YU News
State Schools v. ‘State-Related’ Schools and the Stimulu$
By Jennifer Pointer
Jul 2, 2009, 10:42

In an Inside Higher Ed report today entitled “Go Ask Arne,” Jack Stripling discusses the irony of schools and governors wanting to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to independence and funding:

When Gov. Ed Rendell decided Pennsylvania State University didn’t deserve federal stimulus dollars, the university’s president took his complaints to the man holding the purse strings.

In a June 29 letter, Graham Spanier urged U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to reject Rendell’s application for education-related stimulus funding, hoping this would “compel” the governor to share the dollars with Penn State. Rendell has argued that Penn State and three other “state related” institutions are not entitled to the money, because they “are not fully public universities.” Unlike Pennsylvania’s state-owned institutions, state-related universities are granted greater autonomy in exchange for receiving a smaller portion of state appropriations.

“If the Department approves this application as it is written, it gives governors in every other state the ability to pick and choose which public institutions they may support with federal dollars,” Spanier wrote.

“Penn State’s role as a public institution of higher education is clear in Pennsylvania statutory and case law. It is not in the Governor’s power to arbitrarily redefine the legal status of institutions simply because he does not exercise ‘absolute control’ over them.”

Penn State officials take issue with Rendell’s assertion that the university is only quasi-public, but there’s some irony to the institution’s position. It has previously used its “state related” status as justification for not operating like a public institution in many ways…Continue reading on Inside Higher Ed >>