Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.

As we come to the end of our little song and truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story, it’s probably a good idea to draw attention to the lessons that can be learned from this little parable.

• Verizon and its technology partners are not devils incarnate, but government and higher education need to scrutinize carefully any “deals” they may be offering.  ATM provides a great example of a “deal” that was too good to be true.
• The State should not let mega-contracts that Verizon almost certainly will win.  I daresay that one of my more observant readers might be able to identify one such state contract (hint: M-P-L-S) let a few years ago that is supposed to be the latest answer to all of our technology prayers.
• The State is going to make bad bets – like ATM and Oracle at WVU – from time to time.  If those bets are made based on careful study and analysis, they should be considered a cost of doing business.  If those bets are made primarily because a vendor lobbied heavily for them, the people responsible for those bad bets should be held accountable for them.
• Any big technology project like ATM should be staffed properly and by technology professionals, not by employees of Cabinet Secretaries’ offices.  You can’t manage a $1.5 million per year program like ATM without staff unless you want to waste more money than you save.
• Higher education and state government are very different in terms of their attitudes toward and regulation of technology.  Higher education is always going to push the technology envelope, while state government generally is going to muddle along.  This is one reason why higher education, not state government, should take the technology lead.
• Higher education is insulated from the vicissitudes of political changes (or at least it used to be).  The Office of Technology, headed by a gubernatorial appointee and other will-and-pleasure appointees, is not.  We should not put anything as important as technology exclusively under the control of a political organization.

When will we learn?  It certainly doesn’t look like it will be anytime soon.

Well, maybe next year.

Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.

Although I learned a lot about higher education institutions and how they operate during my Flatwoods meeting with WVNET staff, my main purpose for meeting with them was to learn more about something they called “shared facilities.”

I learned pretty quickly that shared facilities were nothing more than circuits across which multiple organizations’ video, voice and data traveled.  As part of an agreement with the previous Chief Technology Officer to create WVSUN (West Virginia State Unified Network), WVNET had taken primary responsibility for managing them.  Most shared facility circuits, I learned, were a lot more expensive than institution circuits.  In part this was because they were bigger, but also because most crossed two of the State’s four LATAs and thus had to be purchased from long distance providers.  (See “A Baby Bell” for an explanation.)

After meeting with WVNET staff in Flatwoods, I quickly figured out we had three problems: one financial and two legal.

The financial problem:

After identifying all the “free circuits” Verizon had given away on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary of Education and Arts and the shared facility costs that had been shifted to her, even though we were missing hundreds of thousands of dollars in invoices, I realized we owed about $6.5 million on a three-year appropriation of $4.5 million, and that appropriation was supposed to be coming to an end.  So we convened a meeting of key stakeholders, including the people who had circuits they weren’t using.  We told them we would pay for everything we could, but looked to be significantly short of money.  We also told them we would talk to legislators about the situation.

Shortly thereafter, we met with key legislators and staff members and explained the situation.  Fortunately, the legislators promised to continue the appropriation until we could get our house in order, at which point the subsidy would slowly be phased out.  I have always appreciated those legislators and their staff members who trusted us to make things right.

The legal problems:

In addition to the rather large financial problem, we had two not-insignificant legal problems of the constitutional variety.

First, it is unconstitutional to use a later year appropriation to pay for an earlier year service.  (Otherwise, the constitutional requirement to operate under a balanced budget would be meaningless.)  So a continuing appropriation couldn’t solve all of our rather large financial problems.  Indeed the only way some of these telecommunications providers were going to get the money they were owed was to file a claim with the Court of Claims, obtain a judgment, and then have the Legislature make an appropriation, which easily could take two years.

Second, the Legislature had funded the WV2001 Project from lottery revenue, which constitutionally can be spent only on education, tourism and a few other things.  But these shared facilities circuits included other telecommunications traffic for which payment would be unconstitutional.  Interestingly, quite a few shared facilities invoices had been paid by the Department of Education and the Arts in violation of the West Virginia Constitution before I arrived there.  Did anything happen as a result of this Constitutional violation?  No!  As a good friend likes to say: Some laws catch on better than others.  I would add Constitutional provisions to his list.

Luckily, we were able to exploit our legal problems to address our financial problems.  We, for instance, offered AT&T a payment equal to the percentage of traffic that legally could be paid for from lottery funds if they would walk away from the remainder of their (quite valid) claim.

And that is a large part of the story of how WVNET staff and others saved the State of West Virginia more than $1 million, much of which it admittedly never should have incurred, but almost all of which it owed.  And that is why the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts escaped the telecommunications billing debacle largely unscathed….

Don’t you love farce?…  My fault I fear….

Just when I’d stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Newer, faster, better!  If there’s one difference between higher education and state government, it is that higher education wants the latest technology, while state government seems more content to use current systems, even if cumbersome or unwieldy.

Don’t worry if higher education doesn’t yet have a good practical use for Internet II; institutions want it because no right-thinking research faculty member would come to a school that didn’t have it.  Don’t worry if higher education doesn’t know what on earth to do with Blackboard WebCT Vista’s enterprise distance learning solution; just spend $750K for the license, and distance learning will take off like gangbusters.  Don’t worry if you don’t have a plan to use new technology that West Virginia University is using.  If West Virginia University needs it, so does Glenville State College and Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College.

