slashing their budgets.  End of discussion. He's not one with much patience with debates.

Meantime,  UA's front office was heard to  be exclaiming great joy over the opening in 2009 of  a  $61.6 million football stadium.  The Beacon Journal recorded Proenza's response as  "WOW!"  -  a word he affixed to many of his proclamations about the school's purported greatness.  The rationale:  A new stadium would create an army of football fans. Or so I was told.

As we all know, the projected attendance never came and the fail-safe stadium is, well, a stadium  in need of fans (and a winning football team with celebrity coaches).  .

The board had other oddly inattentive moments to the budget as UA continued to  stock its roster with six-figure vice presidents  and managers.    There was even the bizarre promotion of an assistant secretary to the board, Russ Sibert.   It promoted Sibert  to vice president, thus having one vice president reporting to another, Ted Mallo.

In a letter to the Beacon Journal,  Walter L. Hixson, UA Distinguished Professor of History, defined the mess this way:

"When I came to the university in 1989, it had real academic leaders and strove to be an institution of higher education, not a badly-run corporation.  The Republican-dominated state government, board of trustees, Proenza and Scarborough orchestrated the disaster that is UA today.    They should be held accountable, not encouraged." 

There isn't much wiggle room on the campus today as it copes with a business model that failed.  We'll see how honestly the present regime tries to explain this one. And then we'll take a another shot at Rubik's Cube.


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A roll-up-your-sleeves moment for Jeb!

Can't let the weekend trash pickup pass without awarding the coveted Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) Award to Jeb!  You may wonder why I chose Jeb! over Donald Trump.  But with every loony word sparking from The Donald's lips, where would you start?

Anyway here is a slice of Jeb!'s  gilded insights  in the New Hampshire Union that I've cited in the GALL award's annals:

"My aspiration for the country - and I believe we can achieve it - is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see.  Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows.  It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families.  That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in." 

You'd think that after his several verbal stumbles  Jeb! would work a little longer on his comments.

Crony capitalists are real; unicorns aren't

With so much concern these days about the huge icebergs of political money melting into the pockets of presidential candidates,  it inspires me to again  think about my fantasies of being a crony capitalist.

I've always thought it would be neat to be a crony capitalist. You know. A life of VIP insider  influence.   A big politician would  interrupt an interlude of sex (only if the heart is healthy enough!) or Chivas Regal  to take your call. A week end in the Hamptons.  Dinner  in lavish restaurants to show off your importance by leaving big tips.  Or a golfing trip to Scotland.   First-name camaraderie for mutual back scratching.      For a crony capitalist, the skies are never cloudy all day. Anybody for a cigar while we complete the deal?. My cousin needs a job.

I'm not exaggerating.

It's a smoothe mostly secretive role. Most people  would never understand what you do if you were called a crony capitalist.      But it has its moments.  Sounds a lot more upright,  say, than a crony socialist.

 Lots of people,  it seems, would like to be somebody else. Like a LeBron James.  Or  maybe one of the Kardashians.

As a kid, I had a friend who wanted to be a unicorn. To hear him, that would be cool,  too.   He was a skinny kid who was bullied more than once.  But as a unicorn he could strut through the toughest streets and nobody would dare bother him.  It was the horn that did the talking.

Some of us would try to tell him that a unicorn was a made-up creature and  he never could be one.  But he swore that he once saw one crossing a field in the moonlight and that was good enough for him.

You'd think that after all of these years folks like me with modest bank accounts would give up on the foolish notion of being a crony capitalist.    I do have coffee  regularly with a few cronies but that's as far this thing   goes.   Never was a capitalist and there's no point in trying now.  So my cousin can go find his own damn job.










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Kasich ship of state faces choppy waters

With Gov. Kasich's official coming-out party as a presidential candidate  arriving on July  21, you can expect more national media to apply stricter radar enforcement of the gallivanting  man who has so far been given a pass.  POLITICO has checked in this week, followed by a must-read report in Plunderbund by John Michael Spinelli.  Either definitive look at the Kasich era can serve as your guide to the 2016 presidential stampede.

The headline for Spinelli's dissection is a clear guidepost of every

thing that follows:

"Visionless, Kasich Retreats to Outdated, Deceptive DC Resume of Kasich's Political History"

(A salient note in Spinelli's account is that the lastest North Carolina PPP poll  casts him with former New York Gov. George Pataki at one per cent.  The GOP's nemesis,  Donald Trump, leads the pack there at 16 per cent!)

Outrage missing from the charter school schemes

Where's the outrage?  

After all of the teasing talk by Gov.Kasich and state lawmakers that reforms for charter schools are on the way for the $1 billion tax-funded industry, the Ohio legislative class merely kicked the idea down the road until September at the earliest and left town for  summer fun.  Meantime Kasich scheduled more out-of-state visits  for his presidential candidacy that he will officially announce on July 21, thus giving convenient  reason to return to his home state.

As Innovation Ohio  reported:  "After months of bipartisan momentum to improve Ohio's nationally ridiculed charter school laws, the Ohio House left for the summer without acting  on House Bill 2.  This means that charter schools will receive nearly $1 billion in state funding in at least  another entire school year."

Where's the outrage?

Where are the first signs of protests at the Statehouse door that $1 billion in taxpayer money will again be granted to the faltering charter system that has been embarrassing to Buckeyeland around the country?

