Response

to the Vice President, Academic Affairs Report on the Academic Reallocation in the College of Education and Public Service by The Department of Public Policy Studies January 2012

 Executive Summary The proposed closure of the Department of Public Policy Studies would diminish Saint Louis University as an urban institution with a distinctly Jesuit mission of serving the region and its people. The University can better establish its national and international presence by embracing its historical mission of thinking globally and acting locally. We believe no academic programs on campus better articulate that mission than those in CEPS and especially the Department of Public Policy Studies. We offer a reassessment of the Vice Presidents measure of the departments cost and benefit to the University based on more complete and valid information than that presented in the Report. We also provide two additional measures of the departments cost-effectiveness. No matter which criteria are used, the numbers show the departments margins more than justify its historic mission. We do agree that there is great value in the silo-free intellectual concept that the Vice President would have us achieve. Indeed, few if any programs at the University already embrace it more than the Department of Public Policy Studies. It has been supporting a broader vision of scholarship and training successfully for a quarter century. Its programs provide a wide range of educational services to other academic units at the University and to the communities and people of the region that it has historically served. Moreover, the graduate degrees offered by the department are in fields with strong future job potential. Regarding job prospects for city managers (MPA), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs042.htm) reports the following: Although job prospects vary by State and region, overall prospects are expected to be favorable. In addition to job openings from employment growth, many opportunities will be created by workers who retire from the industry. Prospects with managerial experience will have better opportunities as a growing number of managers are expected to retire in the coming decade. Currently, some States and localities are being forced to reduce payrolls; however, as State and local budgets improve, new opportunities should arise. Of particular interest are the job opportunities in public administration for women and people of color. According to an article on the International City Managers Association Web Site (http://icma.org): Executive recruiters report that shifts in the city manager profession are creating opportunities across the board, regardless of gender or ethnicity, and greater awareness and sensitivity have significantly increased the presence of women and minorities in upper management positions. Since this is a population that our MPA program has typically served, we are again in a good position to take advantage of this potential job growth. Similar growth prospects exist for Urban Planning. According to U.S. News and World Report:

An expanding population has created the need for additional transportation systems, affordable housing, and schools in many parts of the country. The urban and regional planning field is expected to grow 19 percent, from 38,400 jobs in 2008 to 45,700 jobs by 2018, according to the Labor Department. Most of the new jobs will be with state and local governments (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos057.htm). As the only graduate Urban Planning degree in Missouri, Saint Louis University is poised to take advantage of this growing and popular field. Finally, all indications are that the impending retirement of large numbers of baby boomers from the academy will provide robust job opportunities for PhDs entering the academic job market over the next few years. Mindful of the Universitys mission to serve an even broader universe, however, we shall offer suggestions of how best to use the Departments resources to help it grow and realize its commitment to the Universitys Jesuit mission of using our knowledge to serve and improve the lives of others. The members of the faculty are not oblivious to the need for their program or any program to be reviewed. Regular review and discussion of programs only serves to improve the function and outcomes that academics welcome. Regular, fair, and accurate data can help to improve programing and academic excellence. We also believe that our academic programs can be improved. We make the following recommendations pursuant to both goals. First, the recommendation to close the department is not warranted and should be summarily withdrawn.

Second, we embrace the legitimate need to serve the University by expanding our graduate programs and making them more available and desirable to other units across the University. Third, we propose to expand the focus of the Departments Graduate Programs by increasing collaboration with the Masters in Sustainability. Fourth, we suggest that sufficient resources be provided to allow the Stupp GIS lab to work effectively as a lab and research center. Fifth, increase the departments undergraduate course offerings. Sixth, we also propose to end the M.A. degree in Urban Affairs and several small graduate programs that we share with other departments on campus. There is not enough interest across campus to sustain them. Seventh, we propose an extensive internal review of the budgets for the last five years to determine other areas where costs can be cut and revenues enhanced. This review can be conducted in collaboration with the Colleges business manager. 3