What’s the only thing higher education loves better than technology?  Someone else to pay for it, of course.  So you can imagine the excitement in higher education Chief Technology Officers’ offices in the late 1990s when Verizon came calling with a too-good-to-be-true deal on telecommunications circuits that would be doing everything from supporting distance learning to handling back office data traffic to managing telephone systems to cooking students’ meals over the next few years.

The too-good-to-be-true part? Higher education and others could have all of this technology for free thanks to a little ole $1.5 million appropriation from the West Virginia Legislature in the West Virginia Department of Education and Arts’ budget.  Every school from West Virginia University to Shepherd College (now University) to West Virginia Northern Community College got hooked up faster than Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire on double coupon day at the local BALCO store.

Surely students benefited from these expenditures, didn’t they?  Well, not at some institutions.  You’ve heard of the “Road to Nowhere.”  At several of our higher education institutions, we had “Circuits to Nowhere.”  Shepherd College, for example, acquired two circuits, to the tune of $600 per circuit per month, over which there was no telecommunications traffic for several years.  And West Virginia Northern Community College was so enamored by these “free circuits” that they didn’t “buy” the cheap kind that Shepherd was buying.  No, they wanted the top-of-the-line DS-3 circuits (cost: $3,800 per month), and they wanted one for each of their three campuses (cost: $11,400 per month/ $136,800 per year).  Did West Virginia Northern need these expensive circuits?  Let just say they dropped them like laundered nickels from a casino slot machine as soon as they learned they had to pay for them.

How did I discover these things?  I certainly didn’t learn about them from Verizon, which must have known there was little or no telecommunications traffic crossing some of these “free circuits.”  I certainly didn’t learn about them from IS&C, which couldn’t even find the bills, much less the circuits.  No, I learned them from two WVNET employees who drove to Flatwoods (ironically WVNET’s future home?) one day to educate me about shared facilities.

Operating in higher education, WVNET has always had to adapt more quickly and be more aware of technological changes than its state government counterpart.  WVNET was the first with mainframe, the first with internet, and its staff were the first to tell me what really was occurring with the WV2001 Project….

Making my entrance again with my usual flair…. Sure of my lines….  No one is there….

Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

When I came to the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts as Chief of Staff in 2001, I found a large stack of telecommunications invoices, a Cabinet Secretary who wisely was refusing to pay them, and a staff who stared blankly at me when I asked them any question about the WV2001 Project or its invoices.

The invoices were from both long-distance telecommunications vendors and the West Virginia Information Services and Communications Division, the Office of Technology’s precursor.  It didn’t take me very long to figure out that I didn’t have all of the bills and, even more importantly, that I didn’t have a clue whether we should pay for them.  It also didn’t take me long to figure out that Verizon and others were busy complaining to every politician who would listen that they weren’t being paid by their biggest customer – the State of West Virginia.

So I asked my blankly-staring staff (good people in over their heads) who could help us figure out the WV2001 project, given that the person in charge of it had made an abrupt exit from IS&C shortly before I started work for the Cabinet Secretary.  At the meeting they arranged for me, I met the state’s technology leaders, many of whom I came to respect a great deal: Dr. Jan Fox, Marshall University’s CIO on loan to the Wise Administration; Brenda Williams, director of educational technology for the West Virginia Department of Education; Billy Jack Gregg, Consumer Advocate for the West Virginia Public Service Commission (who hadn’t been invited by us, but came anyway and shook his head back and forth and laughed throughout the entire meeting, which, I must say, was very disconcerting for a brand new Chief of Staff); and Henry Blosser, WVNET’s director.

During that meeting, I learned that these weren’t run-of-the-mill telephone bills about which we were talking, but rather bills for something called telecommunications circuits that could carry video, audio, and data.  This is not what you would have thought from reading the Charleston Newspapers, which were reporting that the State wasn’t paying its telephone bills (which also was true).  Additionally, I learned that our bills from long-distance carriers were for something called shared facilities, circuits over which multiple organizations’ video, audio, and data traveled, and most of my IS&C bills were from Verizon for circuits to specific organizations.

What I didn’t learn until much later was that many of the shared facilities bills had been shifted from IS&C to the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts shortly before Governor Wise took office, not because the Department had made a commitment to pay them, but rather because IS&C had failed to rebill them by the end of the state fiscal year, and agencies with expiring funds (supposedly) could not pay for them.  (WV2001 project funds did not expire.)  Older and wiser, I now know that most people who claimed they couldn’t pay these bills could have paid (and later did pay some of) them from other non-expiring revenue (admittedly unbudgeted for this purpose, but still available).

At the end of the meeting, I asked WVNET director Henry Blosser why these monies had not been placed in his agency’s budget.  He shook his head knowingly and smiled.  Twenty-five plus years of government service had taught him not to say too much too soon….

Where are the clowns?…  Send in the clowns….

Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

As some of you probably have guessed, I have a much more extensive technology background than people viewing my resume otherwise might expect.  The reason: I spent more than eight years of my life discreetly cleaning up messes for two different state agencies, and many of those messes happened to be of the technological variety.

Today I begin to discuss one of those technological debacles in greater detail – the WV2001 project – because so much of relevance to WVNET can be learned from it.  In exposing this spectacle, I make the assumption that all applicable statutes of limitations for crimes of incompetence (no malice was involved) probably have run.

