DITCHWALK

Take a look at this face:

That’s the face of J. Bruce Harreld, the current president of the University of Iowa. That’s also the face of crony corruption in higher education — not only in the state of Iowa, but across the United States.  [ Read more ]

This post is part of an extended Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.

The Iowa Board of Regents oversees three public institutions of higher learning: the University of Iowa (UI), Iowa State University (ISU), and the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Like most colleges and universities in the U.S, each of the state schools is abetted in fundraising by a closely affiliated but legally separate foundation, which is solely dedicated to generating and managing charitable donations for its school. Importantly, these foundations are not simply separate non-profits which are owned and controlled by the state, but are entirely separate legal entities. Confusion about that status, however, is actively perpetuated by the schools and foundations because doing so aids in generating revenue, and inherently promoted by varying degrees of conspicuous administrative overlap between each symbiotic pair.  [ Read more ]

This post is part of an extended Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.

A little over eleven years ago, in March of 2008, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) — which is owned by the state and administered by the Iowa Board of Regents — commenced a feasibility study for constructing and operating a new, dedicated children’s hospital. That study was in turn the result of decades of conversation about moving the various pediatric units into a single facility, thus building out UIHC’s infrastructure in a market already heavily influenced by the university’s massive, sprawling medical complex. Despite the fact that much of the campus would soon be inundated with catastrophic flooding, by 2011 that study had turned into an active and accelerated plan, with an initial budget of $270M. (Project timeline here.)  [ Read more ]

This post is part of an extended Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.

While naming physical structures after human beings is a time-honored tradition in many cultures around the world, in no context is that tradition more lampooned and maligned than in higher education in the United States. For every alumnus whose life work materially changed society for the better — and was thus deserving of genuine recognition — there are a hundred who merely lined their pockets with the fruits of their degrees, if not also contributed to society’s ills in the process. Because colleges and universities are always looking for ready sources of revenue, however, any alumnus with a bulging bank account can, with the right crony connections and the right number of zeroes, buy the naming rights to a prominent edifice on campus, thus purchasing outright the reverence that others earned with their good works.  [ Read more ]

This post is part of an extended Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.

Rank and file state employees in Iowa are constrained in their financial decision making by their job descriptions and limited budgetary authority, and that includes the seventeen staffers at the Iowa Board of Regents, and thousands of similar employees at the regent schools. If those government workers spend state funds without a valid justification, they may end up being terminated, if not also having a criminal referral filed by the Iowa State Auditor. (Recent examples from the University of Northern Iowa here and here, and from the University of Iowa and UI Athletics here and here.)  [ Read more ]

This post is part of an extended Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.

In the two previous posts it was noted that over the past four years the Iowa Board of Regents has raised tuition out of scale to any legislative funding cuts, and that student-subsidized economic development is one explanation for how that new unrestricted revenue is being spent. Unfortunately, because the regents routinely obscure and even scrub tuition totals from their public reports, and because the board is only obligated to report on economic development which is directly funded by the legislature, we have no way of knowing whether the regents are taking money from students and spending it on economic development that the state desires, but does not want to fund with taxpayer revenue. What we can say is that any new economic development programs at the state universities are almost certainly being funded by tuition revenue, because everyone agrees that there is simply no other substantial source of revenue to draw from.  [ Read more ]

This post is part of an extended Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.

In the previous post it was noted that although the Iowa Board of Regents produces copious and detailed reports on all manner of operations and performance, it also goes out of its way to obscure and omit the amount of revenue generated from tuition and fees. While routinely positioning itself as a victim of ‘state’ funding cuts — even as the regents are themselves part of state government — the end result is that the state of Iowa, through the Board of Regents, has raised a massive amount of new revenue over the past four years. What we still do not know is how the board is spending all of that unrestricted revenue, and how much is being spent.  [ Read more ]

Dear State Auditor Sand,

For the past three and a half years — following the Iowa Board of Regents’ appointment of J. Bruce Harreld as president of the University of Iowa in September of 2015 — I have been paying close attention to the state’s public universities and to the board. While there is a good deal of information available from those institutions, and considerable reporting by local and state press about those institutions, over time I have encountered a number of questions that can only be answered by looking at the financial books of the schools, or of the regents as a whole. Because I have no ability to compel such access as a citizen, and as Iowa’s state auditor you obviously do, I am writing in that regard.  [ Read more ]

A new threaded post on this topic can be found here. For previous posts about the Harreld hire, click the tag below.

06/28/19 — The Face of Crony Corruption in Higher Education.

