Holiday News Dump: Dickinson State Releases Awful Campus Quality Survey Results

The North Dakota University System was, earlier this month, tried to get away with releasing a heavily redacted version of Dickinson State University’s latest campus quality survey. Even the results released to the public were pretty embarrassing for the university, but higher ed officials redacted specific comments put into the surveys by faculty and staff at the university and sicced their lawyers on reporters asking to see the full report.

North Dakota’s university officials are used to being able to bully the media, and usually the state’s reporters are pliant, but this time around they stuck to their guns and the full report has been released.

On New Year’s Eve, with the report from the Dickinson Press being filed on New Year’s Day, when most North Dakotans are no doubt recovering from the holiday celebrations.

The lengths to which the university system will go to avoid transparency and accountability never cease to amaze.

The Press doesn’t really include a lot of the specific comments from the CQS, so I’ve requested a copy from the NDUS office. I’ll post the full reporter here on the blog when I get it.

Suffice it to say that, while Governor Jack Dalrymple alluded to the problems at Dickinson State University and elsewhere in the university system as mere “distractions” in his recent budget address to the legislature, the issues run much deeper than that.

From top to bottom, the university system is being managed incompetently, and dishonestly.