Now turn back your clocks to the period before the first major technology bust when half the world thought an internet startup selling the latest earwax removal product was a sound investment and the other half believed most high school and college classes would be online within five years.  Into this tech-crazy world of the mid- to late-1990s comes Verizon with its knight-in-shining-armour proposal to keep West Virginia from being left behind by constructing a massive ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) infrastructure to support the expected exponential growth in technology use.

Never ones to be left outside the big tent when the circus comes to town, the West Virginia Legislature quickly appropriated $1.5 million annually to cover the State’s price of admission.  This appropriation, which appeared in the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts’ budget, would support higher education, K-12, library and other agency buy-ins to the bright, shiny, new high-tech ATM network.  The idea was this: the State would pay for higher education institutions to buy and maintain T-1 and DS-3 circuits to transport data, voice, and video for 14 months, at the end of which these circuits would be so central to operations that everyone would print money on their bright, shiny, new high-tech color copiers to keep them.

The circuits, of course, were not cheap: a T-1 line cost $600 per month, a DS-3 line cost $3,800, and an OC-3 line cost $7,200 as I recall.  But there was a bit of a sleight of hand involved because that was not the only charge: T-1 and DS-3 circuits have to connect to other circuits, which the State also purchased.  Circuits that crossed LATAs (discussed in a previous post) were purchased from long distance providers like AT&T, while circuits within LATAs, including organization T-1s and DS-3s, were purchased primarily from West Virginia’s cute little “Baby Bell” Verizon.

On the state government side, the person who took responsibility for this initiative worked for IS&C, the precursor to what is now known at the West Virginia Office of Technology.  As best I can tell, he spent most of his time running around the State making sure everyone got hooked up to these bright, shiny circuits.  What he did not do was bother to keep track of the costs … or pay the bills ….

And watching this technology spectacle from their seats in the balcony, like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show, were the wizened technology veterans at WVNET, who had been in the technology business for more than 25 years….

Isn’t it rich?…

Over the last few days, I have been providing background information about WVNET’s role in the larger world of technology.  Today I would like to veer off in a different direction and remind everyone that WVNET is about more than technology: It is about people.

First, the people WVNET serves:

• The Raleigh County adult who is pursuing a degree by completing distance learning classes late into the night after a long day of work at a low paying job.
• The Tucker County judge who holds a pretrial hearing via teleconference.
• The little old lady from rural Pocahontas County who uses dial-up because it’s the only available option and calls WVNET’s help desk with questions – and to chat.
• The administrative staff at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College who use back office technology housed at WVNET to operate more efficiently and effectively and ultimately maintain lower tuition costs and provide better service for their students.
• The Ohio County high school student researching Marie Antoinettte online for her term paper.

These are the people with whom WVNET is concerned day in and day out.  Have you heard ANY of them discussed?

Second, the people at WVNET:

Over the last four years, WVNET has been under perpetual assault.  On three separate occasions, I had to talk directly to WVNET staff about the latest assault, twice in person and once by video conference.  I remember explaining one time that another organization surveying and marking off their property really did not have permission to do so.  I remember explaining another time that legislation giving the Higher Education Policy Commission authority to sell the only property it truly had authority to sell didn’t automatically mean their property was going to be sold and their jobs lost.  I remember explaining yet another time that all the rumors they were hearing from others in the Morgantown community about their jobs were not accurate.  And I remember each time talking to those employees ALONE.

I also remember a meeting where everyone was so busy fighting over who would benefit from the sale of the WVNET property – West Virginia University, some or all higher education institutions, or the Higher Education Policy Commission – that no one said a word about WVNET’s employees.

What does this perpetual uncertainty produce?  I will tell you.

• A suspicious workforce who had to wonder whether I was telling them the truth as they peered out their windows and saw surveying stakes in WVNET ground that suggested I was not.
• A demoralized workforce, many of whom are now gone, who knew good work didn’t matter and regularly asked me for reference letters.
• Higher education institutions fearful of looking to WVNET for new services because it soon might not be there.
• A facility that was not properly maintained because you don’t want to make a significant investment in a building that isn’t going to be there five years from now.

WVNET staff is not perfect, and most of them would be the first to tell you that.  But they also would tell you they did not deserve to be treated as they have been – and they would be right.

In 1982 AT&T, also known as “Ma Bell,” agreed to a break-up that led to the creation of a series of Baby Bells, including Bell Atlantic, which ultimately merged with other carriers and became Verizon.  The agreement divided the United States into local access and transport areas (LATAs) inside which Baby Bells would be allowed to operate and across which only long distance providers would be allowed to operate.

The goal of the U.S. Department of Justice in entering into this agreement was to promote telecommunications competition in a post-breakup world.  Competition was fostered on the long distance (LATA-crossing) side, but was less successful on the local provider side.  At the local level, it is much more difficult to ensure effective competition among telecommunications providers, primarily because they often have monopoly control over telecommunications circuits.

