“Let’s be honest. At a research university like Penn State, education just isn’t the primary mission.”
So declared an administrator at Penn State late last year in a private meeting, explaining his view of the real purpose of Pennsylvania’s flagship land-grant university. This was his rather tenuous way of defending the lack of cost controls on tuition and fees.
What has surprised me over the years at Penn State is not so much the amount of institutional waste that exists at an ostensibly non-profit enterprise, but how frank so much of the school’s leadership is in admitting the failure of the institution to mind its founding mission: to provide an liberal and practical education to the working class sons and daughters of the Commonwealth.
The university’s annual budget stands at more than $3.4 billion. Ten years ago, it was barely $2 billion. There are other costs, too, like the interest on the nearly $1 billion worth of debt that the university has accrued over the years, largely as a result of its unending building binge.
And while the research-minded administrator quoted above is wrong about the school’s core mission today, time looks to be on his side. According to a recent policy report by the Commonwealth Foundation, a sizable 30 percent of Penn State’s operating budget in 2006 was devoted to research expenditures.
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