SUNY report card is tough to comprehend

The State University of New York has released a “report card” that Chancellor Nancy Zimpher promises to use to increase accountability.

It was released this week, to much fanfare, at a Buffalo event attended by dozens of higher education leaders. The document is supposedly prepared for the public, but the casual user will have great difficulty making any sense of it.

Here’s what Zimpher said it will do:

“Today, our performance in every respect is unveiled for all to see. This report card is our message to New York that SUNY is your university; we are a public institution of higher education unafraid to regularly and forthrightly evaluate ourselves so we can provide the best education to our students and be an economic driver for our state.”

The report cards we received throughout our schooling had letters or numbers, a simple system of measurement that let us know how we mastered the material. Unfortunately, even though this report card comes from an institution of higher learning, it is anything but simple.

For those not familiar with the vernacular of higher education administrators, it will be of little value. It does not make clear the areas where SUNY is deficient, where it needs to improve, and reads more like a glossy advertisement that lays out the financial impact of SUNY on communities and the number of minorities it attracts.

The assessment offers no easy comparison of SUNY to other higher education systems. Instead, data on SUNY is presented separately from national data in charts and graphs.

For example, the average SUNY retention rate is displayed in one graph and while a separate graph show three different bars representing “high,” “median,” and “low” retention rates nationally. Perhaps the presentation of the data is poorly designed, or perhaps it was never intended to be an honest accounting. See for yourself: http://www.suny.edu/powerofsuny/reportcard/index.cfm.

Many will be lost as soon as they read the report card guide. Here’s how it starts:

“This document is not intended to be a standalone product. To understand the full scope of The Power of SUNY one will need to read the original strategic plan published in April 2010 and the baseline Report Card published in May 2011. As the third document in a sequence, this report card focuses on data rather than narrative.”

If you had any report card in your academic career that required you read two other documents to understand it, please let me know.

Firefighters in school

After they put out the flames, they can pick up the books.

Volunteer firefighters make no money for saving lives. They don’t just put out flames, they respond to emergency medical calls and even help people pump our their flooded basements, as the Schodack Landing Volunteer Fire Company did for me during Tropical Storm Irene.

Now, there is a generous reimbursement program that will send more firefighters to school. The Firemen’s Association of the State of New York recently introduced a Higher Education Learning Plan. Volunteer firefighters who do not currently hold associate or higher degrees will be eligible for a 100 percent tuition reimbursement as long as they maintain good grades. There is no restriction on the degree.

The program is funded by a $4.3 million grant and the goal of the program is to attract and maintain 15,189 new volunteer firefighters over the next four years.

“Now more than ever, we need volunteers serving our communities so that the same optimal level of fire and emergency protection can be sustained for the safety of the citizens of this state,” George Davenport, chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee, said in a statement.

Volunteer fire companies throughout New York need more members and the new program is expected to swell their ranks. The deadline to apply for tuition reimbursement for the fall 2011 semester is Saturday and Feb. 1 for the spring 2012 semester.

In New York, volunteer fire departments cover an area of 47,214 square miles and protect 9.8 million people through 1,740 volunteer agencies served by 88,841 firefighters, according to the association.