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Saturday, October 27, 2007

With Europe's Subservient Universities...

...in mind, UD has always urged as little state intervention in America's campuses as possible. But when your public university system can't govern itself, the state has to come in, at least temporarily.

One of the most shocking stories UD's covered on this blog has involved spectacular corruption at New Jersey's University of Medicine and Dentistry.

When a public university rots, and goes on rotting, so hideously, it has implications for the entire state system. The entire state system, especially when other campuses have their own accountability problems, will take the fall for a scandal of this magnitude.




'Thirteen years after New Jersey dismantled higher education oversight, the entire system has shown itself to be vulnerable to waste of taxpayer and tuition dollars and abuse of positions by officials, a state commission reported Thursday.

The New Jersey Commission of Investigation said it found instances of officials taking gifts from contractors, accounting systems that were virtually indecipherable, patronage appointments to boards, out-of-control borrowing and little oversight of hiring practices and discretionary spending.

In the case of the alleged gift-taking, at the scandal-plagued University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the commission's findings were serious enough to be specifically forwarded to state prosecutors for further review, according to the report.

... For example, Rutgers University, the state's largest higher education institution, had an accounting system that was so poorly integrated, with record-keeping so decentralized, that commission investigators had to hire a private forensic accounting firm to gain an understanding of it, according to the report.

A study of a random sample of Rutgers University expense reports submitted by faculty members found that nearly two-thirds - 37 of 58 - had compliance problems. A university professor, for example, received about $5,500 to take six people, plus family members, to a workshop in Lake Placid, N.Y., but submitted no documentation to support the expenditure...

... State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, said the commission's report backs up his proposed legislation to increase state oversight of higher education.'