 Introduction This document is a formal response to the Office of the Vice President, as requested in the Academic Reallocation in the College of Education and Public Service. That report recommends the termination of the Department of Public Policy Studies. This unit offers primarily graduate education in Public Policy, Public Administration, City and Regional Planning, and Urban Affairs. These programs have a long history at Saint Louis University and were created to address the numerous problems facing urban areas, especially those in the Saint Louis metropolitan region. The primary markets for these graduate programs include many of the regions chief administrators and public officials in city and regional government, urban and regional planning, law enforcement, higher education, health care, and the non-profit sector. Additionally, numerous individuals graduating from the program currently hold academic appointments in major universities including the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of San Diego, the University of Missouri, and Southern Illinois University. The mission of the Department is articulated well by Derek Bok (1975), former President of Harvard University, when he said that in light of key urban problems, . . . universities have a major opportunity and responsibility to set about the task of training corps of able people to occupy influential position in public life. This mission is a core value of Jesuit life and embodied in the principles of the four academic programs offered in the Department. The Departments mission, furthermore, embodies several characteristics the Vice Presidents Committee on the Features of Jesuit Education identifies as key: Mastery of cutting-edge disciplinary knowledge situated within a broader appreciation of the many dimensions of knowledge. The Department is interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary and has been since its creation 25 years ago. In addition, students are often required to take course work in law, political science, economics, psychology and other departments in the university. Enduring engagement with the world and an educated desire to seek justice. According to the committees report, Students are prepared to plunge into the heart of the world and to understand the complex factors underlying injustices at the local, national and international levels. The Department has a legacy of working with the community to help solve community problems through coursework, internships, capstone projects, faculty research and grants. Respect for difference and diversity. Students learn through their coursework and assisting on research projects to be cognizant of the impact of social and economic institutions on societys most vulnerable people (SLU, 2011, p. 4-5). The first part of the document will address the last two arguments advanced in the Vice Presidents recommendation to terminate the Department of Public Policy Studies: the development of metrics to assess the productivity of faculty and departments; and the idea that the Department of Public Policy Studies falls woefully short of the mark in terms of its teaching, scholarship, and grant production. A number of methodological and philosophical flaws will be identified in the report. Two additional methods of calculating the Departments profitability or margin will then be proposed. The second part of our response will focus on the first and second arguments made in the Vice Presidents report: the need to cull non-productive departments and programs; and the Universitys 4

desire to join the ranks of the nations top-50 universities.1 Central to this part of the rebuttal will be an alternative package of recommendations to the Board of Trustees. These recommendations are more consistent with the Universitys Jesuit mission and desire to improve their rankings among major research institutions. The Need for Further Methodological and Philosophical Analysis Our response to the data and metrics in the Vice Presidents document proceeds on two fronts: a general assessment of their validity and accuracy as presented by a special committee of faculty from the College of Education and Public Service; and their application to the Department of Public Policy in particular. A detailed review of the metrics and data appearing in the Vice President report is built around four major points: I. The metrics and methodology do not measure everything that is important.2 2. The data used are incomplete or inaccurate.3 3. Performance expectations are not spelled out in advance or are unduly burdensome4. 4. No statistical rationale for index scales used in the Report was offered.5 These problems with the data and metrics of the original report have a serious and decidedly negative impact on the assessment of the Department of Public Policy Studies. According to the Report, the Department produced an inadequate score in credit hour generation over a five-year period (2007- 2011). An examination of data provided by the Office of Institutional Research (OIR), however, reveals numerous inconsistencies in the report and serious flaws in its analysis. Specifically, the Report has a great many missing numbers like enrollments by non-PPS students, only counts students pursuing PPS degrees (and does not include dual degree students), and groups enrollments in a way as to leave the impression of overall and serious decline in enrollments for all programs. The bias built into the analysis begins with the data used and is masked by the metrics which mistakenly conveys the impression that a very valid and scientific assessment was made. In fact, our reanalysis shows that our programs are highly cost effective. Problem 1: The Number of FTE Faculty in the Department of Public Policy Studies There are 6.5 FTE faculty in the Department of Public Policy Studies in AY2011-2012. Three are tenured Full Professors (i.e., Cummings, Gilsinan, and Monti). Monti joined the faculty in 2009. Gilsinan, as the E. Desmond Lee Professor, teaches a reduced load as per agreement with the Des Lee Foundation so that he can work half time in the community. The community projects are supported by his E. Desmond Lee Professorship while his salary is covered by the University as per their agreement. Two are tenured Associate Professors (i.e., Coffin and Cropf). One is an untenured Assistant Professor (i.e., Ganning). One is a tenured Instructor (i.e., Tomey). Tomey teaches full time but has limited research expectations attached to his position. The teaching faculty is routinely supplemented by several adjuncts and had another full-time instructor for two years during the period in question. These persons have no research expectations attached to their position. We have lost faculty during this period. Several had only teaching responsibilities. Others had both teaching and research obligations. One non-tenured Associate Professor (i.e., Domahidy) retired at the start of AY2011-2012. She, too, had only a half-time appointment during five of the years in question. Two additional staff members who had some teaching responsibilities but no research expectations 5

