The Vilsack Faction's Marching Orders

By Jeff Cox (First Printed in the Prarie Progressive)

As David Skorton was being inaugurated President of the University of Iowa, the President of the Iowa Board of Regents, Owen Newlin, turned to our state legislators and pleaded with them:  “Let's keep our public universities public.”  Owen Newlin is no longer on the Board of Regents, and David Skorton is no longer President of the University of Iowa.  Governor Tom Vilsack has very different ideas for higher education in Iowa.

He made those ideas clear in an interview with David Yepsen in the Des Moines Register (April 24, 2005).  The universities in the past have been about research and teaching, he argued. In the past when faculty did things like “publish a paper” or “write a book”, they were rewarded, but that has to change.  “Now it's come up with an idea and start a business and you'll get rewarded.”    Hired for their expertise in research and teaching, faculty are now expected to become entrepreneurs.  Instead of serving all the people of Iowa, they are to serve the interests of corporate investors.

In order to transform the university, Vilsack appointed four new members of the Board of Regents:  Mike Gartner, Teresa Wahlert, Ruth Harkin, and Tom Bedell.  These regents, he told Yepsen, must “put their foot down and say 'This is the way it's got to be.'…Mike Gartner is going to be the next president of the board, and those are my marching orders to him.”

Gartner and other members of the Vilsack Faction wasted little time.  They took over key roles in the search committees for the presidencies of the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Iowa.  Their habit of direct interference in university affairs has led to legislative hearings on their conduct. Far more important than the Vilsack Faction's managerial style is their campaign to undermine state support for public higher education.

Provision for publicly funded higher education was in the original constitution of the state, and Iowans have ever since shared a consensus that it is not only an advantage to the state, but essential to a healthy democracy, to have publicly supported and accessible institutions of higher education.  The level of public support for higher education has varied enormously over the past century and a half, depending on political circumstances, the condition of the state budget, and the commitments of Iowa's political and civic leaders.   Over the decades, though, Iowans have been proud of their support for higher education.  Iowa is one of very few states of comparable size and wealth with two public research universities that belong to the prestigious Association of American Universities.

Key members of the Vilsack Faction do not share the Iowa consensus on higher education.  When the chair of the University of Iowa's presidential search committee, Regent Teresa Wahlert, met with the faculty committee responsible for giving advice on such appointments, she informed the faculty that she believed that all state aid should be eliminated from the University of Iowa.  She acknowledged that the privatization of the university would be controversial, and called for a public debate on the topic.

It would take an endowment of more than four billion dollars to make up for the quarter of a billion dollars in yearly support that the University of Iowa receives from the taxpayers.  Regent Wahlert had no suggestions as to where that extra money might come from, other than a vague suggestion that we might recruit more out of state students.   Nonetheless, both Governor Vilsack and the Vilsack Faction on the Regents are busily reducing state aid to the university, with or without debate. During his first term in office Vilsack cut roughly one hundred million dollars out of the University of Iowa operating budget in order to fund his economic development schemes and buy off the Republicans with tax cuts. 

As Vilsack's second term began, and state revenues improved, an earlier Board of Regents put in place a reasonable and affordable “transformation plan” that would have provided an additional 40 million dollars a year for higher education in 2005, 2006, and 2007 to help make up for the Vilsack Cuts. In 2005 the transformation plan was only partially funded, although unlike the Governor the Regents at least supported full funding that year.

In 2006, by way of contrast, new Regents President Michael Gartner gave the green light to our legislators to divert 20 million dollars of the 40 million transformation plan into an economic development boondoggle that had been proposed in an obscure consultant's document known as the Battelle Institute Report on Iowa's Bioeconomy (watch this space for more).  All three Regents institutions were left, not with the additional 40 million originally proposed by the Regents, but with a mere 11 million in recurring funds.

In response to the Vilsack Cuts, and the failure to fund the transformation plan, the University of Iowa has been shrinking the size of its teaching staff while increasing the number of students.  You can do the math about classroom size and the quality of teaching.  The university has tried mightily to avoid  disaster by finding funds for competitive faculty and staff pay raises, but cutting back on faculty and staff numbers alone does not free up enough money for pay increases.

The university administration was hoping for additional funds from the transformation plan.  When those weren't forthcoming, thanks to lack of support from Vilsack and the Vilsack Faction, the university asked the Regents for a tuition surcharge to fund pay raises.  Instead of funding pay increases with state money, the Regents supported the diversion of state funding to economic development and funded pay raises with a tuition surcharge instead (it should be called the Battelle Surcharge). In terms of Vilsack's marching orders to Michael Gartner, that is not all.  In order to receive the tuition surcharge this year, the university promised the Board of Regents that they will not ask for state money for any new buildings for the next three years.

Those are the elements of the privatization of higher education being put into place by Vilsack and the Vilsack faction.  First comes (1) the Vilsack Cuts, then (2) a faculty hiring freeze, then (3) the diversion of research and teaching money into the Battelle Report, then (4) the tuition surcharge, then (5) a building moratorium.  Most Iowans would be shocked to hear that the University of Iowa is being transformed into a private university by a faction of the Iowa Democratic Party.   The Governor has given his marching orders, though, and the Regents are marching. When a new President comes to the University of Iowa, he will take charge of a corporate-based privatization program that is well under way.

Jeff Cox

The Prairie Progressive
Summer 2006
The Prairie Progressive is available in genuine hard copy for $12 a year.  Box 1945, Iowa City IA  52244