06/07/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Affiliated Foundations.

05/30/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and the UI Children’s Hospital.

05/23/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Naming Rights.

05/17/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Fiduciary Duty.

05/10/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and the AAU.

05/03/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Economic Development.

04/26/16 — An Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.

—————^^—– Published as Regular Indexed Posts —–^^—————

04/13/19 — J. Bruce Harreld and the 03/12/19 Daily Iowan Interview: Part 2. Updated 04/15/19.

04/10/19 — J. Bruce Harreld and the 03/12/19 Daily Iowan Interview: Part 1.

04/09/19 — In advance of next week’s meetings of the Iowa Board of Regents, two very sharp reports from the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller. First, the regents are postponing their tuition hikes for next year, despite having imposed perennial hikes precisely to provide “predictable” tuition. (The idea of “predictable” tuition was in fact a deliberate perversion by the board’s president, Mike Richards, who substituted that concern for very real concerns from students and families that tuition hikes were announced at the last minute — as will again be the case this year.) Second, Miller provides critical context for the University of Iowa’s request to once again explode the budget for the new children’s hospital, after years of downplaying the school’s exposure to additional charges in the tens of millions of dollars.

03/30/19 — J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Insurgency at the University of Iowa is a Massive Grift — Part 5.

03/26/19 — J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Insurgency at the University of Iowa is a Massive Grift — Part 4.

03/06/19 — J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Insurgency at the University of Iowa is a Massive Grift — Part 3.

02/25/19 — J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Insurgency at the University of Iowa is a Massive Grift — Part 2.

02/19/19 — Harreld the Ogre Backs Down on Closing the UI Labor Center.

02/17/19 — J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Insurgency at the University of Iowa is a Massive Grift — Part 1.

A new threaded post on this topic can be found here. For previous posts about the Harreld hire, click the tag below.

02/06/19 — If you haven’t read this story, it’s an exceedingly bad look for the University of Iowa. The best-case scenario is that it describes jaw-dropping incompetence. The worst-case scenario is that J. Bruce Harreld was moved to assist a Chinese student in maintaining his progress toward a degree.  (See posts below on 01/02/19 and 01/05/19 for more.)

01/18/19 — The 2020 Task Force Phase II Final Report.

01/05/19 — J. Bruce Harreld, China, and America’s National Security Interests.

01/02/19 — Fresh off Harreld’s obligatory appearance with the UI Football team in Tampa — not far from his multi-million-dollar vacation home in Jacksonville — I was not expecting additional media availabilities until the start of the academic year. Silly me. Here’s Harreld giving an exceedingly conciliatory interview to Chinese media. Related concerns here.

12/29/18 — In Which J. Bruce Harreld Continues His Petty, Bratty, Vindictive Persecution of the UI Labor Center.

12/16/18 — A Slate of Updates About J. Bruce Harreld and the University of Iowa.

12/02/18 — The Secret to J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Success at the University of Iowa.

11/28/18 — The Daily Iowan’s Marissa Payne reported today on the deep political and financial connections of members of the Iowa Board of Regents, including particularly President Michael Richards. It is a straightforward accounting of how beholden Richards and a majority of the board are to the Republican party.

11/12/18 — Predictably, J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Insurgency Begins With a Lie.

11/03/18 — The Iowa Board of Regents and the 2018 Elections.

10/24/18 — J. Bruce Harreld at Three Years — Part 4: Stabbing the Faculty in the Back.

10/14/18 — J. Bruce Harreld at Three Years — Part 3: Putting Women at Risk of Sexual Abuse.

10/03/18 — J. Bruce Harreld at Three Years — Part 2: Iowa’s U.S. News Ranking Implosion.

09/24/18 — J. Bruce Harreld at Three Years — Part 1: The Children’s Hospital Construction Debacle. Updated 09/28/18.

09/05/18 — Harreld the Ogre Slashes and Burns the UI Labor Center — Part 6: Fighting the Good Fight.

08/26/18 — Harreld the Ogre Slashes and Burns the UI Labor Center — Part 5: The Leadership Lie.

08/19/18 — Harreld the Ogre Slashes and Burns the UI Labor Center — Part 4: The Motive Lie.

08/12/18 — Harreld the Ogre Slashes and Burns the UI Labor Center — Part 3: The Process Lie.

08/07/18 — Harreld the Ogre Slashes and Burns the UI Labor Center — Part 2: The Mission Lie.

08/02/18 — Harreld the Ogre Slashes and Burns the UI Labor Center — Part 1: The Funding Lie.