have been released in the last couple of years. One tenured Full Professor (i.e., Swanstrom) left to join the faculty at UMSL. An untenured Assistant Professor did not have his contract renewed. It takes some work to reconstruct the actual number of research and/or teaching staff, but its not impossible and is important. In the present case, a careful accounting of the Departments staffing during the five years in question would have shown that it had the 9 faculty counted for the teaching staff only once, for the 2007-2008 academic year. It was substantially less than 9 for the rest of the period. The five-year average turns out to be 8.1 FTE. The 8 staff cited in the report for the purposes of accounting for the facultys research and grant getting activities is overstated even more. On average, the department had only 5.45 FTE staff with specific research obligations. What the data show is that the department never enjoyed the sustained services of 9 FTE tenure-track faculty alluded to in the Report when it came to the departments teaching activities, capstone (i.e., thesis) or dissertation supervision. Nor did it enjoy the services of 8 full-time research staff as was claimed in the Report. A larger number of FTEs divided into a smaller-than-accurate figure on enrollments shows a smaller student-to-faculty ratio. A larger number of FTEs divided into the same number of publications and grants conveys the impression that research faculty (as opposed to faculty whose only job was to teach) were producing fewer pieces of scholarship and fewer grant dollars per FTE. The effect of the over-counting in the report was substantial. All measures of teaching, research, and grant-getting productivity for PPS faculty were bound to make the department and its faculty members look substantially less productive than they were. We can only suppose that the performance of other units in CEPS was graded down inaccurately in much the same way. Problem 2: Failure to Credit Enrollments by non-PPS Students The Department routinely delivers graduate education classes to a wide variety of students besides those specializing in Public Policy Analysis. Graduate students who routinely consume the educational services delivered by the department include psychology, law, public health, sociology, political science, and a variety of students from other departments. In addition, the graduate programs offered through the Department of Public Policy Studies all entail the collaboration of graduate faculty from all those programs just identified. This enables all programs to achieve a high degree of cost effectiveness in the delivery of educational programs. No consideration was given in the Report to the impact the proposed closures would have on all these collaborating departments. Further, the proposed closure would contradict the Vice Presidents explicit interest in promoting programs that cut across academic silos. Not only did the report neglect these cost effective measures currently in place but it also appears to have inaccurately represented the facts of the programs under analysis. The administration claims in the report that enrollment has remained low over the past five years: 109 students in 2007, and 112, 111, 96, and 91 in subsequent years. Data acquired from the Universitys OIR reveal a much different departmental. Enrollment data from the OIR show actual enrollments for majors alone over the five year period are: 294 graduate students and 22 undergraduates in 2007; 268 graduate students and 22 undergraduates in 2008; 219 graduate students and 23 undergraduate in 2009; 220 graduate students and 21 undergraduates in 2010; and, 198 graduate students and 33 undergraduates in 2011. 6

The accuracy of figures appearing in the analysis cant be verified. Reports issued by the Office of Institutional Research at different times (e.g., February 25, 2008 and September 25, 2008) do not have the same counts for any given category of student in the Public Policy Studies department. The numbers are off by at least a couple of persons in each category and are best thought of as a rough count rather than an accurate count. The same cautionary note applies to numbers we acquired from the OIR for the purpose of our reanalysis and rebuttal. Even with this in mind, the data under-represented actual graduate enrollments by 270% in 2007, 239% in 2008, 197% in 2009, 229% in 2010, and 218% in 2011. All subsequent renderings of those data in the metrics created by the Vice President mask these omissions and present a dramatically unfavorable and demonstrably inaccurate picture of the departments performance. It is likely that the same problems exist in the data and metrics presented for the other CEPS departments. The graph depicting the discrepancy between actual and reported data for graduate enrollments, as best we can reconstruct them, appear in Figure 1.

The analysis presented in the preliminary report do not reflect the fact that enrollment in many of the graduate courses in Public Policy draw a significant amount of enrollment from other graduate programs including political science, social work, public health, psychology, and sociology and, indeed, from other Universities including UMSL and Wash. U. Furthermore, enrollment figures in many courses in Public

Policy are reflected in the enrollment counts of two or more departments. Many departments distrust the enrollment figures produced by the OIR and insist that students enroll in Public Policy courses be counted through course numbers tallied through their department. These well-taken suspicions notwithstanding, departments deliberately participate in the delivery of not only curriculum but also dissertation supervision and masters theses preparation in nearly all the Public Policy graduate programs. Termination of the established degrees in Public Policy will have a major impact on the graduate degrees and programs offered through its several collaborating departments. All graduate degree programs in the Department of Public Policy are premised upon collaboration and mutual cooperation from other departments. This principle will be significantly undermined by the current recommendation to close four graduate programs. These observations gain further credence when we examine each program separately as we do below. Problem 3: Failure to Disaggregate PPS Enrollment Figures for its Constituent Programs Figure 2 shows the graduate enrollment data by separate programs. The data are presented according to the accurate figures provided by the OIR and not those appearing the Vice Presidents report. In order to be consistent with the Vice Presidents report, however, data are examined between 2007 and 2011.

