By Jason Fossum
MSCSA Director of Government Relations

Now that the 2010 Minnesota state legislative session is under way and moving rapidly, many issues that are important to students will be considered and moved through the process. Having a basic understanding of how issues are dealt with at the Capitol becomes crucial for anyone who wants to follow an issue that they care about.

Traditional breakdowns of the legislative process do a nice job of simplifying an often complicated and detailed process. However, looking at the process from a higher level will not allow someone to fully understand the ins and outs of following legislation.

The first step involves elected officials presenting ideas that are then drafted into legislation or into “bill” form. These bills are then introduced in the House or Senate, or in many cases both chambers for possible consideration. Once a bill is created and drafted, it is given a bill number that allows for easy tracking. Minnesotans are fortunate that our legislative bodies have great websites that make tracking legislation very simple (see the end of this story for links).

Now that a bill has been given its number it will be referred to the committee that has jurisdiction over the subject matter of the bill. For example, legislation pertaining to online college courses would be referred to the Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee in the Minnesota House.

At this point in the process, a member of the legislature must convince the chairperson of the committee to give the bill a hearing. Some committee chairs will hear any bill; some are much more selective on what is heard. If the bill you are interested in is scheduled for a hearing, this is the first chance that the public will have to give input on the issue. These committee hearings are open to the public and are held to get input on ideas.

Once a hearing is held and assuming a bill is supported by the committee, it can move forward through the remainder of the process. That could include hearings in other committees or the bill could move right to the house or senate “floors” for debate by the whole membership of that chamber.

If the bill you care about is supported by both the house and senate and the two versions are identical in every way, the legislation would then be sent to the Governor for action. However, if the bills are not the same, a conference committee will be formed to iron out the differences between the two bills. These committees typically consist of five house and senate members each. Once the conference committee has finished its work, the bill will then be re-passed by the House and Senate and sent to the Governor. In most cases, the Governor will do one of two things to a bill. He or she will either sign the bill into law (the final step if that occurs) or he may issue a veto. If the Governor vetoes legislation, the bill is sent back to the legislature. At that point, the house and senate may try and work out changes with the Governor, or they may attempt to override the veto. A veto override requires a very high vote threshold, but if successful, the bill would become law over the objection of the Governor.

In general, the legislative process can be summarized by thinking about two identical ideas, passing both the house and senate and being signed by the Governor. However, in practice, the process is much more complicated and often very time consuming. There are many different avenues for a bill to either become law or to be prevented from becoming law.

If there is legislation that you are interested in tracking, you can visit www.house.mn or www.senate.mn and use the bill search feature to track bills you may want to find out about. You can search legislation in a number of different ways, including bill number, author, topic, or committee jurisdiction.

As always if you have a question regarding a legislative issue, do not hesitate to contact the MSCSA state office at 651-297-5877.

Darrel Huish Hired as MnSCU CIO

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees in January appointed Darrel Huish vice chancellor and chief information officer for the system.

Huish, 53, has been vice chancellor and chief information officer for Maricopa Community Colleges in Tempe, Ariz., since 2004. From 1996 to 2004, he was assistant vice provost for information technology at Arizona State University. Huish will replace Ken Niemi, who retired in January.

Central Office Spending and Services Reviewed

The Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) released a report in February on the spending the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system allocates for centralized staff and resources and the office’s effectiveness. The report outlines findings in several areas, including oversight by the Board of Trustees, technology investment expenditures, academic program review, and the transfer of credits.

The report found that the system spent $89 million on services and staff at the state office in St. Paul in fiscal year 2009. The OLA reported that the system office meets a significant need for centralized services that create efficiencies across the system, but that improvements should be made to increase efficiency and accountability.

Chancellor McCormick said that the system will review all of the recommendations in the report. “It doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily come to the same conclusion,” said McCormick. “We will process each one, consider it, look at it, and I would think a number of them would be implemented.”

