One of the main things I’ve been working on as part of my position as GSB’s Director of Information Technology has been working with the Computation Advisory Committee (CAC). CAC is a university level committee that advises the Provost; technically, however the decisions of the committee are pretty much accepted wholly. The main part of CAC’s job is to apportion and distribute student computer fees that are collected every semester, the fees are about $110 for most students and can be nearly double for some . For example engineering students pay $218.50.
With this much money floating around (~$6.5 million) and so many different groups receiving funds (9) directly from the committee and numbers more receiving money directly from the initial 9 finding out where it all goes is a big deal. At the moment the committee asks for reports every year in the fall semester for the previous fiscal year’s numbers. These reports come in all shapes and sizes, and levels of completeness.
To say the reports are incomplete would be kind, and I’m feeling kind tonight. The reports as they currently stand have no requirements on them at all. You’re probably thinking “But TJ obviously they have simple things like a total amount spent and report everything they charged to student fees?” Well apparently the colleges and departments don’t think that this is so obvious. Things as simple as totals at the bottom of the report (I kid you not, one was simply 6 pages of items and prices) or reporting every cent (a particular college year after year failed to report any operating expenses) haven’t been done. In addition to this yearly departments set aside funds for large projects such as buying whole new labs (completely understandable) but the result is even less is reported on these reports.
How bad are they? Well for the three most recent fiscal years that reports are available (2003-2006 school years) on average (without further investigation into spending, only going off of the reports) student fees went 18% unspent. 18%, for most students that would be ~$40 back in their pockets. Now further review of the situation finds that it’s likely that the funds are indeed being spent and used properly but without good reports it’s truly impossible to tell.
As a result of prodding by GSB the committee has taken a faster step towards a formalized reporting policy. The former chair (he retired, didn’t resign in disgrace, to his defense he took over the committee this fall) has submitted a draft proposal and I have submitted a separate draft. We’ll be debating the proposals at our meeting on November 29th and I think that we’ll be able to pass a good policy but we’ll have to see.
So that’s part of what I’ve been working on. As a result of this rather scandalous poor reporting the Iowa State Daily printed an article on the topic which I think is a pretty good read.
And students say that GSB doesn’t do anything.
I'm Trevin Ward, I'm a Political Science Student at Iowa State University in Ames, IA.