Figure 2 shows that the Ph.D. consistently reveals the highest enrollment figures. The decline from a high of 116 in 2009 to 93 in 2011 are consistent with losses experienced in graduate programs across the country during this prolonged recession. Enrollments in public administration have remained fairly

stable from 49 students in 2007 to 46 in 2011. They dropped a bit in 2009 but showed a slight increase in the last two years. Meanwhile, enrollment in planning classes over the last five years has dropped consistently. Planning enrollment has dropped from a high of 73 students in 2007 to a low of 49 in 2011. Enrollments in the Urban Affairs MA have been modest for the last five years and appear to be declining (24 in 2007 to 9 in 2011). The enrollment figures for students enrolled in the GIS and the organizational studies curriculum have always been fairly small and also are declining noticeably (14 in 2007, 20 in 2008, 11 in 2009, 3 in 2010, and 3 in 2011). The important point to be drawn from this presentation is this. The data do not support the contention that overall enrollments are down in the departments graduate classes. The major omission in the report came from not counting the widespread draw of Public Policy classes from collaborating degree programs. A similar problem emerges with regard to the departments undergraduate enrollments. These, too, appear only to have included the number of majors, not the number of undergraduates who routinely take our classes. In the tables and analysis that follow, we have included all students that have taken classes in the Department of Public Policy Studies. The numbers reveal a much different picture of the facultys contribution to the Universitys teaching mission. Our analysis, nonetheless, does confirm the figures and conclusion of low enrollment in the urban affairs program and the GIS/organizational studies curriculum. Enrollment in the Ph.D., however, is quite stable over the five-year period. Enrollment has experienced a slight decrease among all graduate programs nationally during the recession, a fact that many college administrators have addressed over the past three years (June, A. W., September 22, 2011). While planning has experienced a slight decrease in enrollment over the period examined in the report, the MPA has remained fairly consistent. These trends are clearly revealed in Figure 2 and, as we already noted, are incompatible with the Vice Presidents wholesale characterization of enrollment deficiencies in all our programs. Problem 4: Rejection of Part-Time Students as a Critical Constituency of Saint Louis University Of particular concern are comments about the part-time students enrolled in the graduate degrees sponsored by the Department of Public Policy Studies. Rather than apologize for this mission, we embrace the principles embodied in the current configurations of degree programs. The degree programs currently under scrutiny were designed to serve as an incubator for the professional aspirations of the regions young and mid-career adults and as a testing ground for solutions to the areas economic, environmental, and social problems. These programs attract people from public, business, and non-profit arenas. Their graduates fill a myriad of public offices, administrative posts, teaching and research positions, and planning positions. They make a difference in urban regions all over the nation, not just here in St. Louis. Further, given the regions emphasis on stemming the brain drain caused by young people leaving the St. Louis area, our programs encourage both professional development in place and subsequently putting down roots in the region. We do not dispute the conclusion that it takes our student body longer to complete the degree. Nor do we disagree with the conclusion that the bulk of our students are part-time. We do take issue, however, with the implication that Saint Louis University is not interested in serving the professional communities that are committed to urban and community development, urban and regional planning, public administration, and the creation of sustainable communities. Indeed, the PPS department is a

primary unit in CEPS with a historic mission to promote sustainable communities, one of the four key values recognized in the Colleges future mission statement. We take issue as well with the implication that it takes too much time to produce a doctoral or masters student. We are well aware of the fact that it takes the older, professional student longer to complete degree requirements. At the same time, we do not compromise the quality of our degrees and the rigor of the training we offer to students who are half-time or less. We remain committed to making quality education programs available to older, established professionals in the region, and younger professionals pursuing these career objectives. We think these values are consistent with the Jesuit mission and refuse to compromise these objectives. The peculiar nature of the logic in the Report is fully revealed in the comments about the competitive Public Policy Masters degree offered at UMSL. They recommend closure because the state institution has a competing degree. Please note that the Public Policy degree at SLU is a doctoral program. An MA program at UMSL does not compete with a Ph.D. program at SLU. The only competitive doctoral program at UMSL is in political science. That program does not compete with any doctoral degrees at SLU; we do not offer a doctorate in political science. The Masters program at SLU is a Masters of Public Administration not Public Policy. Those two programs do not compete as they emphasize separate areas of study. Even if the programs did compete, it does not make administrative sense to recommend that one be closed. We believe that the educational programs offered at Saint Louis University have immense added educational value in the marketplace, as our 25-year record demonstrates. . Building on the narrower point about tuition dollars, the premium placed on undergraduate students on page 4 of the Vice Presidents report is accurate but misleading at the same time. The tuition paid by undergraduates for each credit hour in the current academic year exceeds $1,100. Graduate tuition at $970 per credit hour is slightly less. Undergraduate programs are more expensive and, hence, valuable to the University because students also take more classes over a shorter period of time. In assessing departmental teaching productivity, however, the report exaggerates this difference by weighting the metric in such a way as to over-count the dollars spent by undergraduates for their education and downgrading the significance of the dollars spent by graduate students. Major research institutions privilege their graduate programs and allocate tuition dollars accordingly because graduate programs bring more prestige to the institution and contribute to their national rankings. Only selective four-year colleges (Amherst, Colgate, Dartmouth, etc.) gain stature in national rankings by privileging their undergraduate programs and numbers. SLU is not in a position to compete for national rankings with high quality undergraduate institutions. Likewise, it will not be able to compete with major research institutions by eliminating its graduate and professional degrees. Institutions with selective graduate degree programs (e.g., Indiana University, University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, University of Texas, etc.) emphasize the production of well-trained graduates. They are rewarded by more tuition dollars rather than less. The professional value of the degrees their students earn are reflected in job placement and advancement. 10