The State of West Virginia has two available mechanisms to ensure that reasonable telecommunications rates are charged and competition fostered.  The first and most frequently discussed, the West Virginia Public Service Commission, can control costs by regulating certain rates and business practices.  To represent the interests of consumers in such proceedings, the PSC employs a Consumer Advocate.  For many years, Verizon and other providers had a fierce foe in Consumer Advocate Billy Jack Gregg, who fought telecommunications providers tooth and nail on behalf of consumers like you and me.

After 30 years of tireless service as West Virginia’s first and only Consumer Advocate, Mr. Gregg retired from the public sector and founded Billy Jack Gregg Universal Consulting. Still widely regarded as one of West Virginia’s foremost authorities on telecommunications issues, Mr. Gregg continues to provide his expertise to clients on both the consumer and business side. But these days, you’re highly unlikely to hear Mr. Gregg weigh in on any issue concerning Verizon. Rumor has it that Verizon now pays Mr. Gregg a substantial retainer just to keep him from commenting publicly on its maneuvers.

A second and less frequently discussed group – public sector telecommunications purchasers, including K-12, higher education, and state government agencies – also can control costs and foster competition with their procurement practices.  Why?  The public sector – first K-12, then higher education, and then the rest of state government and the courts – are Verizon’s largest customers.

Given this fact, I will pose a counterintuitive proposition: The last thing the State of West Virginia, including education, wants to do is bid out mega-telecommunications contracts to be awarded to a single vendor.  Rather, the State wants to bid out multiple smaller contracts to multiple vendors.

But doesn’t the State want to get the best bang for its buck on telecommunications costs, you ask? And doesn’t an entity like the State get the lowest vendor cost and have the lowest contract management expenses if it bids out mega-contracts?  Yes and no.

In the short run, you possibly could attain these benefits if you assume that the bidders are on a level playing field, which they are not, and that political considerations would play no role in the award.  Verizon, with control of so much infrastructure, particularly middle mile infrastructure referred to in a previous post, has a leg up on everyone else and is the entity most likely to win the mega-contract.

But even if the first round of bidding were truly open and competitive, future rounds would not be as the entity that got the initial contract could quickly exploit its monopoly status and drive current and future competition out of the market, resulting in higher long-term costs for the State of West Virginia and its citizens.

Tying these thoughts back into a discussion of WVNET, the State is not like any other single private sector vendor, which almost always would benefit from collective bidding of telecommunications services.  As an entity large enough to promote harmful monopoly, the State should be strategic in its thinking about contracting and should not automatically bring K-12, higher education and state and local government together for purposes of telecommunications contracting or bid all parts of its infrastructure at once.

Technological advances are changing the calculus I have described, but we will have an 800 lbs. telecommunications “baby” into the foreseeable future.  And that is an important consideration in these proceedings.

PS: If this blog mysteriously ceases publication, one of two things happened.  My own personal Verizon account was shut down … or I received a VERY LUCRATIVE consulting contract and am honoring the terms of that contract.  (Others have posited a third scenario, but I remain optimistic, even as I lock my doors.)

So much to comment upon it is hard to figure out where to start:

• The latest plan is to consolidate WVNET, sell its property, and move the equipment to Charleston or Flatwoods? Why would you not consolidate everything to Morgantown where you have qualified staff and a machine room at the ready?  [Insert obvious answer here.]
• What about the 16 to 24 months West Virginia University needs to move services to its campus data center (which, by the way, was in a flood plain the last time I checked)?  [Insert obvious answer here.]
• A proposed follow-up question to the statement that the Higher Education Policy Commission owns Bluefield State College and Concord University property, too: So the 2007 legislation was aimed at helping the Commission sell Bluefield State College’s and Concord University’s property, not the WVNET property?  [Insert obvious answer here.]

Why doesn’t everyone just take a deep breath and admit one thing?  There is no well-thought-out plan to do anything other than put up a “For Sale” sign on the WVNET property.  I don’t mean to sound so bemused/ cynical/ sarcastic/ strident (take your pick), but seriously … technology is too important to our public schools, our colleges, our courts, our government, and our citizens not to have solid transition plans in place before selling property as important to the State as that on which WVNET sits.  Even more important, the environment in which good plans are developed and implemented requires trust, and there’s not likely to be much trust after all of this.

For you and me, moving is a difficult experience.  For an organization like WVNET, it would be a logistical nightmare.  A nightmare, mind you, that could be accomplished, but a nightmare nonetheless.

In an earlier post on WVNET, I referenced logistical challenges if WVNET were to move from its current location, as well as significant costs associated with such a move.  Why is that?

• When you and I make a move, we generally pack everything, shut down for a while, and make our move.  That would not be possible for WVNET.  Can you imagine what would happen if no public education teacher or legislator could send an email or access the internet for days?  If colleges could not register students or offer online instruction?  If the state court system could not hold online hearings?  The number of complaints directed at WVNET, higher education system offices, the governor’s office, and others would be astronomical, and WVNET would receive front-page news coverage, just not the kind WVNET would like.  WVNET has a backup generator, tested regularly, that kicks on almost instantly when it loses power to prevent even minimal down-time much less this kind of down-time.
• Moving WVNET also is not as simple as packing up a few desks, chairs, computer monitors and hard drives and some old papers and office supplies and loading them on a moving truck.  Millions of dollars worth of equipment are sitting in WVNET’s machine room right now.  Much of that equipment was assembled onsite and is highly vulnerable to damage if moved.  Although there are maintenance agreements for much of that equipment, the provisions of those agreements would not apply to damage caused during a physical move like that being proposed.

