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By Hailey Murphy
Without informing or consulting with faculty or students, Western has signed a ten year contract with Study Group, a private corporation, to dramatically increase the number of international students at Western.
The contract, obtained in full by the AS Review, states that Western will pay 57 percent of the first year tuition of students recruited by Study Group to Study Group, along with 25 percent in their second year, 10 percent in their third year and 0 percent in their fourth.
This decision has been met with displeasure from the faculty senate and union.
“This has been a true betrayal of shared governance,” Allison Giffen, president of the faculty senate, said. “Shared governance has been a value that this president and this administration have been expressing commitment to since the day he arrived… I’m stunned.”
It took weeks for administration to give faculty the contract, Giffen said. Once they finally did, many pieces of information– including the amounts Western would be paying– were redacted.
When the AS Review requested a copy of the contract under Washington’s public records law, these same amounts were redacted. Administration cited a section of the records law that allows the redaction of trade secrets.
The controversy caused the committee drafting Western’s strategic plan to decide to suspend their work, Friday, November 17. On Monday they sent out an email to all majors on campus explaining their decision.
Paqui Paredes is the co-chair of Strategic Planning Committee that has been working on the plan since January. They were planning on presenting a draft to the Board of Trustees in December, but in light of the revelations, and due to the plan’s emphasis on shared governance, they decided to put things on hold, she said.
“We thought it would be important to talk to the president and the provost about how we are envisioning shared governance moving forward,” she said.
President Randhawa and Provost Brent Carbajal met with the committee Monday afternoon, Paul Cocke, director of Communications and Marketing, confirmed.
“The president and provost share the committee’s desire to clarify the role and understanding of shared governance on our campus, and look forward to defining some practical next steps to that end,” Cocke said in an email.
The committee expects to update the campus community about next steps after Thanksgiving Break, Paredes said.
The reason faculty was left out of this conversation was due to time constraints, Carbajal said at a November 13 faculty senate meeting.
In the spring of 2016, Western started engaging with a different educational agent to recruit international students. After months of no communication, the plan started falling apart.
When Donald Trump’s election deterred students from wanting to study in the United States and when the corporation Western was talking to signed with a different Pacific-Northwest institution, it became clear that there would be no agreement, Carbajal said.
Yet it was still the university’s goal to have an internationalization initiative up and running by Fall 2018, Carbajal said. In order to accomplish that, the process of signing on with Study Group was rushed, and faculty got left out.
“Things had to move quickly to not lose years in international recruitment,” Carbajal told the senate.
In an email to faculty sent Friday, November 17, Randhawa apologized for not engaging faculty more directly and pointed out that the internationalization initiative had been ongoing since before he was hired in 2016.
“Being new to Western, I made assumptions about the extent to which the university community had vetted the topic. I assumed that the contract with Study Group would be the culmination of an almost 18-month process and thus moved forward last year,” Randhawa said. “In retrospect, we should have had direct conversations with faculty over the nature of the partnership with Study Group. For not having had those conversations, I sincerely apologize. Please know that I greatly value shared governance, and both Provost Carbajal and I believe that our collaborative work with faculty is critical in advancing our goals.
What is Global Pathways?
The Global Pathways program is part of the goal to increase the number of international students on Western’s campus from 1 percent to 5 percent, according to Carbajal.
In the program, Study Group recruits and admits international students to Western, as well as providing support services for them throughout their education.
Randhawa has long been a proponent of international students and exchange programs. In his time as provost at Oregon State University, the international student population grew from 3 percent of the student body to 11 percent.
OSU engaged in a partnership with a private company similar to Study Group, Into University Partnerships.
Giffen said they were told the goal is, initially, to bring in about 75 students, with a goal of international students be about 5 percent of the student body, somewhere between 750 to maybe 1000 students.
“Which is a pretty significant number, particularly given the fact that the provost has indicted that the first wave of students will be largely in STEM fields, which already are filled with bottlenecks on our campus,” Giffen said.
Carbajal indicated that the first students will be from China and India, although he said that Study Group is an expert at recruiting students from all over the world in a variety of different fields.
Randhawa pointed to this as one of Study Group’s selling points in a Q&A sent with his email to faculty and published on Western Today.