Problem 5: Underestimating Faculty Research and Grant Productivity The professional productivity of the Department of Public Policy Studies is also grossly misrepresented in the Vice Presidents report. The five senior professors have authored numerous books, articles, and book chapters during their careers. Several of the books have won various awards and are routinely used among professors in public policy and urban affairs. In addition, the senior professors have generated significant grant funds; one professor alone has generated over $3.1 million dollars in grant funds during his career. In recent years, the junior professors have generated significant grant funds and produced numerous articles and book chapters. A fuller picture of faculty productivity emerges when three additional factors are considered. First, most academic departments count magazine articles and technical reports toward ones service to the unit, not as scholarly output as was done in the report. Second, the production of a book is equated with a magazine article, report, and journal article. Books have multiple chapters and take years to produce. Books are discounted in the metric. Magazine stories and technical reports to agencies are privileged even though they usually arent reviewed for publication by ones fellow scholars. Third, as our colleagues have noted, Activity Insight did not capture everything that was counted as scholarship. Some faculty didnt enter everything they had written that would have counted. The work of faculty who left before Activity Insight was launched was not counted. Also missing from the analysis is all the work that faculty have underway and submitted for publication. In the case of the Department of Public Policy Studies, at least two books are either being reviewed for publication or under contract. Research for a third book detailing among other things the role of Saint Louis University in helping to redevelop the City of St. Louis is underway. Chapters for an edited volume on the culture of entrepreneurship are being collected. Several articles have been submitted for publication. In short, the scholarly output of faculty in the Department with research obligations continues to grow even as its members teach their classes, oversee Capstone and dissertation projects, and apply for more grants. Problem 6: Misrepresentation of the Contribution to Tuition Revenues Perhaps most significant is the misrepresentation of the contribution of the Department of Public Policy to the generation of tuition revenues at Saint Louis University. While the report notes that the department has generated more grant revenues that any other unit in the college, the characterization of tuition revenues is inaccurate. Table 1 shows the estimates of actual enrollment from the OIR.

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 T B E 1 A L P S C re i Ho rs P d t u

2 7 00 U der r du n g a ate M j a or No -M j n a ors 74 3 68 4 42

2 08 0 1 7 0 3 8 1 4 5 2

2 9 00 13 2 27 1 40 3

2 010 89 3 43 4 32

2 1 01 8 6 33 2 41 8

G dua ra te M j a ors No -M j n a ors

9 91 1 26 1 7 11

1 29 3 1 9 2 1 58 4

1 2 06 84 1 6 14

8 22 1 80 1 002

78 1 14 4 92 5

As has already been demonstrated, these enrollment figures are much greater than those presented in the Vice Presidents report. For analytical purposes, the enrollment data have been presented separately for graduate and undergraduate students. By applying the Universitys metric for graduate and undergraduate students, it is possible to calculate the revenue produced by the Department of Public Policy Studies. Table 2 shows the tuition dollars earned by the Department of Public Policy Studies over the five-year period. The calculations were based upon the variable tuition rates charged for the several years included in the analysis. Tuition rates have steadily increased over the five-year period. Currently, graduate students are charged $970 per credit hour and undergraduate students are charged approximately $1116 per credit hour. In 2007, tuition rates for both graduate and undergraduate students were less than currently charged.

The table shows that tuition revenues have increased somewhat among the undergraduate and slightly decreased among the graduate student population. The spike in graduate tuition dollars in the 2008- 2009 and 2009-2010 academic years corresponds to shifts in the American economy. The drop in graduate tuition dollars appears to be associated with decreases in enrollments in that program. While we expect our graduate tuition dollars to rebound, the shifting balance between graduate and undergraduate tuition revenues supports our proposal to upgrade and expand our undergraduate curriculum. In general, the total tuition revenue production is nearly the same in 2011 as it was in 2007. Overall, the Department of Public Policy Studies generated approximately $1,363,738 in tuition revenues during the 12

current academic year. In 2007, it generated approximately $1,363,323 in tuition revenues. Tuition revenue production has remained flat, but has done so during an especially trying economic period. Nevertheless, as we shall see below, the department has been producing very cost efficient programs. The other major source of revenues for the department came from external grants and contracts. During the five years under analysis, the department generated $75,784 in 2007, $105,114 in 2008, $240,383 in 2009, $118,838 in 2010, and $394,512 in 2011. Table 3 shows the revenue produced from tuition plus the revenues generated through the acquisition of grants and contract research. Total revenues produced are displayed next to total expenses for the Department of Public Policy Studies. The total expenses for the department include all personnel costs, secretarial services, as well as supplies and expenses. As has already been explained, personnel costs have been reduced in recent years with retirements and reallocations.