So how would you orchestrate such a move?

• In a perfect world with unlimited resources, you would buy all new equipment and allow WVNET to transfer systems one by one over a period of days, weeks and months.  But re-outfitting a facility like WVNET from scratch probably would be prohibitively expensive and wipe out all or most of the money it would receive from the sale of the property.
• More likely, WVNET would be expected to make the move at the least cost possible.  This probably would mean buying some equipment where there would be no other way to facilitate a move; renting equipment like a power generator until the current generator could be relocated in the last step of the move; disassembling very expensive pieces of equipment, packing them, moving them, and reassembling them, probably with assistance from some of the vendors from whom the equipment was purchased (there, of course, would be a bill for that); and making major portions of the move between midnight to 6 AM on Sunday mornings over a period of weeks or months.  (The adult student trying to complete her online coursework during this time would just have to suffer.)  During the period of the move, WVNET would incur dual costs for many items.
• The worst job in all of this probably would be that of the move coordinator.  The move coordinator would have to go down the WVNET services and equipment list item by item and figure out how to orchestrate a move for each item while minimizing both costs and disruption.  The Gantt chart developed to accomplish this move would go on for pages and pages.
• The monetary aspects of the move also would be problematic.  Typically the transfer of funds from buyer to seller does not occur until the time of closing after a move of this size and scope has been accomplished.  From where is the money going to come to orchestrate this move before Mylan Pharmaceuticals pays for the property?  As a state agency, WVNET can’t simply go to its local bank and get a loan.
• And let’s not forget all of the problems that arise during a simple move.  Workers packing instead of working.  Broken and missing items.  Movers not where they should be when they should be.  Packing and unpacking that takes longer than expected.
• And we’re not done yet.  There is a lot of telecommunications fiber going into the area where WVNET is located because of what WVNET and its neighbors do.  As a result, WVNET cannot move just anywhere.  It must move to a place where a whole lot of fiber is located and/or can be located.  If not, you’re talking more time and money.

Several years ago, WVNET staff made an initial pass at calculating some of the costs associated with moving.  I do not remember precisely what those numbers were, but they were staggering.  I hope this helps you understand why I have been laughing at what I have been reading.  Even I could not pull off the sprezzatura needed for this project.

The Charleston Daily Mail published an interesting article today that illustrates the difficulty of meeting technology needs in a political climate.  The article explains that much of the $126 million in federal stimulus money leveraged for broadband is going to Verizon to build something being characterized as the “middle mile.”  The “middle mile” will get close enough to rural communities that other companies will step in to build out the “last mile” to customers’ homes and businesses, or so the theory goes.  And guess what?  Verizon will own the “middle mile” circuits that the federal government is paying $126 million to install.

Is that wrong?  Something doesn’t seem right, but I am unsure.  Some thoughts and then a history lesson:

First, the thoughts:

• A lot of money will have been wasted if no one actually installs the “last mile,” but it’s possible that the “middle mile” truly is a larger barrier to broadband access than the “last mile.”  I do not know.
• Why would the State turn over millions of dollars worth of infrastructure paid for with federal dollars for free?  Strangely, this is the public sector equivalent of Dow’s $10 million “gift,” but makes far less business sense than Dow’s financial move.  Why not at least put the new network infrastructure out for bid to see if someone thinks it has a value of more than $0 and then use any funds generated for additional broadband expansion?
• While I question the choice of Verizon, I do realize that it is easier (but possibly not cheaper) to deal with Verizon, the telecommunications Goliath, than a large group of Davids like FiberNet, CityNet and Ntelos.

Second, a history lesson: In the late 1990s, Verizon convinced State government leaders that the wave of the future was asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology.  So the State ponied up $1.5 million per year for all kinds of educational institutions and state government agencies to get the new ATM circuits through the WV2001 Project.  Verizon effectively wanted to hedge its ATM bet, and the State of West Virginia was more than happy to comply.  But guess what?  ATM were not the wave of the future.  Verizon and its partner the State of West Virginia bet wrong.

Why was the State happy to comply with Verizon’s request?  Verizon is very powerful politically, and no one, including skeptical state technology officials, were about to stand in its way.  Given the powerful technology interests out there and their willingness to use their political power for financially beneficial ends (and I don’t blame them for that nor expect them to behave any differently) and given the large amounts of money spent by the State on technology, we need technology agencies that are very stable and insulated from political influence.  In 2000, then Chief Technology Officer Sam Tully thought that entity was WVNET and transferred control of much of the State’s telecommunications infrastructure to WVNET.

The rarely-studied lessons of history are intriguing.

As for today, WVNET does far more than I possibly could describe here – and light years more than you’re reading in the news articles and reports discussing WVNET.  By way of illustration:

• WVNET supports institutions’ Sungard Banner data systems to various degrees.  Sungard Banner is back office software for our colleges and includes student record, financial aid, and finance modules, just to name a few.
• WVNET hosts WebCT for numerous institutions.  WebCT is higher education’s primary distance learning system.
• WVNET supports K-12 and others with internet and other comparable services and ensures that K-12 maximizes e-rate discounts (federal discounts provided thanks in significant part to Senator Rockefeller, by the way).
• WVNET manages significant segments of the state telecommunications infrastructure, which combines K-12, higher education, state government and other technology traffic.  K-12 is the largest user, followed by higher education, followed by state government.
• WVNET serves as WVU’s major back-up site and provides similar services for others.
• WVNET coordinates cross-institutional procurements.