New Candidates for the MnSCU Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees will have five open seats in July, with two of these vacancies for students. The Trustee Candidate Advisory Council (TCAC) recommends non-student candidates to the Governor for appointment, and the Minnesota State College Student Association (MSCSA) makes candidate recommendations for the student positions. Non-student trustees serve six year terms and student trustees are appointed for two years. TCAC is currently seeking candidates to fill seats designated for individuals representing the 1st Congressional District, 8th Congressional District position, and one at-large member. MSCSA will recommend one candidate to represent community college students and another to represent students in technical programs. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) Board of Trustees is a 15-member board that governs the MnSCU system.

MnSCU Board of Trustees Holds Listening Sessions on the Future of the System

The MnSCU Board of Trustees held a series of public listening sessions in January and February in St. Paul, Mankato, Moorhead, Alexandria, and Bemidji. The Board of Trustees asked participants to address the most significant changes or challenges affecting public higher education in Minnesota, how the system can add value and better meet student, employer, and state needs, and what the system’s priorities should be over the next five to ten years.

At the sessions, students, faculty, staff and administrators of nearby campuses voiced their concerns regarding higher education in Minnesota as well as discussed what MnSCU’s top priorities should be in the future. Participants spoke to the rising cost of tuition, textbook prices, and flexible learning options. During these sessions, the MnSCU Board of Trustees made it a priority to listen to its constituents and take notes for future conversations on system planning.

Students First Initiative Planning Underway

In December, MnSCU kicked off work group meetings to plan for implementation of the system-wide Students First initiative. The Students First initiative is a project to align the business practices of the MnSCU system, to make the process of enrolling, registering, and completing college seamless and consistent across the state. The project has six components: single search, single application, single registration, single bill and payment, a graduation planning tool, and shared services. MSCSA students and staff are represented on all six working groups, which will continue meeting throughout Spring 2010.

Work Continues on Credit Transfer

In response to growing student concerns over credit transfer within the MnSCU system, MSCSA and the Minnesota State University Student Association (MSUSA) are working in cooperation with the Office of the Chancellor to survey transfer students across the state on their experience with credit transfer. The survey addresses topics from on-campus advising, to the expectations of students, to the appeals process.

The survey will provide unique data that will identify patterns in the current transfer system to be further researched. The survey was sent to nearly 10,000 students who transferred credits into the MnSCU system in the 2008-2009 academic year. Results from the survey are expected in March of 2010.

By Bruce Humphrey, aka Avov Sao
Ridgewater College

Hello. I am A Variety Of Students, Speaking As One. That’s Avov Sao or just Sao for short.

I want to talk to you today about the 60/120 credit cap that was passed by the Minnesota Legislature to be implemented by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system. As a new student, I heard a lot of things about this legislation, some good, some bad, some true and some not. Let me tell you, it was very confusing and if you are a new student yourself, I imagine you are already confused.

First, let me tell you a little about who I am. As I said, my name is Avov Sao and I am a student at a community and technical college in Minnesota. I am enrolled in a nursing program but I have many friends, much like me, who are in many different programs; from multimedia to marketing, liberal arts to law enforcement, education to economics and many, many more. Believe me when I tell you, MnSCU has something for just about everyone.

In fact, the home page of their web site, mnscu.edu says it best: “We educate Minnesota; we make it work.”

“So what is all the fuss about this legislation called 60/120,” I wondered the first time I saw a flyer on a bulletin board. “This is college. Can’t they figure out that it’s 0.5, 1/2, or 50 percent? Come on. Even I know how to divide 60 and 120.”

Unfortunately, the 60/120 legislation is not that simple. Fortunately, I was able to talk to a lot of folks, ask a lot of questions, sort through a lot of myths and come out with a much clearer picture.

More than anything else, it is the myths that are causing confusion. As I explain the ins and outs of the 60/120 legislation, I will highlight some of the myths and reveal the truth.

Wasn’t 60/120 created to make it harder for students to get what they want?

First of all, let me explain what 60/120 means. The Minnesota state legislature, in 2007, passed into law a provision that capped all associate degrees at 60 credits and all baccalaureate degrees at 120 credits. This meant that institutions could not arbitrarily increase the class load required for degree programs. Ultimately, this provision was designed to save students money.

But what if it takes more than those credits to get my degree? What if I need more training to be ready for the workforce?