Also shown in Table 3 are calculations of return on the departments investment (ROI), profit margins, and operating margins, which are the Vice Presidents preferred measure of profitability. ROI is based on the gain of an investment minus the cost of that investment divided by the cost of the investment. Profit margin is based on the net income earned divided by the revenue produced. Operating margin is calculated by dividing the units operating income (costs) by its revenues. While it is not easy to apply these accounting terms to higher education, we think they are instructive. The revenue earned by the Department of Public Policy ranged from a low of $548,833 in 2007 to a high of $804,191 in 2011. The standard calculation of ROI ranged from 62% in 2007 to a high of 84% in 2011. The calculations of profit margins ranged from a low of 38% in 2007 to a high of 46% in 2011. The departments operating margins were never less than 50%, the unrealistically high bar set by the Vice President in the Report. By any business standard these are high figures. Few Fortune 500 corporations make a 50% profit in one year much less every year. Any private sector firm would be very enthused about the generation of the departments performance figures. Table 4 shows the revenue analysis without the grant dollars appearing in the previous table.

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 The identical formula was used to calculate ROI and profit margins. The figures for both ROI and profit margin are somewhat lower since grant dollars were deducted from revenues; expenses are identical to those presented in Table 3. While ROI and profit margin are obviously lower than those presented in Table 3, the figures remain very positive and are inconsistent with those appearing in the Vice Presidents analysis. The departments operating margin is actually higher when only tuition dollars are counted as revenues. Based on these figures alone, the recommendation to close the department is without foundation. We already exceed the proposed margins by a substantial amount. Even in their current configuration our programs are highly cost efficient. The Vice President claims in his report that all metrics were based on structured discussions with the faculty and that all metrics were based on faculty feedback. This is not true. CEPS faculty have no idea how the metrics were derived in his Report; nor do we have any idea about how his analysis was conducted. He states that his analysis is based upon the operating margins of a department and that a margin of 50% constitutes a scale score of 1. The methodology is not conventional or transparent. We believe that standard procedures such as return on investment and profit margin are reasonable terms to be applied to performance analysis. While we believe the application of operating margin analysis alone is problematic when applied to higher education, we actually do better on it than the other two metrics when tuition revenues alone are considered. Policy Recommendations Based on our analysis of his report, we propose an alternative set of policy recommendations. Recommendation 1: Withdraw the decision to close the Department of Public Policy Studies. Data available to the Vice President did not warrant such a recommendation. Our more thorough analysis of more complete and accurate data confirms that the proposal to close the Department of Public Policy Studies is without merit. The department is highly productive and cost efficient. The Vice President obviously recognized the value of our programs when he initiated discussions between the program on Sustainability and the Department looking to unite them under his office in

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2010. The intellectual contribution of the Departments programs to the University remains strong, its programs a lot more attractive than the Report suggests. Recommendation 2: Expand the focus of the Departments doctoral program. The University gains prestige from its graduate and professional programs. Universities do not enhance their national stature by eliminating graduate programs. The Department would like to have an opportunity to explore new partnerships on campus and off campus that would enhance its enrollments and research funding. It had been in discussion with universities in China, Jordan, Thailand, Korea, and Italy before the decision to close it was made; currently, we enroll doctoral students from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. We think these discussions can make good progress in the coming year. But we need time to bring these discussions to fruition. The doctoral degree program is already attended by students coming from several other units on campus including Business, Engineering, History, Law, Political Science, Public Health, and Sociology. It can be opened up further to other departments. Recommendation 3: Expand the Focus of the Departments Graduate Programs by Increasing Collaboration with the Masters in Sustainability. We already noted that the Vice President was keen on the idea to merge the programs under him last year. The Department has qualified staff to teach many of its courses and a mission on behalf of sustainable communities that has been endorsed by the College. Indeed, it is a primary unit currently in the College with the goal of building sustainable communities. Recommendation 4: Increase the effectiveness of the Stupp GIS lab. Additional resources would help us enhance the services it provides to other units in the University and to the larger region. The success of the lab figures prominently in our ongoing and successful efforts to build a consortium of regional research institutions and programs in urban policy analysis, planning, and public administration. Recommendation 5: Increase the Departments undergraduate program. The University makes more money on every undergraduate credit hour that is taken. Undergraduate students are also more profitable because they take less time to move through the Universitys academic program than graduate students do. Inasmuch as the University produces many more undergraduate students every year than it does graduate students, it is fair to say that the Universitys undergraduate programs in effect subsidize its graduate programs. Of course, the same can be said of every university. Universities by their very definition value and subsidize their graduate degree programs because these programs are the ones that increase their status among their competitors. Select liberal arts colleges move up the rankings by providing a high- quality undergraduate education. Institutions like the University that have limited graduate offerings outside of the medical and law schools and school of public health can move up the rankings by offering a hybridized model. This 15

