Quern responds to Regents letter

By Brian Slupski

Reverberations from a Board of Regents letter continue.

The Regents, NIU’s governing board, fired off a letter to Arthur Quern, Illinois Board of Higher Education chairman, after its last meeting.

The letter, sent by Regents Chairman Brewster Parker, outlined the Regents’ position on Quern’s Priorities, Quality and Productivity initiative.

PQP is designed to streamline public higher education through the elimination of academic programs and to make better use of available resources. Critics have said the process does not allow input from universities, butchers university mission statements and evaluates programs based on outdated data.

Quern’s Sept. 25 letter to Parker states, “I don’t know what your definition of process is, but it seems to me there could not have been a more orderly, open and focused process.

“If process is allowed to be defined as how do we avoid making choices and taking actions, then you can rightly accuse me of abandoning that definition of process. To talk about 12 months of work as hurried is a reflection of a sense of time foreign to me,” the letter states.

In an interview Thursday, Parker said even though the process has taken place over 12 months, the last month has been hurried.

He said it wasn’t until last month that the IBHE came up with definite suggestions and demands for the universities.

Parker added that the IBHE staff didn’t wait to receive university reports and suggestions concerning program cuts before finalizing suggestions to the IBHE for its Oct. 6 meeting.

The letter goes on to criticize the Regents, stating, “I am disappointed that (the Regents) have not taken the time over the past 12 months to challenge the existing mission statements and probe the priorities and quality of programs being offered under those mission statements.

“If your letter is a reflection of the Board of Regents attitude about PQP, I am far better able to understand the concern which exists over maintaining the system of systems,” Quern wrote.

These statements may be a reference to Gov. Jim Edgar’s Task Force on Higher Education’s Report on Governance.

The task force has two chairmen, Quern and Lt. Governor Bob Kustra.

The task force made several suggestions about the governing system of Illinois higher education and about the IBHE.

Concerning the IBHE, the report suggested the following recommendations should be considered and studied further:

‘ Give the IBHE the ability to leverage more control over the spiraling costs of higher education, perhaps through added authority to approve tuition levels.

‘ Allow the IBHE to provide leadership in the process of presidential searches with the authority for selection remaining with the individual governing boards.

‘Strengthen the role of the IBHE in the review and approval of new programs of instruction but more importantly, add the authority to eliminate those not academically or economically justified.

Presently, the IBHE is the coordinating board of the governing boards in the state. Only the governing boards have direct authority over the universities and can eliminate a program from a university.

The recommendations, if adopted, would effectively give the IBHE a larger role, one more related to governance.