Nevada higher ed officials quashed report critical of their management

When state lawmakers wanted ideas about how to improve the state’s community colleges last year, the Nevada System of Higher Education hired a Colorado-based think tank to scrutinize the four schools.

But when the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems produced a report highly critical of the state’s higher education leadership, the study was quashed.

A series of emails between higher education system officials obtained by the Review-Journal through the state’s public records law shows state officials feared the report could be used by their critics and suppressed the findings in fear that reforms would dramatically reduce their authority over the schools.

In an email, Constance Brooks, the higher education system’s vice chancellor for government and community affairs, remarked to colleagues that the report shed a “very negative light” on the state’s Board of Regents and asked if the audience for the report was the system’s “antagonists.”

“I say we just take what we like out of the report and do away with the rest,” she suggested.

So that’s what happened.

In an email to his staff, Chancellor Dan Klaich said he wrote to the researchers in “blunt” terms, telling them the report had given his office “heartburn.”

Their rewrite was better received.

“I like it. I think it is believable,” Klaich later told his staff. “You could draw attention to things that would be more positive for the NSHE, but I think that would call independence (of the researchers) into question.”

In the end, not even that report was sent to lawmakers who were considering ways to improve higher education in Nevada. Klaich told the Review-Journal it became an internal four-page document he shared only with the president of the College of Southern Nevada.

“I wanted a report that was reflective of what I thought were the facts,” Klaich told the newspaper.

Academic freedom is an important concept in higher education — so much so that the American Association of University Professors formally censures institutions that try to prevent faculty members from publishing legitimate research results that might be controversial or politically unpopular.

The idea is that society is better served if independent researchers find facts and let the chips fall as they may.

But Nevada’s higher education establishment has long been criticized as an agency run by people who lack a background in higher education — a point raised in the very report that Klaich buried.

When told about Klaich’s effort to suppress findings he didn’t agree with, academics, members of the state Board of Regents and others said they weren’t surprised.

They’ve seen it before.

In 2012, the Legislature selected SRI International, a prestigious nonprofit consulting firm spun off by Stanford University, to recommend an overhaul of the state’s complicated higher education funding formula.

SRI did the work, not knowing that Klaich had hired the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems — the same Colorado-based think tank he used last year — to duplicate the work. NCHEMS had competed for the Legislature’s research contract but had lost out to SRI.

Klaich said he feared SRI would need to play a lot of catch-up and he hired NCHEMS, which has a history with his agency, to give the Legislature additional information. The move drew the ire of legislators, who criticized him for abusing the process and creating a mess because the two research groups reached conclusions that clashed.

When told about the effort to quash the community college report last year, Roland Stephen, an associate director for SRI International, just laughed.

Stephen said no one made it clear to SRI why Klaich had hired someone to do its work. Considering that SRI routinely handles complicated federal research contracts, Stephen said he felt his group was more than up to the task of evaluating Nevada’s formula.

He said the Colorado think tank’s willingness to rework its recommendations to match Klaich’s definition of “believable” provides a clue.

“I can tell you why he (Klaich) wouldn’t want to work with us — because we don’t work like that,” Stephen said. “That is inconsistent with the way SRI works with clients when doing independent assessments and evaluations.”

When contacted for comment in March, NCHEMS President Dennis Jones said he felt the Review-Journal was “looking for dirt where there is none.” When asked last week to elaborate, he declined comment, saying the newspaper was “doing a hatchet job, not a story.”

MUCH TO LOSE

There was a lot at stake in last year’s interim study.

The quality of Nevada colleges and universities has been the subject of lively debate in recent years, with business and political leaders openly saying that mediocre programs retard the state’s economic development.

In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Brian Sandoval noted that “we know the jobs of the future will require two-thirds of us to have post-high school credentials.

“The New Nevada will need more scientists, machinists, engineers, computer programmers, welders and other STEM workers to grow our new industries,” Sandoval said, warning that improvement in the system is a critical need and that “our colleges and universities are the key.”

Nevada’s seven public colleges and universities have their own presidents but are overseen by an elected Board of Regents.

Klaich, an attorney, has had a hand in running that system for 25 years, first as a regent from 1983 to 1997, with two terms as chairman of the board. In 2004 he went to work for the board, serving as executive vice chancellor, vice chancellor for legal affairs and administration and chief counsel before his appointment as chancellor — the system’s chief executive officer — in 2009.

The NCHEMS report’s conclusions were clear: How Nevada handles higher education isn’t cutting it. It entertained radical overhauls aimed at improving the state’s community college system. Among them was a statement that questioned the ability of Klaich’s agency to accomplish any of its improvement goals.

The Nevada System of Higher Education “faces a major challenge of addressing policy issues across all missions from the universities to the community colleges,” the researchers wrote.

That was seen as a bit harsh.

“The report appears to describe a disaster, which we are not. If we had shared it with others outside of our group it could (would) be used to bludgeon us,” wrote Frank Woodbeck, executive director of the College Collaborative with the Nevada System of Higher Education, in an email to Klaich.

