Extravagance without Accountability

Harrisburg, Pa.—Of all the myths that the higher education establishment has perpetuated, perhaps none is more pervasive, or contributes as much to the preservation of the status quo, as the notion that the blame for tuition hikes lay somewhere other than the central offices of universities. On March 20th students here rallied at the capitol to get the Pennsylvania assembly to increase funding of Penn State campuses and, so the idealistic youth hope, lower tuition.

Eleven days later, the Harrisburg Patriot reported that “The former executive assistant for Judy Hample, chancellor of the 14 state-owned universities, pleaded guilty to stealing more than a half-million dollars worth of jewelry and handbags from Hample’s state-provided home.”

“She was hired by Hample on March 25, 2002, and fired from the $72,148-a-year position on July 14 last year after her arrest,” Patriot staff writer Pete Shellem reported. The protesting students at the Capitol would have been in high school contemplating college at the time that Hample hired Karen A. Madden.

“Hample said she became suspicious because Madden, who had a key to the home in the 2900 block of North Front Street, said she was concerned when she saw Hample’s car there,” Shellem reported. “The car was parked in the garage, Hample said.”

“As Hample, 58, prepared to leave on her trip later that evening, she couldn’t find one of her favorite watches, a $2,500 Gold Invicta with a Pave diamond face.” By the way, $2,500 is about the average cost for a semester in a four-year public university, Front Street is about the best address in the city and Hample, according to Shellem, makes $327,718 a year.

“It is true that state spending [on higher education] has fallen,” Ohio University economist Richard Vedder said at a forum in Washington, D. C., earlier last month. “Maybe the political processes in the states are doing the right thing.” Dr. Vedder is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he spoke on March 13.

It should be noted that, even as states are putting the brakes on college subsidies, the federal government is moving to increase its support. Margaret Spellings, the U. S. Secretary of Education, has moved to raise the amount the feds confer in Pell grants and the new Democratic Congress is trying to increase the funding of rural colleges by about a half a billion dollars in earmarks.

“The ‘country clubbing’ of the university is all being financed with this,” Dr. Vedder said. “Who knows where the money goes—athletic programs, climbing walls?”

“You can’t have a university without a climbing wall anymore.” Even some of Dr. Vedder’s more liberal colleagues acknowledged the odd trend of university finances growing with tuition hikes.

“There is a difference between the amount charged and what is being thrown back to students,” Ron Ehrenberg of Cornell noted in the AEI forum. “At the same time that tuition has soared, so have endowments.”

“Cornell has a $4 billion endowment.” Dr. Ehrenberg is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.