would be one that better integrates a portion of its undergraduate population with its graduate programs. We already do something like this by allowing especially talented and accomplished undergraduates into some of our lower-level graduate classes. So-called piggy back classes that allow more than a few such undergraduates do not work well for either student population. A much more effective model would resemble what our colleagues in education and social work implement. They provide undergraduate students with professional training and research opportunities. The Department of Public Policy Studies could do more of this kind of training by providing more undergraduates a taste of what it means to be a professional planner, public administrator, and policy expert through classes dedicated to them. They would also learn how the knowledge they are acquiring in the main department can be applied in ways that enhance the Universitys Jesuit mission. Recommendation 6: End the Urban Affairs Masters Program The Masters of Urban Affairs program has historical relevance for the department. It was the first academic program created in the Center for Urban Studies founded by Dr. George D. Wendel in 1968. However, with the subsequent creation of the Urban Planning and Real Estate Development program, the market for Urban Affairs masters students has largely dried up. As a result, it is time to close the Masters of Urban Affairs program and reallocate its resources to more profitable uses within the department. This would include an exploration of on-line offerings in Planning and Public Administration. Recommendation 7: Examine ways to streamline costs and enhance revenues Some possibilities in the area of cost cutting involve reducing our use of adjunct professors, reducing operating costs through cost sharing with other departments and other opportunities to be identified through discussions with the College Business Manager. Revenue enhancements are possible through investigating international programs. These might be achieved through a reallocation of existing resources and minimal additional resources. Conclusion This response to the Academic Reallocation in the College of Education and Public Service report (Report) submitted by the Office of the Vice President of Academic Affairs to the faculty of the College of Education and Public Service (CEPS) has been organized around four key themes or problems raised in the Report: 1. the need to review older degree programs in light of the addition of new programs in recent years; 2. the desire for the University to be ranked among the top 50 universities in the country; 3. the importance of developing metrics to assess the effectiveness and contribution of degree programs to the University; and 4. the alleged failure of Department of Public Policy Studies to measure up to the standards implied in these metrics and, hence, the need to close the department at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year. 16

The desire to submit departments and programs to intermittent reviews is valid and fair on its face and requires no further discussion. The larger institutional context and manner in which the review is conducted does inasmuch as the closure of an academic program can have serious consequences to the Universitys other programs and historical mission. For both reasons, the Department of Public Policy Studies uses this opportunity to explain and justify its contributions to the University. It does so in the knowledge that other academic programs across the University will soon receive the same scrutiny to which our department has been subjected using the same metrics and values embedded in the Vice Presidents Report. The desire of the University and indeed of any college or university to be viewed more favorably by its alumni, present and future students, major stakeholders, and the larger community is equally valid and compelling. The interest of the University to expand its focus and mission to include new international markets is understandable, both in terms of attracting students to its programs and claiming a presence among other universities that have been doing so for decades. However commendable or realistic it may be for the University to increase its stature to the point that it will be viewed as one of the top 50 national universities, under no circumstances would that goal be advanced by the termination of graduate programs in public policy, public administration, and urban planning or by diluting their quality. It erodes the value of a graduate degree and diminishes the status of the institution that awards it. The desire to develop a set of metrics that can be applied across different programs and departments is understandable and achievable in a general way. No one questions the standard practice of assessing a faculty member or department in terms of their teaching, research, and service. The metrics used for analysis of academic units in the College of Education and Public Service, however, are not designed to reveal comprehensively any of the departments contributions. For example, there is no metric for service as it is conventionally understood. This is a significant omission given the mission of service as implied by the name of the overall Unit. The Department of Public Policy Studies continues to make a valuable contribution to the University and region for a quarter century. Its academic programs are well attended and highly regarded nationally. It produces a healthy profit or margin for the University, and it is poised to move into the international arena with its graduate offerings. The kinds of scholarship pursued by its faculty both funded and unfunded play to both the Universitys commitment to basic and applied research. By any reasonable metric, the Department should not be closed. It can make a better contribution to the University by marketing its doctoral program and Masters programs in Urban Planning and Public Administration to more units inside the institution and internationally and by expanding its undergraduate course offerings on campus. The Vice President would be well advised to consider the preceding analysis as he continues his assessment of the productivity for other academic programs and of the operating margins produced by its several administrative departments. So, too, would our colleagues, members of the Board of Trustees, and the President of Saint Louis University. 17