While I could continue with my list, the real issue is that each service that WVNET provides needs to be analyzed thoroughly: (1) What is provided? (2) For whom is it provided? (3) At what cost?  (4) Does someone else provide the same service?  (5) Is it something that’s needed, and will it be needed in two years/five years? (6) Is the charge reasonable and could the services be obtained elsewhere more cheaply? (7) Are there other economies of scale that should be taken into consideration?

A thorough analysis, I am sure, would find things that should change, but it also would find that WVNET provides important services that are not readily replaceable, particularly by smaller institutions. Although the proposals to shut down WVNET have been on the frontburner for a long time, nobody has undertaken a thorough analysis of WVNET’s portfolio of services.  And until they do, no one can argue effectively that WVNET should be shut down, moved, or merged.

Finally, any analysis of WVNET should address the significant logistical challenges and costs involved in a move.  On the logistics front, WVNET has a lot of equipment and circuits that must somehow be transferred seamlessly if higher education, K-12 and state government in West Virginia are not to come to a grinding halt.  (Insert joke about whether anyone would notice here.  But the truth is they would.)  This probably means creating additional redundancy in advance of a move. On the cost front, it is possible that significant moving costs should be incurred for the greater good, but those costs will be far more significant than political and education leaders currently realize.

I have been critical of late of many poorly-thought-out plans for major change.  The WVNET proposal provides yet another case in point.  Fortunately, the House of Delegates appears poised to make higher education perform its due diligence before tearing WVNET asunder.

Before anyone does anything with WVNET, it would be a good idea if someone learned what it truly does.  The statements I’ve been reading in print miss the mark rather dramatically.  Equally important, someone needs to learn about the telecommunications infrastructure going into the WVNET site … and, while they’re at it, whose emails cross its servers.  Finally, there’s one last thing people should know, but they’ll have to look to others for the answer.  Technology is not all that complicated.

UPDATE: 10 March 2010 @ 11:47 AM.  As requested, I edited the first link so that it takes you to the document to which I was referring.  I must say that I am amazed by the number of views of this post.  I passed the previous record for most views in an entire day before 9:00 AM this morning and am very close to the “double” mark now.

What major sector of the United States economy has seen costs rise more quickly than the health care sector – and by a wide margin?

Higher education, of course.

Why have higher education costs risen so quickly? Certain higher education officials would like to convince you that it’s because state appropriations have not kept pace with inflation. But that’s really only a small part of the explanation – and not even that if you factor in all the new federal and state funding coming through the back door in the form of merit- and need-based financial aid. The dirty little secret: The back door funding of rich and poor kids with financial aid has removed market forces from the fee-setting calculus. With almost no pressure to control prices, tuition costs – and thus the revenue institutions have to operate in real dollar terms – has increased exponentially. I’m oversimplifying a bit here, but this certainly is the case for West Virginia’s four-year higher education institutions over the last decade – and what the public higher education sector tries to hide using an inflation measure called the higher education price index. (It has a legitimate purpose, just not the purpose for which it is most frequently used.)

Were I less busy, I would connect the dots that support my contentions for you sooner, rather than later. But alas market forces require me to do real, paying work. When I return to posting on this blog (this coming weekend), I will share my thoughts about our newest higher education market force – the Governor, who’s saying “no” to tuition increases, as well as address the legislative auditor’s assessment of the appropriate number of four-year institutions, which I think may be wrong-headed. Plus I’ll flag three interesting news articles about subjects that I think may have a larger impact than people realize.

But alas it’s back to paying work.

During the process of facilitating the development of West Virginia’s green jobs education and training plan, I had an opportunity to read some very rosy assessments of future green jobs needs.  Those reports (e.g., O*NET) repeatedly emphasized that green jobs were primarily, but not exclusively, going to be found in existing occupations.

As a result of these assessments, the leading national report on green jobs education and training, titled Greener Pathways, had this to say: “More time should be spent embedding green skills training within current curricula, and less energy inventing new programs.”  This admonition caused the West Virginia GREEN-UP Council to propose expending most new green education and training dollars on greening up existing programs and existing workers, not on starting a lot of new sustainability programs.

Is Greener Pathways right?  I think so:

• To design a green building, you must have basic architectural skills.
• To build or renovate a building using green products, you must have building and construction trades skills.
• To install or retrofit an energy efficient HVAC system or maintain a wind turbine, you must have basic electro-mechanical skills.
• To ensure that a community’s water supply is environmentally safe, you must have basic chemistry and biological testing skills.

While I’m convinced that a green revolution is upon us, I worry that students pursuing these new sustainability degrees will not be able to find jobs upon graduation unless they also have other, more practical skills.

In my opinion, this push to create stand-alone environmental sustainability programs is another example of higher education being out of touch with real world needs, even as it tries to address those needs.

