President’s Corner – April 2013 President’s Corner – April 2013
Transparency. Does that word bring to mind "scotch" tape, squeaky clean windows, or perhaps my recurring nightmare "the Emperor’s New Clothes"? You know where I’m going here – faculty and staff on campus want transparency in executive decisions and actions, constituents want it from politicians and stakeholders are beginning to demand it from higher education.
In our digital world, transparency is spreading like a computer virus. Check-out the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Adjunct Project (http://adjunct.chronicle.com/). Across the country, adjunct faculty are able to report pay levels, benefits and working conditions for their non-full time faculty status. This means that your adjunct faculty and your prospective adjunct faculty are able to look-up and size-up, what may be considered, the value placed on adjunct faculty at your college. What are they seeing? How do they interpret what they see? Feeling underdressed, my Emperor?
Please tell me you’ve looked up your college on the Whitehouse College Affordability and Transparency Center’s "College Scorecard" . This project shows every college’s and university’s "score" on costs, graduation rates, loan default rates, median borrowing and, soon, former students’ employment levels. While the data is being debated, picked apart and criticized for imperfections and over simplification, higher education consumers are viewing the information and drawing their own conclusions. What conclusions might they be drawing about your college? Feeling like your suit is missing more than a few garments, my Emperor?
In Texas, a nearly unnoticed piece of legislation from 2011 known as SB5 requires every college and university that receives state funds to post, on the internet, payments made from state funds or student tuition. The Texas State Comptroller has a voluntary program that far exceeds posting of payments funded by state or student money. Called the Texas Comptroller Leadership Circle of Texas Transparency, many school districts, counties, cities and special districts have elected to open their records to the public to provide clear, consistent pictures of spending and to share information in a user-friendly format which lets taxpayers easily drill down for more information. In April of 2013, a Texas community college joined the "gold" level of the Comptroller’s Leadership Circle, posting their check registers, budget, audited financial statements, investment reports, property tax information, and contact information for their elected board – all on one page that can be reached with three "clicks" from their webpage’s front page. My thinking here - when an organization has nothing to hide, when a college’s financial story is one that inspires confidence, when we shine a spotlight on the finely sculpted physique of fiduciary responsibility, transparency is liberating. Even with those "new clothes", you’re looking mighty fine, my Emperor. Who else will join this sartorial movement of "exposure"? Who else wears "the Emperor’s New Clothes"?
...Edward M. DesPlas, CCBO President
Note: In case you’re not familiar with "The Emperor’s New Clothes" by Hans Christian Anderson, you may read it by clicking here.