Woodbeck went on to question if the researchers felt Nevada’s higher education system was healthy and only in need of minor adjustment.

Woodbeck, previously director of the Nevada Department of Employment, Training & Rehabilitation, had only been on the job for a little more than a month when the report came his way. His position had been created as an assurance that the system was doing enough on behalf of community colleges, but the researchers noted that in other states such positions go to people with community college leadership experience. That experience doesn’t exist in Nevada’s system, researchers said.

“Absolutely agree,” Klaich said in an email to the researchers. “Frank is our first step toward that but does not have the type of experience you mention here.”

Woodbeck last week said it was important for him to weigh in on the draft in a “forthright manner” on inaccuracies in the report, and said he based his assessment on his experience with the community colleges and their workforce development roles during his previous state job.

In late April, Klaich said he wasn’t out to whitewash the report, as shown by his agreement on criticism of some issues.

“I didn’t want them to just issue a report that says everything is 76 and sunny,” Klaich said.

But Klaich said researchers didn’t find what he expected, and he feared they hadn’t had enough time to reach the conclusions they did.

In the end, not even the toned-down version went to lawmakers who were looking for ways to improve the system.

Last June the interim committee determined Klaich’s agency should attempt to strengthen the community colleges within the current system.

‘THIN-SKINNED’

Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a former state senator who served on the interim committee, said she would be extremely disappointed to hear that the higher education system would flinch at criticism but noted that as a law­maker for 18 years she found the system’s guarded nature a constant problem.

“For years we’ve been trying to go in and clarify things, go in and try to make changes, but it is very difficult to make changes in that system because in our statute they don’t have to respond to us,” Cegavske said. “All we have to do is give them money.”

Regent Trevor Hayes, who was elected last November, called the agency’s reaction baffling and harmful.

After reviewing the draft report and emails about it, Hayes said he doesn’t see how letting people read the initial version would have caused any harm.

“It seemed like there were a lot of comments in the emails from people who felt insulted from (the consultant’s) look at our system, but look — we’re not running the California university system here. There’s room for improvement,” Hayes said.

“Why can’t we take criticism and try to improve? I don’t know why we’re so thin-skinned.”

Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Lincy Institute, a think tank that pushed for lawmakers to put the community colleges under a separate governing structure, said they also faced opposition for suggesting change.

David Damore, a UNLV associate professor of political science who worked on the Lincy research, said Klaich went to Don Snyder, who was then acting UNLV president, and tried to get him to halt the researcher’s work.

Klaich said he never tried to shut down Lincy’s work, however, and Snyder said he didn’t remember any dustup.

“I have a good ability to turn the page on those type of issues pretty quickly,” Snyder said.

Regardless of the reaction, Damore said, it would have been helpful for lawmakers to have known that Klaich’s consultants raised concerns similar to Lincy’s findings.

Hayes said the higher education system needs an honest look at its problems. Otherwise, it’s hard to get needed support from legislators and business leaders.

“We keep telling everyone things are fine, and it’s hard to get help,” Hayes said.

Yet in asking the researchers to tone down their criticism of his agency, Klaich pulled no punches in saying what he feared would happen if business leaders critical of Nevada’s higher education system ever saw it.

“Wow, this is a truly condemning summary,” Klaich wrote on a copy of the report he sent back to the NCHEMS researchers. “If I were the LV Metro Chamber I would be licking my chops and sending you a thank-you note.”

A former chamber employee who worked closely on this issue agreed with Klaich’s assessment of the reaction. The initial report, he said, echoed concerns he was raising to the agency.

“It’s frightening — there it is, in black and white,” said the former chamber employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of sensitivities in his current job. “These guys don’t want to take (the problems) into consideration.”

Regent Mark Doubrava said the system’s handling of the NCHEMS report is upsetting but no surprise. At his first regents meeting in 2011, he recalled, a different consultant mentioned during a presentation that a research conclusion was thrown out at the direction of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Even if researchers offer opinions, their work shouldn’t be discarded, Doubrava said.

“Let’s hear that opinion,” Doubrava said. “We paid for it!”

Doubrava said he wants to know how many consultants the system has and who gets to see report drafts.

Using outside experts gives the impression of an objective opinion, but that objectivity is in jeopardy if the system dictates the findings, he said.

And if an agency works mainly with the same consultant, the consultant might place keeping the agency happy above delivering unbiased research, Doubrava said.

Emails show Aims McGuinness, a senior associate with NCHEMS, did tell Klaich the think tank could make the entire draft “go away, if necessary” and would work with him “to do whatever is necessary.”

Everyone knows Nevada needs to start doing something different to improve education, but real change is rare, Doubrava said.

“Who benefits from the status quo?” Doubrava asked. “We shouldn’t be scared of information.”

Contact Bethany Barnes at bbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Find her on Twitter: @betsbarnes