Since the beginning of the economic downturn, public colleges in North Dakota have been in what would seem to be an enviable position, thanks to robust tax revenues generated by the state’s supply of oil, coal, and corn used in making ethanol. Lawmakers in Bismarck, the state capital, hiked spending on higher education by a whopping 60 percent between the 2007 fiscal year and 2012—the largest increase in the country—while spending by states nationally declined nearly 4 percent, according to figures from the Grapevine project at Illinois State University.
But money hasn’t bought peace for the state’s public colleges in the Peace Garden State. Instead, the extra dollars presaged legal and political battles with state legislators who are seeking to increase their authority over higher education.
Legislators’ demands for more control of public colleges come in the wake of a series of scandals that have rocked the university system. First came the slow-motion firing of Dickinson State University’s president after it was discovered that he inflated enrollment figures, and then, last month, charges that Dickinson State had awarded degrees to unqualified foreign students.
And now voters and lawmakers are reviving a long-running comedy of errors and ethnic affronts: the clash between the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the University of North Dakota over its athletics logo, the Fighting Sioux, which was supposed to be retired in 2010 under a legal settlement with the NCAA. The logo is back, however, because its die-hard fans collected enough signatures to require a referendum on the issue. The State Board of Higher Education is suing to challenge the referendum, which would repeal a law allowing the university to retire the logo, but the legislature is defending the referendum. The state Supreme Court will decide the issue sometime this spring.
And it turns out that much more than a mascot may be at stake in the case. Lloyd B. Omdahl, a former lieutenant governor and retired professor of political science at North Dakota State University, warns that a ruling in lawmakers’ favor could seriously undermine the Board of Higher Education’s policymaking authority, which is now protected by the State Constitution.
As if that weren’t enough turmoil, the board expects to hire a new chancellor this month. The four finalists are Marshall Hill, director of the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education; Hamid Shirvani, president of California State University-Stanislaus; Warren Wray, interim chancellor of the Missouri University of Science and Technology; and State Rep. Tim Flakoll, a Republican and provost of Tri-College University.
Famous or Infamous?
The various controversies have brought negative attention to the state’s higher-education system after it has spent years trying to boost its image and prestige by seeking to attract top-notch researchers to a state that has fewer than 700,000 residents and is best known elsewhere for its long, harsh winters and an edgy murder movie by the Coen brothers.
The most recent problems, however, have earned the state a completely different kind of international attention.
In February, it was revealed that hundreds of foreign students, mostly from China, were enrolled in a dual-degree program at the Dickinson State campus, about 100 miles from Bismarck, and had been improperly awarded degrees from that institution. The university system released a damning audit, and a dean at Dickinson State was found dead, an alleged suicide, the same day the audit was released, though it’s unclear if there was a connection between the two incidents.
Now Chinese government officials are asking their diplomatic corps to conduct an investigation of events at the nearly 100-year-old university, which enrolls about 2,500 students. The university, which could face penalties from its accreditor and the U.S. Departments of Education, Homeland Security, and State, also canceled plans to open a Confucius Institute, a cultural center supported by the Chinese government.
All that has happened since December, when the Board of Higher Education fired Richard J. McCallum—president of Dickinson State since 2007—several months after an audit concluded that he had pressured staff members to inflate enrollment figures. Grant Shaft, president of the state’s Board of Higher Education, said last week that audits had found no other problems at the university, and that the enrollment inflation and foreign-student scandals were “essentially an anomaly that resulted from a president that we terminated out there.”
The issues at Dickinson State were expected to be on the agenda at a legislative hearing late last week at which the House majority leader, Al Carlson, a Republican, was expected to call for greater legislative oversight of the university system—and for a revival of his proposal to abolish the Board of Higher Education and form a State Department of Education to oversee everything from elementary school through college.
Mr. Shaft played down Rep. Carlson’s calls for greater accountability, calling him “a politician who likes sound bites.”
“He has a lot to say about higher education and none of it good,” Mr. Shaft said.
Nevertheless, he said, the legislature is “never friendly territory—there’s always some back and forth between the legislature and the board.”
At Loggerheads Over Logo
While the problems at Dickinson State have been grabbing attention in recent weeks, the lawsuit over the ballot measure could have a much longer-lasting impact on the university system by undermining the higher-education board’s constitutional authority to set policy.
The bitter controversy over the mascot has been swirling since 1999, when a bill was introduced in the legislature to eliminate the image of a Sioux warrior that the University of North Dakota had used since early in the 20th century. In 2005, the NCAA announced that it would sanction institutions, including the university, if they did not change mascots that NCAA officials deemed “hostile or abusive” to American Indians. Since then the issue has bounced between the courts, the Board of Higher Education, the legislature, and the NCAA.
In the spring of 2011, state lawmakers passed a bill requiring the university to retain the Fighting Sioux moniker, but that law was repealed during a special legislative session in November. By last month, however, supporters of the logo had turned in enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in June. If the referendum passes, it will essentially repeal the law passed in last November.
The system’s board is challenging the referendum on the grounds that it would violate the State Constitution, which grants the board the full authority to govern the institutions under its control, according to John Olsrud, former director of the North Dakota Legislative Council, who wrote about the controversy recently in The Bismarck Tribune.
“If that authority does not include control over sports logos, then the constitutional provision is meaningless,” Mr. Olsrud wrote.
Mr. Shaft, however, sees it differently. He said that the board is trying to “shepherd” the issue through the courts and protect the system, and that there really is no conflict with lawmakers on the issue. The November law that passed allowing the university to retire the mascot is a sign that legislators support the board, he said.
But Mr. Omdahl, the former lieutenant governor, warns that losing the case in court could create an opportunity for legislators—and especially Mr. Carlson, the majority leader—to encroach more frequently on policy decisions in the university system.
“The majority leader is aggressive,” Mr. Omdahl said. “He wants to prove that the legislature is superior to the Board of Higher Education.”