REFERENCES Bok, D. (1975). Harvard today, 18(2). Center for Self-Organizing Leadership. (n.d.). Available: http://centerforselforganizingleadership.com . June, A. W. (9/22/2011). New graduate-student enrollment dips for first time in 7 years. Available: http://chronicle.com/article/New-Graduate-Student/129111/ (Jan 2012). International City Managers Association Web Site (http://icma.org). U.S. News and World Report (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos057.htm). Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs042.htm)

Final Report of the Committee on the Features of Jesuit Education at Saint Louis University, October 25, 2011, pp.4-5.

1 The Vice Presidents own taskforce on Research Productivity in a report released on November 1, 2011 identified several major weaknesses with the US News and World Report ranking. They are the following: reputational data make it a very subjective approach, ranking formula is not transparent, rankings are unreliable because methodology can change from year to year, and focuses on input measures (wealth, acceptance rate, faculty salaries) with no measures of teaching.

2

The methodology omits any index or metric that has to do with contributions to the Jesuit mission or service. Much of our work in the College involves service to others and none of this was deemed of value. The methodology omits any index or metric that has to do with teaching or student learning outcomes. There is no documentation supporting the indices presented, nor their applicability to best practices in academic program evaluation. The committee reviewing the methodology was unable to obtain such documentation from the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs or through their own research efforts. Finally, the original report fails to recognize the contribution that departments make to units across the university. Measures used also do not disaggregate external grants that involve collaboration with other departments and do not disaggregate scholarly production that involves collaboration with faculty from other departments.

3

The metrics used to calculate SFR and operating margin do not include non-major enrollments. Including non-major enrollments would result in a significant increase in the actual number of credit hours taught. It is a more accurate gauge of teaching load. Unfortunately, university accounting practices fail to pick up revenue dollars from non-majors who take courses in the College. The way FTEF is calculated is misleading because it includes faculty who have left during 2006-2011, faculty who are part-time, and one-year appointments, as well as adjunct faculty. This results in under-counting scholarly productivity and Student Faculty Ratio. The Report does not disaggregate enrollments into constituent programs. This failure to disaggregate masks the fact that some programs have actually been stable and not declining. This is important in the case of Public Policy Studies (PPS) because the report makes the claim that it is unable to compete with UMSL. The data collection method currently underestimates faculty research and productivity. Activity Insight was recently implemented as a 18

 database for scholarly production and does not capture everyone's contribution and because of survival problems faculty who left before 2009 were not included. The scholarly productivity index suppresses publication impact; the way the index is weighted a faculty member would have to double publications per year to move up the scale by one point. The same is true of the Student-Faculty Ratio Index. The external grant data are at best incomplete and often inaccurate. Activity Insight and ERS do not communicate effectively with each other and often provide erroneous data. Operating margin is based on the Colleges aggregated revenue. This amount is broken down by percentage of enrollment of each department. This does not adjust for the lower tuition rates of some programs in a college or other differing revenue streams.

4

The manner in which the operating margin index was calculated places a heavy financial burden on departments. It requires departments to have gross tuition revenue twice as large as its operating expenses during a fiscal year in order to receive an acceptable score. Breaking even, that is, covering operating expenses with tuition revenue is scored -5. Expectation of $45,000/FTE in external grant production is unreasonable. There has been a lack of institutional support, until recently, for the pursuit and maintenance of external funding. The figure provided has never been communicated to chairs and dean as an expectation for faculty. The External Grant Funding baseline of $45,000 also was derived from internal funding levels rather than from benchmark equivalents from competitor and aspirational academic programs. Consequently, there is no sensitivity to discipline-specific funding trends or profiles. If all units in the University are to be held up to such exacting standards, it would be interesting to see how any, including those of the central administration, could survive.

5

The indices aggregate a series of non-comparable ordinal level data and incorrectly transform them into interval level index measures; then proceed to calculate ratios and averages. This violates basic premises of measurement even as it obscures the incomplete and often inaccurate data used in the calculations. There is no justification for using different scales (weights) for the different indices. For example, the Grants Index goes from -5 to +6; the Operating Margin Index goes from -6 to +6; the Scholarly Productivity Index goes from -3 to +5; and the SFR Index goes from -4 to +4. Throughout the evaluation process, the VP linked his metrics to a process enneagram whose promoters have shown no success applying in academic settings (http://centerforselforganizingleadership.com). However, the enneagrams provide, at best, a confusing framework by which to view the interrelationship of metrics and what they are intended to measure.

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