“Study Group has unmatched global reach and capacity, including the ability to focus on specific region recruitment…This capability is important because we seek diversity within our international student population itself,” Randhawa said. “While pent-up demand might have it that initially most students will come from only a handful of countries, Study Group and WWU will routinely reflect on diversity and continually aim for a diverse pathway.”
As part of the program, international students will be offered a pathway year. This pathway year will consist of classes from the Intensive English Program (IEP), 100-level GUR’s as well as some credit-bearing courses. Offering this pathway year opens up the opportunity for non-English speakers to attend Western.
“[Program participants] spend their first year, the pathway year, in a special program to gain the required English proficiency for full admission, participate in classes designed to help them understand the expectations in U.S. higher education, assimilate into the life and culture of the United States, and complete some first-year coursework,” said an introductory letter on the program submitted to the faculty senate.
Along with the Global Pathways program a center for program participants will be created. The center will be staffed by Study Group and will provide support services for pathway students during their time at Western, according to the contract. The space, equipment and resources necessary for the center are to be provided by Western.
Randhawa indicated in the Q&A that the funding would come from pathway student tuition.
“It is anticipated that this revenue [international student tuition] will complement state funding and allow us to address access issues… with respect to increasing and improving space,” Randhawa said.
Western’s prioritizing of the initiative concerns AS President Simrun Chhabra. Western has promised to provide space for an international student center, and yet students of color had to fight and pay for their own space on campus.
“Just bringing a larger amount of them doesn’t solve the problems that students of color on campus are facing right now,” Chhabra said to the faculty senate. “And we’ve had to fight for this space, we have to pay for this space that we want. So when I hear that we’re going to have more international students… I would hope that you would think about, very strongly… if you’re really valuing diversity or if you’re really just valuing the image of what diversity looks like.”
Another concern, raised by Chhabra, is whether the internationalization initiative is a step in the right direction for diversity.
“The fact of the matter is that this is for diversity, and really what that means is that it’s co-opting identities in order to increase the university’s image,” said Chhabra
In the Q&A, Randhawa said the international students would not take the place of any in-state students.
“We believe that we have a moral imperative to expand access to higher education, particularly for individuals from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, including first generation and ethnically-diverse students,” he said, pointing to the diversity of Western’s incoming class.
He said he did not expect the new students to change the current 87 percent to 13 percent ratio of resident to non-resident students.
“We believe this partnership will help us ensure an equitable and transformative education for all students, and we expect that this institutional effort to have our students reflect the increasing population diversity in Washington and the nation will continue going forward,” he said.
Shared Governance
The principle of shared governance is something Randhawa has expressed great commitment to, according to Giffen. This principle says that all major decisions regarding an institution should have input from faculty, administration and students.
However, there was no consultation with the faculty. It wasn’t until after the contract was signed in late September that faculty were informed.
“The university had been working on this for 18 months and they had already signed the contract with Study Group before they made this information largely public,” Steven Garfinkle, president of the faculty union, said. “[The union] has worked, for the better part of a decade, to create a partnership with the university administration where we work together to forward the mission of the university and to benefit our students. This is a tremendous breakdown in that partnership.”
Faculty have been assured that they’ll be part of the planning process moving forward. The academic working group has been formed to plan the curriculum of the pathway year, to define a set of principles for the Global Pathway program and to determine where the center will go.
Those serving on the academic working group include Marc Geisler, associate dean for of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ed Love, associate professor of Marketing, two unnamed IEP faculty and Vicki Hamblin, executive director of the Institute for Global Engagement, according to Hamblin..
Since the faculty senate meeting on November 13, the working group has invited two faculty from the senate and two faculty from the union to join, according to Giffen.
Western has been working towards internationalization since the the Provost’s Working Group on Internationalization recommended increasing the number of international students at Western in 2010, Randhawa said in the Q&A.
“The idiosyncrasies of this type of contract (confidentiality, exclusivity terms negotiated individually by each university, proprietary considerations, etc.), made the process very complex,” he said.
“We acknowledge that from the beginning of the conversation in 2016 and over multiple presidencies, the process was allowed to too strongly dictate communication and the lack of it, but we also see the implementation of university strategic goals as one of our responsibilities within a shared governance environment.”
He said the president and vice presidents regret the process and “errors of omission” and reaffirmed their commitment to shared governance.