Position descriptions are critical to any effort to classify, compensate, or set performance expectations.  Despite this rather obvious fact, I received no support whatsoever for my efforts to get position descriptions updated across higher education.  To the contrary, numerous efforts were undertaken to ensure that I was stopped as several human resources “professionals” asserted with straight faces that higher education as we knew it would cease to exist if such a radical idea were not checked.

As a result, state employees will have up-to-date position descriptions come February, while higher education employees (also state employees) will not.  It’s amazing what a little leadership can accomplish.

Last weekend Marshall University ended its regular season 6-6 after four losing seasons.  MU probably could save a little money, too, if it dropped football, especially now that its football coach has resigned.  Some people in Morgantown say MU dropped it a few years back anyway.

PS: I’m a Marshall University graduate, so I can get away with this bit of heresy – or possibly not.

A poorly-kept secret: All but the nation’s top athletics programs regularly operate at a loss.  So in this time of dramatic belt-tightening across higher education, will other institutions follow Northeastern’s lead?  Don’t bet on it.

Today we are watching the greatest higher education system on earth implode: On Thursday the University of California System increased tuition 32 percent and still needs $913 million (not too far from $1 billion) in cuts to balance budgets.  On Friday students across the UC system protested and students at Santa Cruz and Berkeley took over buildings. Meanwhile California’s community colleges cut students, classes and staff at a time when community colleges are expanding by leaps and bounds elsewhere.

Has California hit rock bottom?  Some people say no; I say yes.  Why?  Any state in which the state’s former finance director seriously researches whether the state can convert from a state to a federal territory so the federal government can step in to address the fiscal crisis has no direction to go but up.  Incredible, just incredible.

Dr. Cox reports that first generation college students “admitted to feeling intimidated by professors’ academic knowledge ….  Essentially, students were afraid that the professor would irrevocably confirm their academic inadequacy.”  She goes on to say that first generation college students are reluctant to ask for assistance even when they need it.

That was very true of me even though I excelled at virtually every academic endeavor I ever undertook.  It took me years before I could bring myself to ask a question or speak unless spoken to in class, and I was near the end of my formal education before I was able to talk to a professor outside of class.  While I rarely needed academic assistance, I never asked for it even when I did.  My few bad grades resulted from my inability to ask for help from my professors when I didn’t understand something.  Meanwhile, I observed classmates from different socioeconomic backgrounds having no such difficulty even when they asked stupid questions (and yes there are stupid questions, beginning with those you ask because you didn’t bother to read your assignment) and wondered what was wrong with me.

Dr. Cox notes that first generation college students tend to devalue teaching methods that don’t involve professors lecturing to (or more aptly “at”) them.  I remember thinking that about the Socratic method when first exposed to it in law school.  I initially thought it allowed the professor to prepare less; only after several years, and practicing it as a professor, did I realize that it takes more time to prepare and forces students to prepare for (or drop) your class.

After reading the book review, I now am wondering two things: (1) How on earth did I ever graduate from college, much less earn a law degree?  And even more baffling, how did I find my way into higher education?  (2) Have I been an ineffective professor for students just like me?  I hope not.

I will be reading Dr. Cox’s book, which is available through Harvard University Press.

Everywhere you turn in the higher education world, you hear policy makers trumpeting the importance of producing more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) graduates.  Indeed Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a significant report issued by the National Academies several years ago, argued that America was on the verge of losing its competitive edge because it was not producing enough STEM graduates and urged national goal-setting.

After reviewing thirty years of educational and labor data, however, the Rutgers and Georgetown researchers have concluded that we’re producing more than enough STEM graduates.  The problem, if there is any, is that fewer than half of STEM graduates work in STEM fields 10 years after they graduate.

I have a hunch this is an important study (I’m not saying it’s correct, just important) that will receive little additional attention as states like West Virginia charge headlong into STEM graduate program expansion.  I make this observation in part because no one seems to have paid any attention to published data that suggest that West Virginia loses an overwhelming number of its STEM graduates to other states, making West Virginia’s return on its hefty STEM investment very poor.

• The brief takes policymakers to task for relying too heavily on graduation rate calculations that examine only first-time, full-time fall cohorts.  If we assume that all students start in the fall as full-time students, the measure works.  But more than half of all community college students, for example, do not meet these criteria.
• The brief criticizes policymakers for not taking “inputs” (e.g., numbers of disadvantaged students being served) into consideration when evaluating an institution’s success in graduating students.  To paraphrase (rather loosely) former Texas Governor Ann Richards, it’s not too hard to score a home run when you were born on third base; not so for those less fortunate.
• The brief suggests that policymakers should place greater emphasis on remediation milestones because most students, particularly at the community college level, need it and because so few students who need it succeed in college.
• The brief suggests that policymakers should gather data on whether students actually put their degrees to work by obtaining jobs in their fields of study or jobs that require the most recently attained credential.

It’s amazing that someone has to write a report making these points.  All are obvious and well known.

The blogger, “Soodo Nym,” was critical of administrators for dismissing his stepmother as chair of the University’s school of music.  Among other things, he wrote that the dean of the College of Fine Arts was “power-hungry and afraid of his own shadow” and that he “lied” to faculty and left the meeting “embarrassed” for having done so.  He also sent an email in which he said: “We can create much more trouble than we have so far,” which supposedly put Butler’s provost in fear for his own safety.

