At City College
of San Francisco (CCSF), the unthinkable happened in July. It was issued a
death sentence by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges;
its accreditation will terminate on July 31, 2014. Despite the shock cast as a
lightning strike out of the blue, CCSF has been on notice since 2006 that its
academic and financial management mandated substantive reform. Despite the chronic
nature of CCSF’s problems, only 2 of 14 concerns identified by the accrediting
body following an evaluation in 2012 were addressed to the satisfaction of the
accreditors.
Accreditation is the ventilator and feeding tube for private
and public postsecondary institutions because it provides access to federal
student loans, grants, and state and local tax dollars. Without accreditation—brain-dead
or not—public financial nourishment terminates.
CCSF faculty, staff, and their unions blame dark political forces
in the accrediting world and demonize its messengers. CCSF’s overarching survival
tactic is to enroll as many students as possible in the tenuous belief that the
accrediting association wouldn’t dare harm students in their efforts to compel
CCSF to operate with even minimal levels of financial rectitude.
The accrediting commission is a straw man in this controversy.
The real story is the report issued in September 2012 by the Fiscal Crisis and
Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) endorsed by CCSF’s Board of Trustees to identify
their academic management and fiscal problems and recommend the needed steps to
solve them. Since the early 1990s, FCMAT has assisted some 850 K-14 California
educational institutions. The team needed only five days in late July and early
August 2012 at CCSF to generate a report that documented systemic management
and fiscal dysfunction even at the most rudimentary levels.
The scope of the review was pure fiscal vanilla: “Determine
how CCSF projects and allocates its fiscal resources and determine if … budget
assumptions and methods were reasonable.” This is hardly the stuff of a political
vendetta as has been suggested by CCSF faculty leaders. Among the findings were
the following:
·
In 2013-14, CCSF’s projected annual deficit is slightly
over $13 million. In $2014-15, it will grow to over $16 million.
·
CCSF employs twice as many full-time faculty per 1000
full-time equivalent (FTE) students and incurs expenses $17-18 million higher
than comparison districts.
·
CCSF’S retiree health benefit obligation indicates a
present value debt of $235 million. The estimated annual cost is $6.9 million
in 2011-2012, but increases to $13 million annually by 2020-21. CCSF only
budgets $500,000 per year to cover this cost, and reserves no funds to cover
this liability.
·
92 percent of CCSF’s budget funds employee salaries and
benefits; the remaining 8 percent must cover utilities, supplies, insurance,
maintenance agreements, and capital outlay.
·
CCSF has not implemented lay-offs, closed any sites, or
eliminated any programs in the past five years, even with significant decreases
in funding.
·
Regular faculty salaries increased 25 percent between
2005-2012. During the same period of time, the number of full-time equivalent
students decreased, and revenues increased by only 10%.
Public educational institutions were created to serve the
public, but at CCSF, the public is serving it with virtually no accountability.
At its July meeting, the CCSF Board of Trustees appointed a “Special Trustee”
to guide them in their efforts to prevent the loss of accreditation.
CCSF is not alone in taking the Californians who pay its
salaries and wages for granted. In the rarified climes of the University of
California System, an annual budget goal is to ensure that 20 percent of all
students are from out-of-state. The U.C. system’s new chancellor allowed that
it is only 18 percent at present, but that the 20 percent goal will be attained
under his watch. This is the policy of a public higher education system whose
charter is to serve Californians.
Faculty and staff at CCSF adorn themselves with their
fidelity to their students. In the summer of 2012, rather than finding ways to
trim operating costs, CCSF eliminated summer school. Fidelity so exemplified
provides an unambiguous picture of where CCSF’s values truly rest.
John D. Murphy was a founder of the University of Phoenix and served as Senior Vice President for Institutional Affairs and Academic Vice President. He was a voting shareholder member of the board and executive committee member of its publicly-traded holding company, Apollo Group, Inc. Murphy also founded and directed a community mental health program while an adjunct professor at San Jose State University. In 2007, he wrote and produced the award-winning film Valley of the Hearts Delight, a dramatic retelling of the notorious San Jose Brooke Hart kidnapping and subsequent lynching of two men accused of that crime. His new book, "Mission Forsaken: The University of Phoenix Affair with Wall Street" was published in July 2013.
