Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

editorial:

In editing report, chancellor interferes with regents, lawmakers

The chairman of the Board of Regents, which governs the Nevada System of Higher Education, has hired an attorney at a cost of $595 an hour, up to a $50,000 max, to help regents decide whether they should be upset with Chancellor Dan Klaich.

The attorney was asked to investigate the appropriateness of Klaich commissioning a consultant’s report last year about how Nevada’s community colleges should be governed and then telling the author to rewrite parts of it so they’d be more to his liking.

There are three basic models for governing community colleges: with the same Board of Regents that oversees UNLV, UNR and the Desert Research Institute, as has recently been the case; with a committee of regents and a vice chancellor who would focus primarily on community colleges; or with a governing board dedicated to overseeing the community colleges and Nevada State College. A state legislative committee studied the issue last year, and Klaich wanted the outsider’s report to reinforce his position that the four community colleges and Nevada State College should remain under his watch within the Nevada System of Higher Education, as a “system within a system.”

Klaich hired Aims McGuinness, a consultant with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, at a cost of $27,700 to produce that report. The two men already knew and spoke well of each other.

But Klaich felt burned by McGuinness’ report because it included observations that reflected poorly on NSHE’s management of the community colleges. A volley of emails obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal through open-records laws showed Klaich and his key staff felt they were being undermined in their contention that the community colleges were well served under Klaich’s oversight.

Klaich complained to the report’s author and his boss, then sent the draft report to his top staff and followed up with an email to them in which he said, “I have reviewed and agonized over this report. I have written to Dennis and Aims in very blunt terms and I believe incorporated all of your suggestions, concerns and frustrations.”

In his response, McGuinness acknowledged “the potential for (the draft report’s) misuse.” He wrote: “This whole draft can go away, if necessary. ... We can totally redraft it. Whatever works for you.”

McGuinness and Klaich told the Sun that such collaboration is common between consultants and their clients, and management experts generally agree, depending on the context. Here are some examples of what McGuinness wrote and how Klaich responded:

• After noting that community colleges are distinguished from universities in terms of who they serve, cost of tuition and flexibility in offering classes, McGuinness wrote, “State and system policies (governance, finance and regulation) designed for university missions will not in many cases support effective community colleges.” Klaich responded: “My point here is that some, in fact I bet many, will support the colleges ... a theme which I may likely repeat.”

• “The NSHE staff faces a major challenge of addressing policy issues across all missions from the universities to the community colleges,” McGuinness wrote. “The experience of other systems is that having senior staff with significant community college leadership contributes to the trust that community colleges have in the system and their willingness to participate in system initiatives. This staff experience currently does not exist at NSHE.” Klaich responded: “Absolutely agree.”

• McGuinness wrote in his draft summary: “NSHE currently does not have the benefits of an effective community college system” in terms of supporting each college, providing a means for them to share resources, offering a means within regents’ policy to address issues unique to community colleges, and linking them to a statewide workforce system. Klaich’s response: “Wow, this is a truly condemning summary.”

Klaich and McGuinness huddled over the language and, two months later, the final report concluded in part — and in stark contrast to the draft: “In summary, NSHE is already performing well in terms of the characteristics of ‘best practice’ overall system policy leadership and coordination as well as in supporting effective community colleges.”

The revised report still was not presented to regents nor the Senate committee studying the issue — perhaps because it still reflected blemishes within NSHE management ranks and would have opened the door for a conversation that Klaich might not have wanted. In any event, legislators and regents each have come down in favor of Klaich’s “system within a system,” which is now being adopted.

And Board of Regents Chairman Rick Trachok is seeking the advice from an attorney about whether Klaich’s involvement in the consultant’s report was improper. We’ll offer that advice for free: It’s one thing for a client to collaborate with a consultant on how to market a new brand of automobile or energy drink. But it’s quite another to insert oneself into a consultant’s report on college governance and instruct rewrites and edits because you don’t like how you come out smelling in the first version. It is disingenuous, if not ethically fraudulent.

If Klaich thought an outside expert’s views would be valuable and worth the expenditure of public money, it should have been shared transparently with regents from the start. It would offer regents and others fodder on which to formulate policy, which Klaich would then carry out. It’s not his place to filter what information should or shouldn’t reach the regents or state legislators.

Regents should see it as their job to set broad initiatives for the system after they have a fair and full (i.e. unedited) research report and recommendations from executive staff.

And that’s the main breakdown here: By editing the report to better serve his purposes, Klaich denied his bosses the opportunity to do their part by making the large-scale judgment about what should happen with the community colleges. It’s the definition of bureaucratic manipulation. You have to trust your CEO to tell you the complete story.

We now wonder how many other reports have been ordered by Klaich and tailored to suit his agenda.

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