Several observations:

• It never ceases to amaze me how thin-skinned some people who reach positions of power can  be.  If you are a leader, you should expect to be criticized, fairly or unfairly, from time to time.  It goes with the territory.
• If there’s any area that should be a “free speech” zone, it is a college campus.  I would not want to attend any institution that sued its students for libel for criticizing, even unfairly, its administrators.
• I would much rather have had my accuser publish his accusations on a blog, rather than behind my back, even if more people might see/hear them.  At least you can refute the former.

Some quotations worthy of reflection:

• “I’ve never traveled out of the mid-Atlantic region, the latest issues of The New Yorker and Harper’s have never appeared on my family’s coffee table, and before arriving on the campus, I thought every working person got paid by the hour.”  College access professionals need to understand that, even under the best of circumstances, students from poor socio-economic backgrounds have not had the quality or quantity of enrichment opportunities of their upper and middle class classmates.
• “As a high-school senior trying to decide where to attend college, I felt besieged by information.”  College access professionals need to appreciate that there is ample, indeed overwhelming, information available to poor students about college selection, admissions, and financial aid.  What is missing is quality counseling to help poor students put all of this information into context.  Such counseling can be provided effectively only by a professional counselor or peer, not through a website or brochure.
• “I don’t want to alienate myself by letting my college friends know that I’m not well traveled and don’t understand their references, so I act as if I were in the know, hoping they won’t suspect that I’m from a different class.  This ‘cultural passing’ gives me a feeling of accomplishment but also leaves me dejected, knowing that I am still an outsider.”  College access professionals need to understand that many such students try hard to hide their otherness and are reluctant to seek support.
• “There were undoubtedly other working-class students on the campus, who could have provided me with the support I needed, but I couldn’t find them.”  Most campuses have African-American groups, religious groups, LGBT groups, etc., but no groups for poor students.  Poor students could benefit from a support group.

Several observations about THE rankings:

• They favor British institutions with four of the top ten institutions located in the United Kingdom, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the source of the rankings.
• They favor research universities.  Of the 54 American institutions on the list, all are research universities and none is a small liberal arts college.
• They favor institutions with significant numbers of faculty from other countries, something that, in my humble opinion, helped my education not one jot as I struggled to understand what many of them were saying.

The interesting news this year: the slip in American universities’ rankings.  The drop is due in part to major international investment in building first-class research universities, particularly in Asia.  Some experts predict the downward trend will continue, in part because the United States will have less money to invest in higher education as it struggles to pay down its mounting debt.

Needless to say, no West Virginia institution made the international 200.

Several weeks ago, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a report on 529 plans in which it disclosed that such plans had lost about $25 billion.    How much is that?  Well, to put that amount in perspective, it’s a lot more than the $16.4 billion the United States spends annually on the nation’s largest financial aid program: the Pell grant program.

Why all the losses?  Fund managers were investing in some of the same kinds of investments in which higher education endowment fund managers were investing.  If you think the endowment fund investment strategy was crazy, consider how crazy it is to place money you know you’re going to need in just a few years in high-risk investments.  It’s no different than placing your retirement savings in high-risk investments right before you retire, something any credible financial advisor would tell you not to do.

For a masterful undressing of 529 plans and their investment strategies, please read a commentary by Kevin Carey, policy director with Education Sector, in The Chronicle of Higher Education last May.

As tax-free 529 plans primarily benefit the rich, this is a case where the rich have gotten not richer, but poorer.

But as the schools, one by one, disclose their numbers, the managers of these endowments are indicating their continued support for a diversified portfolio chock full of alternative investments like hedge funds, private equity and real estate — the very things that have caused so much trouble.

None of these managers would want me on their Boards of Trustees.  In my humble opinion, the goals of non-profit investing should be to ensure that the corpus is maintained, while making a conservative return.  Why?  Well, Harvard University and Yale University, as well as West Virginia University and Marshall University, are just too important to have their endowments (our donations!) frittered away on high-risk, high-reward options, even if the returns generally will be higher over the long term.  Non-profit higher education institutions also need consistent revenue, not obscene profits.  These high-risk strategies should be considered breaches of fiduciary duty.

The commitment, which seeks to reduce our nation’s college campuses’ carbon footprints, initially was signed by schools representing 1/3 of America’s college students.  I was not surprised to discover that only one West Virginia public institution, Bridgemont Community and Technical College, which is doing quite a bit of education and training in the clean energy and environmental fields, was a signatory, even though it did not meet the deadline.  Bethany College and American Public University System, which is headquartered in Charles Town and provides education primarily to the military and online, were West Virginia’s other signatories.

Shhh!  Don’t tell anybody involved in the health care reform debate, but the House chose the public option – cutting out the private insurance company lender middle man in favor of providing health care coverage student loans directly to America’s citizens students – and saving an estimated $80 billion over ten years.

In commenting on the legislation, New York Times columnist Gail Collins said something very important about higher education finance yesterday:

The central problem with financing higher education is that tuition keeps running ahead of the rate of inflation like Secretariat closing in the Belmont. The assumption that kids can just pay the bill with borrowed money has to be one of the reasons schools aren’t feeling more pressure to control costs.

I have been threatening to expose the higher education finance emperor’s lack of clothing besides a big fat purse for a while.  It’s coming – just like additional government regulation of higher education finance unless it changes its ways.