Audit: NDSU, UND inappropriately spent student fees
July 24, 2012 at 3:42 pm in Grand Forks Herald
The state auditor’s office released a report Tuesday that found both NDSU and UND had “inappropriately” spent some of the millions of dollars they take in each year through student fees. Continue Reading
This is proof that fees have been used as an additional income stream for universities, not as a device to recover actual costs. Once again, it’s the students who get the shaft. This is going to be used against the university system in an atmosphere that is increasingly hostile to higher education; in this case, they deserve whatever fallout there is from their policies.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Some years ago, universities across the country adopted a business model of operations. Education became a pretext for the two real priorities: generating revenue and becoming a sports entertainment center. Administrators became executives. Presidents make 6- and 7-figure salaries, live in million-dollar houses, travel by private jet, and never set foot in a classroom. Faculty are Walmart door greeters. Students are customers. Whether any learning actually takes place is of little concern to the people actually running the institutions.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I had a vision. In it the people that don’t agree with you all worked at these colleges. It seemed real to me. I think it was.
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“I had a vision.”
Maybe you can get together with Joan of Arc and compare notes.
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Maybe.
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A government entity misusing funds?
Wow. I am shocked.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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The whole higher-education system in this state needs to be overhauled.
Anyone involved in the misuse of this money needs to be fired and to lose their professional licenses (if applicable.)
After that, they should be prosecuted (hopefully with prison time attached, because probation or ankle-bracelets is NOT enough)
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Nice of them to provide a link to the full report as well….
http://www.nd.gov/auditor/reports.htm
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Thanks for the link. To the untrained eye, there’s lots of discussion material in the report.
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Misrepresentation or misuse of funds is wrong. But as Greg stated, should this surprise anyone. I silently thought to myself when so many were looking at going Division 1 through rose colored glasses that people are not realizing that there are some negatives and not just a higher class of sports entertainment involved here. These are some of the negatives.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Obviously, few of you have ever been audited. One of the reasons for audits is to discover and adjust mistakes. $30 or $40,000 in transactions out of millions of receipts is incidental, not fraud. Talk of firing and prison terms over tiny amounts of funds that can simply be re-routed to the correct fund is just odd. Visit with some of the people in accounting at NDSU or UND. They’re some of the most honest, loyal people on the planet. Gene D might be right about schools being too much about business and numbers, but no one is in trouble for these minor mistakes. Still, a $1 million fund balance might deserve some criticism, if, say the annual budget is $1 million.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Well said.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Would the same approach apply the WSI spending and Sandy Blunt? Using $$ to reward employees (not for personal gain) and still prosecuted?
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There’s no suggestion in this audit that employees were unjustly enriched. This was all public use activity. The two examples are as different as night and day. It’s actually kind of elementary, yet 15 of you agree with Schurkey’s 11:29 rant. How inappropriate.
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well said Alvin. I also don’t think the entire system needs an overhaul. Maybe just the big two? We haven’t seen audit reports from VCSU, NDSCS, Mayville, etc.. Maybe the are doing things appropriately. I am not willing to lump all 11 institutions into one category. Unfortunately that is what most do when the big 2 get into trouble.
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The new Grand Pooba of the university system wants to double the size of the staff in an effort to increase accountability. On the surface this makes sense.
What I want to know is how are these new employees going to prove their worth? In other words: how do I know I am getting my money’s worth? What is the measurable accountability trail?
If the new guy can answer that, I will support him. If not, he will be lucky to get 5 out of the 30 he is asking for
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I’m supposing the board will create the job descriptions and determine the effectiveness of any change in personnel. I doubt that they need our support.
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@flyingnurse
“If the new guy can answer that, I will support him. If not, he will be lucky to get 5 out of the 30 he is asking for”
As if your opinion has any bearing on whether the new Grand Pooba gets the money he is requesting or not!
You really are full of yourself.
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Next will be lawsuit against the state that tax payers will have to foot the bill for. There needs to be some heads rolling for this!
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I’m glad I’m not working for you and Schurkey. The clerical errors discovered here are just slightly more important than breaking the lead in your mechanical pencil.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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UND and NDSU have been around for several years. They should know by now how to operate according to the law.
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The Institutions of Higher Education have been around for years. They’ve learned how to unethically spend a lot of money in a way that’s not technically illegal. Sometimes they screw up, and it may actually be illegal.
Point being, they’re not trying to do what’s right. They’re not really trying to act according to the law. They’re trying to NOT GET CAUGHT AND CAUSE AN OUTRAGE more often than they consider “acceptable”.
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I wonder if some of you have ever been privy to a major corporation or university’s audit. For universities this size, the numbers of misappropriation or misuse we are talking about are a proverbial drop in the bucket. This would be akin to the IRS reading Joe Sixpack the riot act over a $50 write off. You know why there are no charges from the auditor, because none are warranted.
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The thing is, an audit doesn’t look at everything, you take a snapshot to get an idea. Pretty clearly there is money being used for things that really don’t fit under the fee that is charged. Therefore, there is a problem. So you should take the necessary steps to change it. The universities don’t want to admit there is a problem because they are using this as their whatever cash.
The way things are supposed to be is the legislature controls spending and the SBHE controls policy. The way it actually functions is the Presidents do whatever they want and fudge everything to make it their way. If tuition is limited, they just raise fees. If they aren’t given money to do what they want, they take it from fees or run to the Foundations and do some sort of accounting to make it on the books look like they didn’t disobey.
Then when they are called on things they either hide things in a mess of books, tell you of course they should be able to do that and sic their friends on the offender, or as a last resort, they say it was a mistake and trust them it won’t happen again.
Then they jump in their jet and leave town laughing about those dummies who think they are in charge.
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Several have mentioned scale as an excuse. It is not.
When a department takes student funds explicitly stated for X and the clique running the department spends it on Y, they deserve severe reprimand immediately even if it is only for donuts, because it is wrong.
For example let me ask how many no show/seldom show, paid full time, workers are an OK number if a University is employing 10,000. The answer is zero, it is not any other number.
The same thing goes for student fees, technology fees, parking fees, and all fees that are supposed to be dedicated to certain purposes. In all these situations any ‘re-purposing’ is another word for abuse, if not fraud.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Eleven grand to fly to India? I checked Priceline and a ticket for next week was only $4700. I don’t care if they bought it with “student fees”, regular tuition, or tax dollars…. that is an inefficient expendature.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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From the report: “Do to fee moneys being commingled with other revenue sources, there is lack of accountability regarding the use of moneys collected by the students.”
There’s the problem. The money should be seperate from the general fund for each department. It will be fixed. It was in the report.
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It used to really annoy me when I lived in Grand Forks that people coming into town, be they at the university or the air force base, would chuckle and find it humorous at the complaining and not seeing the big picture attitude of some (not all) residents of the area. However, now I see they may have had a point.
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Please do not misunderstand, there are many things I miss about Grand Forks. I miss being able to leave my house or car unlocked with no worries. I miss my neighbor being there to help me at a moment’s notice, and I reciprocated. What I do not miss is the big brother system of the authorities (some rules apply to some, some rules do not apply to others), the weather, and the belief that anything big or new is bad, bad, bad.
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