Why Study Group
The contract with Study Group has large financial implications. While Western will pay nothing upfront, each student recruited by Study Group who directly enrolls comes with an automatic $5,000 fee. For students in the Pathway program a chunk of their tuition is paid to Study Group.
In a student’s pathway year, 57 percent of their tuition will go to Study Group, according to the contract. Those values decrease to 25 percent in their second year, 10 percent in their third and 0 in their fourth.
For students entering a graduate program, these values are 45 percent in their first quarter, 33 in their second, 15 in their third and 0 in their fourth.
International students would be charged out-of-state student rates, according to Randhawa.
Western admissions puts non-resident tuition for the 2017 -18 year at $20,760. At that rate Western would pay Study Group just less than $19,100 over the four years a student was enrolled.
Additionally, it states in the contract that any international student recruited by Western– not by Study Group– will cost Western $1,000 in that student’s third quarter.
So if Study Group’s services are so expensive, why did Western partner up with them?
There have been a number of internationalization efforts at Western throughout the years. These attempts have all ended up unsuccessful, with international student population remaining near 1 percent.
“We lacked a source of funding, we lacked the infrastructure, and we lacked the expertise, making international recruitment almost impossible,” Hamblin said to the faculty senate. “That reality is what motivated the need to seek an external partnership.”
Another reason, according to Hamblin, is the lack of support currently available to international students. She said that, in the intensive English program, only one or two students matriculate into Western as a degree-seeking student. Additionally, exchange students who come to Western for study abroad programs often struggle.
“Those [exchange] students can either do really well or they can crash and burn,” Hamblin told the faculty senate. “And they crash and burn because the infrastructure at Western does not give them much support. We have one international student advisor for 181 international students, and that’s at one percent.”
Hamblin said that, with Study Group’s help, Western will create a “pipeline of support” to assure that pathway students are successful.
In the Q&A, President Randhawa said a benefit of partnering with Study Group is their global reach.
“It is simply beyond the ability of Western to develop such a network or global presence from its own resources, and the university lacks the sophisticated knowledge of individual national educational systems, marketing, and recruiting channels. Study Group has a reputation for success in recruiting students from all over the World,” Randhawa said.
He also said that Study Group pays for tours of Western by agents, and for Western faculty and staff to visit “key markets.”
Admissions Concerns
On top of faculty frustrations regarding the lack of communication, there have been a number of concerns with the deal itself.
For one thing, the admission standards for Global Pathway students are lower than those of traditionally admitted students. They don’t have as many required high school courses. There’s no SAT or GMAT requirement. They don’t have to complete a common application, but instead complete a Study Group application.
Additionally, because of the option to take the intensive English in their pathway year, pathway students don’t need to be proficient in the English language. For recruited students attending the pathway year, their minimum score requirement on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is 4.5. For international students entering directly into an undergraduate program, the minimum is 6.5.
A score of five indicates a “modest” English user who is expected to make many mistakes but grasps meaning in basic situations, while a score of four indicates a “limited” user who only grasps meaning in familiar situations.
Western’s 6.5 requirement makes it the highest in the state, alongside Washington State University. The University of Washington and other state universities only require a score of 6.0.
While Carbajal said that Study Group has techniques to protect against testing fraud, Cheiron McMahill, a faculty member from TESOL and the Woodring College of Education, is concerned students could enter the program with less English knowledge than indicated in their test scores.
Students who Western rejects may end up being admitted anyways. In the contract, it states that Western must “refer International students to Study Group who do not meet the University’s entry requirements, but do meet the Entry Criteria for the Program.”
What’s distinct about the lower admission standards is that Western and Study Group mutually agreed upon them. The University of Vermont, which Western cited as a school that’s been highly pleased with Study Group, has equal admission standards for their pathway students and non-pathway students.
These admission requirements are a concern to some faculty because they feel it places students on an uneven playing field while also failing to set students up for success.
“If one group is going to have a very different set of entry requirements: A. Is that fair to our in-state students who service to whom is our mission, and B, Is that fair to those international students? Are we really setting them up to succeed when we’re bringing them in at lower standards?” Garfinkle said.
When questioned about the lower standards during a faculty senate meeting, Carbajal had no explanation and said that the admissions office may have more answers.