From the beginning, there has been a waiver process that allows certain programs to exceed the 60 and/or 120 credit caps. One of the defining features of community colleges is their efforts to provide the nearby business community, with an educated, highly-skilled workforce. There have been waivers granted at nearly every community and technical college in the state.

We have seen the economy change quickly. How difficult is it for our schools to get their waivers granted so they can offer the complete programs that we need?

Check out the process for yourself. I just Googled 60/120 and the top of the list was a Word document that has a flow chart showing the process. At most, it is 8 or 9 steps. Normally, it is 3 or 4. This credit cap was never intended to hinder a college’s ability to respond to the needs of the community or the needs of its students.

Then why bother? If the waiver process is so simple, why have a cap at all? What purpose does it serve?

In the eyes of the legislature, this provision was designed to do one thing: protect the students. They wanted to make sure that students were only being asked to take the type and number of classes that they truly needed to be successful in the workplace.

As colleges compete more and more for limited resources, it was suggested that some administrations may add classes to programs unnecessarily to bring in extra revenue.
As part of the provision, MnSCU was tasked with overseeing this waiver process to ensure that any program that exceeded the 60/120 limit had a very justifiable reason for doing so.

Can you sum up all of this?
Sure. 60/120 is a law that limits the number of credits that colleges can require for an associate’s degree to 60 and a baccalaureate degree to 120; however this law has very broad waiver language written into it so that schools may increase the credit requirements to meet the needs of its students.
What I, Avov Sao, have learned is this:

• The law was designed to protect students and save them money.
• Programs that need more credits will receive waivers.
• The waiver process is simple and efficient.
• Students will get the training they need to be ready for the workforce.

Any student who has more questions about 60/120 can call the Minnesota State College Student Association at 1-877-63-MSCSA.

By Jacque Clinton
Normandale Community College

The state’s legislative session started February 4. That means Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) and the University of Minnesota systems will once again be fighting for funding, after steadily losing funding over the past decade.

Let me start with a brief explanation for those of you who are new to the system. The MnSCU system consists of all public two-year community and technical colleges and the seven state universities. The Minnesota State College Student Association (MSCSA) works on behalf of the two-year students in MnSCU at the legislature. The University of Minnesota system is separate, consisting of its five campuses. Both receive funding from tuition, as well as the state government.

Here is a bit of background on what happened during last year’s legislative session. After the gloomy budget forecasts of this past fall, the 2010-11 MnSCU budget was unallotted (or cut) $50 million by Governor Tim Pawlenty. This did not affect tuition because of a tuition cap that limited increases to 5 percent, bought down to 3 percent by one-time federal stimulus money.
The budget situation is looking equally as tough this year as we head into the legislative session. MnSCU is most likely going to be facing additional cuts–MSCSA’s hope is to minimize these cuts because they often result in higher tuition and program cuts. We realize that the state is in a budget crisis, but we also believe that higher education is one of the ways we can fix the economy. To that end MSCSA is hoping that the tuition cap of 5 percent that the legislature passed last year remains in place.

The Minnesota legislature runs on a two-year or biennial cycle. In normal times the first year is a budgeting year and the second is a bonding year. The 2010 session is a bonding year, which means a lot of proposals for building restoration and new construction on MnSCU campuses. Perhaps not as exciting as a new building, but in many ways more essential is Higher Education Asset Preservation and Repair (HEAPR) money. This is money that can go to fixing a leaky roof, or replacing a faulty heating system. It’s money that’s meant to preserve the buildings we already have, as it’s cheaper to maintain than to rebuild.

The second part of the bonding bill is the actual bonding projects. MnSCU creates a list of prioritized projects the system would like to see built across the state, and asks for money to help fund them. Now that the legislative session has started, the House, Senate and Governor Pawlenty have all released their bonding proposals. The lists are available online:

• MnSCU
• Minnesota House
• Minnesota Senate
• Governor Tim Pawlenty’s proposal

It will be interesting to see how the different proposals play out as the major players jockey for position. The MSCSA state office will follow all the action and be at the Capitol on a daily basis during the session. If you have any questions, call the MSCSA office at 651-297-5877.