In a moment of amazingly uncharacteristic candor for a U system official, Dr. Mike Rao, the new chancellor at MSU-Northern, recently told an Associated Press reporter that Northern is carrying at least a half a million dollar operating debt and that most of the debt was a carryover from the previous administration. Rao also mentioned to the reporter that he was disappointed that he had not been informed by anyone of the debt before agreeing to accept his chancellor's duties.
This story was reported in the--appropriately enough--Friday the (Nov.) 13th edition of The Great Falls Tribune and, in another uncharacteristic moment--in this instance for Montana's print media--The Trib followed up the story the next day with a brief unsigned editorial that offered a thumbs down under the headline "Chancellor blindsided with debt." Welcome as they are, the story and the editorial do not go far enough.
In the case of the editorial it's not clear who is being assigned the thumbs down. Accompanying the editorial is a photo of Rao, but it's clear that he's not the paper's target: "(Rao) has a right to be frustrated. It's hard to develop a realistic budget and plan for improvements when unknown debts are lurking." But Rao's is the only name mentioned in the brief piece. So who exactly is to blame for the debt? Who has earned this unequivocal thumbs down?
The editorial goes on to note that the school enrollment has declined since 1994 by about 150 full-time students and that this has cost Northern approximately $600,000 in state money. True enough. But human agency has caused the decline and human agency has perpetuated the debt and I would think that the question the taxpayers of Montana really want answered is: Who are the people who have taken Northern to where it is today?
Since the answer to this question is as plain as the nose on my face, I'm only too happy to give it. First, there is Rao's predecessor, a man who received a two to one vote of No Confidence from Northern's faculty seven years ago and who operated in what can only be called very mysterious ways, under that cloud for the rest of his stay at the school. The vote stemmed from the ex-chancellor's vindictive and wrongheaded attempt to illegally fire a popular and productive member of the nursing faculty. She was finally re-instated, but Northern's economic situation seemed to spiral out of control from there.
For example, Northern was the first U system institution to set up shop in the population rich Great Falls area and its extension campus in that city had been up and running before the ex-chancellor's arrival in Havre. Under his regime, the Great Falls campus almost immediately lost 60 of the 200 full-time students it had attracted and that departure number has now grown to probably 110. The ex-chancellor had attempted to replace live teaching with costly distance learning equipment, but the students weren't buying.
Other U system operations like the Vo-Tech began to siphon away students from Northern's extension campus. In an incredible development, the Vo-Tech paid to have its students take basic skills classes at The University of Great Falls, a private institution. Some students were literally driving past Northern's extension campus to get to UGF and complete their freshman core courses.
The ex-chancellor's bungling of distance learning did not stop at the Great Falls campus. The expensive distance learning system known as NorthNet was abused and misused at the main campus as well. Student complaints--from those on and off campus--are legion. Instructors were illegally videotaped. System failures resulted in repeated class cancellations. There were attempts to underpay faculty. There were disruptions at the remote sites. Unprepared students were welcomed to classes they had no interest in or aptitude for. There are persistent rumors that much of the initial expensive fiberoptic cable needed to run the system had been irreparably damaged at a cost estimated in the tens of thousands. The ex-chancellor seemed to have a secret NorthNet agenda, one that called for the replacement of faculty rather than the supplementing of faculty. NorthNet was up and running at great cost to deliver curriculum to one or two off campus students and 30 to 40 on campus. Those on campus students were in cramped rooms often dealing with faulty equipment and exasperated teachers. The decision to introduce NorthNet to the campus was made, as were all decisions during his rule, unilaterally by the ex-chancellor. The initial start up was cheap, but the maintenance costs are astronomical and, until relatively recently, there was never a clear plan for the system's implementation and continuation.