Starting in Fall 2018 Western has lowered admission requirements for all students, not just global pathways students, from a 3.0 GPA to 2.5, with a holistic review of a GPA between 2.3 and 2.49, Randhawa said in the Q&A.
“We are confident the standards set in place will favorably position Western to achieve desired goals of increasing our international student enrollment, and to do so without sacrificing the level of preparation of the students who will be welcomed into our community,” Randhawa said. “Bottom line, Western is solely responsible for all admissions decisions.”
Tenure Track Concerns
Another concern for faculty is the potential disproportionate amount of non-tenure track faculty that’ll be involved in the pathway year. The courses in that year consist of intensive English courses and 100-level GUR’s, which are typically taught by non-tenure track faculty.
If 5 percent more students are requiring entry into these classes, the administration will have to hire more professors to accommodate. These professors will likely be non-tenure track faculty, according to Giffen, as they are cheaper to employ and have the necessary qualifications to teach these classes. However, this could potentially go against the collective bargaining agreement between Western and the union.
In section 7 of the collective bargaining agreement it says, “Consistent with the academic mission and University resources, the University will increase the number of tenure-track positions when adding faculty.”
Meaning that, if more non-tenure-track faculty are being added, more tenure-track faculty must be added, too. This is for the sake of student learning environment, Giffen said.
“There’s been so much research done on student success and retention and graduation rates all improve when there are more tenure track faculty,” Giffen said.
Having access to these faculty, who are long-term employees of the university, who can supplement their teaching with research and who can bring students in on research, allow students greater opportunity in their education. The union says that hiring non-tenure track faculty isn’t the answer to budget issues, considering the effect that would have on student learning environment.
“If they’re going to put 750 students into a program that currently has no tenure-track faculty, they’re clearly adding faculty,” said Garfinkle. “Are they maximizing the role of tenure track faculty at the university when they do that?”
President Randhawa, in the Q&A with Western Today, said that the revenue from international student tuition will help Western hire 30 to 35 tenure-track faculty.
Trust Issues
There’s still a sense among the faculty that administration is keeping secrets. Not only because of the lack of consultation, but also due to withholding information within the contract.
It took weeks for administration to give faculty the contract. Once they finally did, many pieces of information– including the amounts Western would be paying– were redacted.
“It’s a prevalent concern that the administration chose to redact part of the contract,” said Giffen during the faculty senate meeting. “Which I can really only read as a willingness to put competitive desires of a for-profit corporation above those of the faculty.”
When the AS Review requested a copy of the contract under Washington’s public records law, these same amounts were redacted. Administration cited a section of the records law that allows the redaction of trade secrets.
Yet both faculty and the AS Review were able to acquire the original version of the contract.
“Suffice it to say that faculty found a copy of the unredacted contract, which has been in circulation for a couple of weeks now… The administration did not provide us with it,” Giffen said.
Another concern for some faculty is the the intent of the partnership. Study Group is a for-profit corporation. Their motivation to make money is clear.
Due to the payment distribution outlined in the contract, associate professor in the College of Business and Economics Jason Kanov questioned the type of student Study Group intends on admitting. Since Study Group will be mostly paid off by the end of a student’s second year, they won’t lose much money if a student doesn’t complete the degree.
In response, Carbajal said that Study Group has a graduation success rate of 90 percent, which is another reason why administration chose Study Group.
Also, Randhawa and the administration had this concern early in the process, he said. They negotiated different percentages with Study Group to achieve the payment distribution currently in the contract.
“Typically it’s 80 to 90 [percent in the first year], then 0 from that point on,” Randhawa said.
Additionally, faculty and students alike are concerned about Western’s intentions for this contract. Because of the hefty price of out-of-state tuition, it’s possible that Western’s motivations are less about diversity and more about revenue for the university.
“Frankly, the partnership with Study Group and Study Group’s partnership with other institutions, as we’ve looked at it, looks more like it’s a financial agreement than a serving and internationalizing mission,” Garfinkle said.
There’s no denying that this deal will make Western revenue, with international students paying high tuition. But revenue isn’t inherently bad. This revenue can help serve all students across campus.
“It is a wonderful source of revenue,” Randhawa told The New York Times in 2014, referring to OSU’s internationalization initiative. “It helps us afford to admit more resident students, offer them more aid, expand the faculty and infrastructure.”