Tribune file photo

Shrouded by fog, a woman walks across Francis Quadrangle on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.

JEFFERSON CITY - Rumblings from two powerful state senators about the need for more state control over Missouri’s public universities sent tremors through University Hall recently, but no one has determined whether there was any damage.

Gary Nodler Senate appropriations chairman ● Wants greater cooperation among universities. ● Charles Shields Senate president pro tem ● Says state higher education system is disorganized. ● Gary Forsee UM president ● Says creativity and initiative should not be stifled. ● Charles McClain Former higher education commissioner ● Says control of program growth is difficult.

Senate President Pro Tem Charles Shields, R-St. Joseph, and Appropriations Chairman Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, said the state Coordinating Board for Higher Education needed more authority over college operations. But it seems both Shields and Nodler were thinking out loud without having a blueprint to explain what additional powers were needed.

Although some believe Nodler and Shields were merely trying to start a dialogue, their statements generated more questions than answers and left some nervous University of Missouri officials perplexed. Nodler said he was later questioned by several public university presidents from around the state about what was up.

More information might emerge at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday when Commissioner of Higher Education Robert Stein hosts a telephone conference call with state leaders and university presidents. The call was organized at Nodler’s request "to clarify issues and clear the air in light of recent press reports concerning the views of legislative leaders on the structure, function and future direction of higher education in Missouri," Stein said.

Nodler, in an interview last week, said the consensus of the Senate Republican Caucus was that the coordinating board needed to be strengthened and that Missouri might look to higher education controls in Kentucky as a possible model.

"You want it stronger to give greater clarity to the voice of higher education," Nodler said. "We want music, not a cacophony." He added that one way to strengthen the coordinating board was to give it more control over money going to universities.

"Recently, the University of Missouri communicated directly to the congressional delegation in Washington its desire for federal funds," Nodler said. "It should have gone through the coordinating board, through state government. We have a state Department of Higher Education. It’s inappropriate for the University of Missouri to ignore it. The University of Missouri does operate under the Department of Higher Education, but they don’t always act like it."

UM System President Gary Forsee said a tremendous amount of coordination and collaboration was under way among four-year and two-year institutions. He pointed out that institutions cooperated on the development of a common budgeting system that took into account the similarities and differences in the costs of providing courses. Forsee plans to elaborate during an appearance Thursday at a state Senate seminar on higher education.

At the same time, Forsee said, there should be no ambiguity between coordination and governance.

"No one should get in the way of any university in bringing forth their unique ideas based on their mission," he said. "I would resist attempts to pre-empt our creativity and entrepreneurship. Creativity and initiative should not be stifled."

Forsee said when the university system recognized federal funds were available for an economic stimulus plan, it went after them and approached the federal delegation.

"We are not going to be pre-empted going after research dollars," Forsee said.

Public university requests for state appropriations are channeled through the coordinating board’s staff at the higher education department before they are sent to the governor and the General Assembly. They can make changes based on follow-up efforts by individual universities.

The legislature controls the lump sum each university receives but does not direct how the money is spent. Local boards - in UM’s case, the Board of Curators - decide that.

Although Nodler said he had seen more cooperation among universities, "we haven’t achieved nirvana yet."

"What I am looking for is a culture change where the university system understands that they fare better when they are respected more, and they are respected more and understood more where they seem to be collected and united," Nodler said.

Bo Fraser, chairman of the Board of Curators, said he was concerned about the senators’ statements but didn’t know enough about them to comment.

"We need to know more about what it is that they have in mind," Fraser said. "People interested in the university, I know, have a great deal of concern about that and are very interested in what they exactly have in mind."

Fraser said he hoped to learn more from the telephone conference.

LIMITED OVERSIGHT

In his opening speech to the Senate, Shields said Missouri’s system of higher education was disorganized. He spoke from his experience as a member and former chairman of the Midwest Higher Education Compact, a 12-state organization that attempts to advance higher education through cooperation and resource-sharing.

"I’ve looked at other structures in 12 states, and this is not unique to Missouri, but it is a fairly disorganized system," Shields said in an interview. "We have a statutorily weak coordinating board."

Rather than looking at the current economic crisis facing the state, Shields said, he wants to take the long view and use his final two years in office to build a vision for the entire continuum of education, from pre-kindergarten to the postgraduate level. He said there was a direct correlation between the economic prosperity of a state and the quality of its educational systems.

Shields said it was his long-term goal to bring Missouri from ranking 30th to the top 10 in terms of numbers of people graduating from college. He acknowledged UM officials might be nervous about the recent statements.

"I probably want to reassure them what we are trying to do is look at the end game of how do you get more people into higher education and through the system in our state," Shields said.

In 2007, the legislature and then-Gov. Matt Blunt increased the purse-string control powers of the coordinating board by giving it the authority to withhold a fraction of a university’s state appropriation if an institution disregards board policy. The board could also withhold 5 percent of a university’s budget if it increases tuition in excess of the rate of inflation.

These changes have rankled those defenders of UM’s turf, who are quick to point out control of the four-campus system is rooted in Missouri’s Constitution establishing MU as the state university. The nine-member Board of Curators is responsible for governing the system under the constitution.