The slipshod adaptation and use of distance learning is only one of many stupefying bungles that occurred during the dogmatic reign of Rao's predecessor. Space limitations dictate that I merely give passing mention of budget drainers like the number of costly lawsuits filed by illegally dismissed personnel that Northern lost during the ham fisted term of Rao's predecessor, the gross mismanagement that almost cost the school its nursing program, (a program necessary to the school's survival), and, in the ex-chancellor's last year, the advent, despite considerable faculty protest, of intercollegiate football to the tune of $280,000. This latter was allegedly largely paid for by a $250,000 grant to the university's foundation which, by the way, is a clandestinely run operation that has--depending upon whom you disbelieve least-- somewhere between $35,000 and $7 million in its coffers and whose director answers--as vaguely as he wants to--solely to the foundation's board even though most of his staff is paid by Northern.
But Northern's woes are not only the fault of its previous chancellor. Ever since that No Confidence vote, a small but vocal minority of staff and faculty were speaking out around the state about the ex-chancellor's mean-spiritedness and mismanagement to anyone who would listen (or, as you'll see, not listen). Legislators, Board of Regents members, the Commissioner of Higher Education, the administration at MSU-Bozeman (Northern's parent institution) were buttonholed at meetings, peppered with e-mails and faxes, letters were written, local media were contacted.
This protest went on for seven years as Rao's predecessor continued to drive the school to the brink of collapse. Any employee of the school who questioned the former chancellor was punished, often with a pink slip. Student concerns were routinely dismissed. Despite mounting evidence that Northern was becoming a sinkhole of debt due to faulty, despotic management, no U system higher-up intervened until it became glaringly obvious that the ineptitude of Rao's predecessor had almost cost the school the aforementioned crucial nursing program, a program that had been very well-regarded in the state and now, thanks to the dauntless efforts of that faculty member whom the ex-chancellor had tried to fire way back when, has regained its esteem. How ironic, but also what a typical occurrence during the ex-chancellor's paternalistic, misguided, retrogressive, Draconian style of management.
So there are enough thumbs down for everyone. The ex-chancellor is certainly richly deserving. But he can now do Northern no good. On the other hand, the Commissioner of Higher Education, the Regents, and the administration at MSU-Bozeman are equally deserving of a very assertive thumbs down for the continued denial and repression of the story of Northern's burgeoning debt. However, unlike Rao's long gone predecessor, any of these agencies can do something about said debt if they are so inclined.
MSU-Bozeman has a budget surplus somewhere between $500,000 and $900,000. The state has a $40 million budget surplus and has just been rewarded over $832 million (Great Falls Tribune, 11/21/98, p.1) in hush money from tobacco companies. Governor Racicot has asked the legislature for $30 million (Great Falls Tribune, 11/18/98, p. 1) in additional funds for the U system. Somewhere among all those millions someone should feel obligated to generate bail out money for Northern.
Mike Rao didn't cause Northern's problem (in fact, he seems like a good choice to get the school headed in the right direction once its circumstances are on a more even keel), but neither did any of the hardworking employees or students at the school. This debt did not accrue because of non-teaching teachers, lazy staffers, do-nothing workers, shiftless students. It happened because of autocratic mismanagement that was allowed to metastasize when the legislature, the Regents, the Commissioner of Higher Education and the administration of Bozeman chose to ignore clear and mounting evidence that something was rotten in the town of Havre. Given the state's currently overflowing coffers, the school can be easily rescued, at least in a material sense. Now is the time for one or more of the people responsible for overseeing the school's plight to perform that rescue. Why should loyal and productive state employees lose their jobs because the man at the helm was, at best, faking it and their cries of protest were summarily dismissed by his titular supervisors?
But even if the state does the right thing and bails out Northern financially, there is no telling how long it will take to even make a dent in the anger and fear that now often paralyze the campus. This anger and this fear prevail thanks largely to Rao's predecessor and his head-in-the-sand bosses. Financial debts of any size seem negligible when one is faced with a sad karmic debt of this magnitude. Nonetheless, coughing up the cash would be a clear and proper step in the right direction, not just for Northern's beleaguered employees and students, but for all of Montana's citizens.