Taxpayers have been conveniently excluded from the business-as-usual moments by budget arrangers who skillfully created a state budget for public schools with a formula that  few  without  doctorates can understand. And the state's media have done a modest  job in trying to explain the taxpayer  stakes in the opaquely distributed revenue for charters that is bleeding the budgets of public schools.

For evidence, the Beacon Journal today editorialized at length  complaining that "the new state budget doesn't include the better funding formula."  So far, so good.  But nowhere does the mysterious word "charter" appear.

Yes, school funding is complicated.  It's costly.  It's never had top priority in the legislative halls from the hacks and 10 o'clock scholars.  Instead, the governor boasts with vacuous self-approval of his Ohio Miracle and now, a New Day for Ohio. New about what?

It's hard to be outraged when a billion dollar industry is  swathed in unintelligible language for its politically disguised accounting system  infused with  dizzying numbers.

Mark Urycki, a reporter for StateimpactOhio, a consortium of WKSU, WOSU and WCPN, courageously  explored the density of the problem of such funding.  He reports that charters are more than an inheritor of  the revenues that are stripped from public school districts.

''But because charter schools on average are assigned more state aid than traditional public schools,  districts have to dip into their local levy money to give charters what the state demands". Right! For  the 370 charter schools with about 125, 000 students.

As a I've written in an earlier column, you must contend with  the powerful charter  guy who founded White Hat Management as a for-profit  investment in school kids, and then writing to lawmakers to remind them of where some of their political cash is coming from.  Legislative hacks don't need much more convincing to  discourage them from leaning on the  state's horrific giveaway of your money.

Where's the outrage?  You know, the kind you might hear from a neighbor who is reacting to a cost overrun on a street repair.

Kasich has talked of more transparency of the money spent.  But if you asked him in  the middle of  a campaign stop, he'd have a hard time  explaining what he meant.  He leaves the gritty work to others.  For example, in 2013 he appointed a pro-charter fellow named David Hansen, the ex-president of the right-wing Buckeye Institute,  and husband of Kasich's chief of staff, to oversee   charter school and voucher programs in the Ohio Department of Education. Sort of like the fox guarding the chicken coop, don't you think?

First things first for the governor and Republican legislature. That takes care of any  threat from the public outrage thing. Unfortunately, it has been fail-safe.


(Reposted from Plunderbund)

Today's consumer report

Would you buy a used slot machine from this guy?

Kasich Ode To Pearly Gates Of Scarlet And Grey

by Abe on July 2, 2015 · Leave a Comment

On July 21 Gov. Kasich’s Starship will touch down in the Student Union at Ohio State University. There, with word from the Lord, he will announce his intention to seek the presidency to rescue America from President Obama as well as the immortals who are already on the Republican list of first responders to the lure of the Oval Office..

Not a moment too soon. For months he’s been flying around the country with the itinerary of a Johnny Appleseed, planting his bountiful seeds for voters in such dog-eared candidate visits as New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina. Not since 2000, when he failed to convince the electorate that he was worthy of the White House, has he stretched out so many tourist miles.

But times do change. With that in mind and his reliance on direct lines to God, the governor is at it again. So far, it has been a message that has yet to elevate him in the polls.. When economists shooed him away from his earlier stump talk of a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget, he could always depend on the media to soften the blows. One occasionally heard a huzzah from network reporters who speculated that his erratic behavior was sort of refreshing, adding that he might be, could be, would be, could arguably be the guy thing to eject him from the clown car running on fumes.

A personal note: Having worked alongside national reporters in presidential campaigns, I can vouch that they are hit-and-run chroniclers of candidates – appraisals arising from a quarter hour interview with the candidate with no awareness of the back story.

The Ohio media, primarily the Columbus Dispatch, have sustained their hopes for the first Ohio president since newspaper publisher and cornet player, Warren G. Harding, who presided over a scandal-ridden administration, prescribing “equipoise”.

Kasich doesn’t resort to big words, although he has referrred to Californians (65 electoral votes, guv!) as “wackadoodles”. More recently, his crude responses to his critics is said to have cost him support from the Koch Brothers. It was their event in California in which Kasich barked from the dais at the wife of a rich Republican donor who questioned his extension of Medicaid. “I don’t know about you, Lady,” he snapped, sounding a lot like a harried Manhattan taxi driver. “but when I get to the Pearly Gates, I’m going to have an answer for what I’ve done for the poor…”

This from the fellow who cut food stamps, opposed the stimulus and auto bailout, and cut corners in other ways, etc. etc.

You should also be aware that according to my ASPCA calendar, July 21 has also been designated as national “No pet store puppies day”.

That will put some of us in a much better mood when the Starship arrives at the Pearly Gates in the land of the scarlet and grey.

(Reposted from Plunderbund)

A Mexican artist trumps Trump

We all laughed when Donald Trump boasted that he was the world's greatest jobs creator.   But that was before Mexican artist Dalton Avalos Ramirez decided the time had come to cash in on Trump's vicious attacks on Mexicans as rapists.

So Ramirez created a Donald Trump pinata and it could become a growth industry  across the border.  The likeness is amazing and is said to be causing a buzz among folks who want to teach The Donald a thing or two about his stupid remarks.  For pinata lovers, Trump is now in  the swing of things. Here it is.: