From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Colleges Urged to Produce Better Information on How They Spend Money   
   By Andrea Fuller and Melissa Korn, Aug. 15, 2023, WSJ   
   A number of university trustees, faculty and staff members are calling for   
   more transparent financial data that they can access about their schools in   
   the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation that highlighted large   
   spending increases at 50 state    
   flagship universities.   
      
   Some contacted the Journal, after it published its article Thursday, asking   
   for information that would give them a better understanding of spending   
   patterns at their schools. That’s in part because some universities provide   
   only minimal information to    
   those with oversight, for instance handing trustees pie charts or high-level   
   summaries rather than detailed budgets, as the Journal’s investigation found.   
      
   “The fault lies with governing boards,” said Marty Kotis, a trustee at the   
   University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2021 who previously served   
   on the oversight board for the UNC system. When he first started seeking   
   financial information    
   about the system a number of years ago, he said, he struck out with university   
   administrators. Instead, he had to track the figures down with the state   
   auditor.   
      
   “They’d just never been asked this before,” he said, adding that without   
   that pressure, universities’ finance offices are less likely to produce   
   detailed, digestible reports.    
      
   “Prior boards were merely ceremonial. If you’ve got a board that never   
   asks about financials and just wants to talk about winning the next game or   
   when the cocktail party is, they are not going to get a lot done,” he said.   
      
   Kotis urged boards to step up their oversight and take their fiduciary   
   responsibilities seriously and said school finance offices need to scrutinize   
   budgets more closely. Specifically, he said, they should review how they   
   handle funds left over at the    
   end of the year, as some policies encourage departments to spend every last   
   dollar—whether or not they need to—for fear of not getting that same   
   allocation the following year.    
      
   In response to the Journal’s reporting, some schools defended their spending   
   habits.   
      
   Justin Schwartz, the provost at Pennsylvania State University, one of the   
   schools highlighted in the Journal’s article, released a statement on the   
   school’s website Thursday saying Penn State has “curbed tuition increases   
   aggressively.” Moreover,    
   state funding, which he said the school uses to reduce in-state tuition, has   
   dropped dramatically over the past 20 years.    
      
   “We strive to provide students with the highest quality education as   
   cost-effectively as possible,” Schwartz said.    
      
   The Journal reported that Penn State’s University Park campus was the most   
   expensive state flagship in the 2021-22 school year for in-state freshmen,   
   even after accounting for scholarships. Those students paid an average $26,747   
   in tuition, fees, room    
   and board, according to Education Department data. The Journal also found that   
   the school received far more new tuition revenue than it lost in state support   
   over the past two decades.    
      
   The requests by university officials for information were also a result of the   
   poor quality controls for financial data that the Education Department   
   requires colleges to report. The Journal found that survey data published in a   
   public data tool called    
   Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS, were riddled with   
   errors and inconsistencies, making them impossible to analyze with certainty.   
      
   For example the University of Mississippi reported in the government system   
   that it spent $2.2 billion in 2019, down from $3.8 billion the prior year; its   
   audits contain vastly different figures and show that spending actually grew.   
   A spokesman for the    
   University of Mississippi said that the IPEDS data was wrong and that the   
   school would update it as soon as possible.   
      
   The Journal’s investigation turned to audited financial reports, available   
   for some years on school websites. It was also supplemented with additional   
   data requested directly from the schools as well as from other public sources,   
   such as state auditors.   
      
   The Education Dept says it is aware of the problem and taking steps to improve   
   the financial data collection.    
      
   A spokeswoman from the National Center for Education Statistics told the   
   Journal earlier this summer that the Education Department unit is developing a   
   working group to help improve its federal data collection efforts. She said   
   that NCES relies on self-   
   reported data and doesn’t have the authority to collect audited financial   
   statements for comparison. NCES said Friday the group expects to begin meeting   
   later this year.   
      
   Robert Kelchen, an education professor at the University of Tennessee at   
   Knoxville who has advised the Education Department on how to improve its data   
   collection efforts, said even small tweaks to its annual survey can take   
   years. Because the reporting    
   places a burden on colleges, changes must be cleared by the Office of   
   Management and Budget, he said.    
      
   “The intent is to provide more useful, usable data,” Kelchen said   
   regarding the department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.   
   “Traditionally IPEDS has focused more on the colleges as stakeholders, but   
   as a piece like [the Journal’   
   s] shows, there is a lot of broad interest in better finance data.”   
      
   The Journal also found that some flagship campuses, such as the University of   
   Tennessee at Knoxville and the University of Colorado at Boulder, didn’t   
   create their own audited financial statements, which were published only at   
   the system level.    
      
   Mary Fischer, an accounting professor at the University of Texas at Tyler and   
   a former college finance officer, said that it comes down to a simple reason:   
   money. Colleges would have to pay more auditors.   
      
   “In some areas the only data you can get is at the system level, highly   
   aggregated and you simply can’t drill down to the information. I would like   
   to see any institution be responsible for posting their financial statement on   
   their webpage. State    
   law could make them do that,” she said.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-urged-to-produce-better-in   
   ormation-on-how-they-spend-money-8dc3b549   
      
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