Sunday, November 08, 2009

Are You Surprised?

I'm not.

California State University officials may have followed federal guidelines in reporting that stimulus money saved an inordinate number of campus jobs, but someone in the university system should have objected to reporting the numbers because "they don't make sense," California's stimulus watchdog official said Friday.

CSU reported late last week that federal stimulus dollars let them retain about 26,000 full-time-equivalent positions. That's more than half of CSU's work force, and it's more jobs than the state of Texas and 44 other states reported saving with stimulus money.

A CSU spokeswoman told The Bee earlier this week that the system reported the jobs in strict accordance with federal guidelines, but confirmed that half the system's work force would not have been laid off if not for stimulus dollars.

3 comments:

Ellen K said...

Just FYI I have linked an analysis of the Chicago schools use of stimulus money. It seems in some districts they paid for more teachers than they actually have teaching. Does this surprise me? Not one bit. Math is definitely not this administration's strong suit.

allen (in Michigan) said...

No, it's no surprise. The misuse of funding was the driving force behind NCLB and the urge to splurge hasn't disappeared.

Forest said...

I just have the feeling that if this were a Republican administration the media would be a lot more active in contesting these jobs statistics.

It is normal politics to exaggerate your virtues. However,all these jobs "saved" seem to have almost no connection to reality.

Talk about audacity.