The claim here that CCSF faculty received a 25% salary increase over the past few years is not correct, IN FACT, there have been no wage increases since 2007 …. only salary CUTS from faculty 2007 salaries (5-10%) In addition - there's no mention here of the $54 million cuts from the state during a four year period. To read more visit http://www.aft2121.org/
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Murphy,
ReplyDeleteTwo points:
One, it's an inaccurate characterization that all CCSF faculty, staff, and administration are involved in the protests against the legitimacy of the the ACJCC. There are many, many of us who have already worked very hard to meet the standards and we recognize the work needs to be done regardless of the questions we may have about the process.
Two, as a founder, perhaps you would care to comment on University of Phoenix's own accreditation problems, which include graduation and retention rates, unlike CCSF, which has some of the best retention, persistence and graduation rates of any CA community college.
A cursory search quickly shows multiple reports of the threat the University of Phoenix also faces to its accreditation, as well as the unsuccessful attempt of the university to switch from the Higher Learning Commission to the ACJCC. That sounds a bit like a challenge to the legitimacy of the accreditation commission U of A must answer to.
Just as CCSF needs to meet the standards like any other community college. So do online, for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix.
Good lord: what a crude hatchet job. If anyone has a vested interest in the disappearance of a public Community College it would be someone from the University of Phoenix.
ReplyDeleteThe FCMAT report on CCSF is anything but "fiscal vanilla." It is rife with factual errors and hyperbole, many of them meticulously documented here: http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=11594
I look forward to following your blog, but something tells me that this will be its one and only post.
...uh, these are self-serving lies designed to polish the investment portfolio of Phoenix U.
ReplyDeleteMention University of Phoenix to some in traditional postsecondary education and the collective amygdala’s ignite in anger; similar to some of the responses to my recent blog about the public travails of the City College of San Francisco (CCSF). Never mind that I resigned 16 years ago and just completed a highly critical book of what transpired following my departure: Mission Forsaken—The University of Phoenix Affair with Wall Street.
ReplyDeleteI remain profiled; just like some trustees, faculty, staff, and students CCSF feel they are being profiled because CCSF accreditation will terminate—unless an appeal is successful—on July 31, 2014.
A founder of the University of Phoenix, I know full well what it feels like to be under siege. We committed the cardinal sin of integrating higher education with the lives of the students rather than students integrating their lives with higher education, and never been nor are likely to ever be forgiven. We will never receive any credit for our cutting-edge educational innovations that are now part of many public and private postsecondary institutions.
The degree of hostility towards anyone who dares comment on the institution-threatening problems at CCSF places the fragility and futility of some of its defenders’ responses in uneasy relief: ad hominem attacks, guilt by association, and haughty dismissal of facts. The characterization of the findings of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team that spent a week examining CCSF in 2012 as a “hatchet job” is just one example.
The one thing I never did during my 20-plus years at the University of Phoenix was to vilify any detractor, and that is why we survived despite the pathological efforts of some hidebound academics to remove us from the face of higher education and the earth.
The point man in governmental and public affairs, my operative rule was to respond to every falsehood or distortion of fact literally. In virtually every instance, the documentation of facts rendered irrational and prejudiced characterizations null and void. No personalization, no guilt by association, and no claims of prejudice. It was an exceedingly dangerous strategy because its efficacy would only manifest over time. University of Phoenix detractors, because of their often-prominent positions at high profile public and private institutions, were usually accorded automatic credibility. If we attacked any detractor—no matter how prejudiced or deluded—by impugning their motives or character, we would have been long gone.
I wrote my blog because CCSF is in imminent danger of being closed despite its efforts to enroll as many students as possible in the arguable hope that the prospect of harming innocent students will avoid the inevitable. Despite the virulence I unleashed, I happen to care about the place. The people of San Francisco have long benefited from CCSF, and absolutely must be able to rely on it in the future.
The only way CCSF will survive is to drop the high dudgeon from the playbook and take the hard steps required to save the institution everyone claims to love. Even if CCSF delays the termination of its accreditation next July, unless the underlying elements of its chronic academic and fiscal management problems are substantively addressed, the termination of accreditation remains extant. The bogeyman is not going away.