"Right now, the coordinating board is limited in its ability to oversee certainly the UM system," Shields said. "We are wondering if there are ways to strengthen the coordinating board to look at problems from all the universities to eliminate duplication and increase areas of specialization."

As to what he expects for this legislative session, Shields said, "I think there may be some attempt to strengthen the coordinating board, but in terms of proposing a constitutional amendment to change the UM System, I’d be surprised. I know that’s the fear. I don’t see that happening."

Experts in higher education governance say there is a wide range of ways in which states supervise their public colleges. Some state boards have the power to hire and fire institution presidents. Kansas has a state board of regents that is in charge of all higher education institutions. In Michigan, it’s like a free-for-all.

The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, which Nodler suggested as a model, sets the agenda for all education that takes place in the state after high school. It presents the universities’ budgets to the Legislature and sets tuition rates. It defines and approves all academic programs at public institutions. It has a larger budget and a bigger staff than Missouri’s coordinating board.

The Missouri board has the power to approve new programs before public institutions can implement them. It also acts as the final arbitrator in disputes between institutions.

Stein, the Missouri commissioner of higher education, said the issue of governance and the coordinating board’s powers come up "periodically every four or five years."

"We work with the tools we have," Stein said. "Quite frankly, I believe it’s all about leadership. Some years, our governing structure works well, and in other years, it’s more challenged."

Coordinating board Chairwoman Kathryn Swan was attending a funeral and unavailable for comment for this story. Lowell Kruse, a board member, said the panel had not taken up the issue of governance. As CEO of Heartland Health System in St. Joseph, Kruse is Shields’ boss because Shields is Heartland’s marketing and information officer.

Not speaking for the board, Kruse said he believed Nodler and Shields were trying to get a dialogue going. "We are all searching for answers," he said.

DUPLICATE PROGRAMS

Larry Isaak, president of the Midwest Higher Education Compact, said the states that have been successful in redesigning their higher education programs did so after the statewide development of a public agenda that laid out a long-term vision for where everyone wanted the system to be.

"You really engage a conversation about where the state is going as well as how you utilize the higher education enterprise to meet those priorities of where the state wants to go," Isaak said. In Kentucky, the goals were set by state policy leaders who adopted the Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997.

In Missouri, the coordinating board’s powers have evolved gradually, but the legislature has always maintained some control over how public universities are established and governed. Lawmakers, especially those with a university in their district, want the power. Attempts at a comprehensive overhaul have sputtered.

The forerunner of the board was the Missouri Commission on Higher Education, established in the early 1960s to create a master plan. For the state to receive federal funds, the commission was needed to develop a strategy for accommodating growing student enrollment from the baby boom generation.

When state government was reorganized in the 1970s, the Missouri coordinating board was created in a constitutional amendment to balance the interests of public four-year universities and public two-year colleges. But the legislature still played its own role, creating three new state colleges in 1979: Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, Missouri Southern State University in Joplin and Missouri Western in St. Joseph.

Regional universities and the UM System are often in competition for scarce state dollars. Institutional tugs-of-war are played out in the legislature, despite whatever powers the coordinating board might have.

For example, in 1998 the coordinating board adopted its own policy for how university names should be changed, but the policy was watered down in 2002. The agency sat on the sidelines while the legislature and Gov. Matt Blunt, over UM’s objections, changed the name of Southwest Missouri State University to Missouri State University in 2005.

Over the years, there have been periodic attempts, without meaningful effect, to upgrade the state’s higher education programs, increase funding and bring greater efficiency to the system. In 1990 a Missouri Business and Education Partnership Commission recommended more power for the coordinating board and a boost in funding for higher education. In 1991, voters overwhelmingly defeated Proposition B, a tax increase that would have increased revenue for state colleges and universities by $190 million.

It was at about this time there was a debate over whether to add an engineering program at UM-St. Louis. Now engineering programs exists at all four UM campuses.

In 2005, Blunt’s Government Review Commission recommended the governor have the power to directly appoint the state commissioner of higher education. The coordinating board members now appoint the commissioner. The change, which was not implemented, would have given the governor more direct control over policy.

Charles McClain, formerly of Columbia, now the interim president of Fairmont State University in West Virginia, has spent more than 40 years in higher education, including seven years as president of Jefferson Community College in Hillsboro, 19 years as president of Northeast Missouri State (now Truman State) University in Kirksville and six years as Missouri commissioner of higher education. McClain witnessed all of these struggles.

"A lot of people have said the coordinating board should have some significant authority," McClain said in an interview. "I don’t know of any way to give significantly more meaningful authority short of saying they have the right to hire and fire the presidents of the institutions, and that would take a constitutional amendment. You can play around the edges, but it will not be meaningful in terms of trying to control from Jefferson City unless there is a constitutional amendment to change the framework by the will of the people."

McClain predicted that it would not happen.

"It’s very hard to control the growth of programs under any governance system," McClain said, citing UM’s engineering programs as an example.

"If it’s a challenge for UM to coordinate program development at four campuses and Extension, you can imagine the challenge of doing it on a statewide basis without a governmental change," McClain said.

Janese Heavin of the Tribune’s staff contributed to this story.

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