To support Gov. Perry on education, Chairman Powell wants to develop a $10,000 four-year degree, increase undergraduate enrollment by 10 % a year and cut tuition in half.
Inefficient professors are the targets in Gov. Rick Perry‘s plan to reform higher education
By Katherine Mangan
Austin, Tex.
Depending on whom you talk to in Texas these days, college professors are either elitist intellectuals oblivious to the financial struggles of their students or hard-working teachers and researchers being pressured to churn out graduates like widgets on a production line.
And no matter where you fall in this increasingly divisive debate, there’s an interest group armed with colorful sound bites, well-heeled supporters, and a conviction that the future of higher education here hangs in the balance.
In recent weeks, the rhetoric of the players in this statewide power struggle has escalated to match the intensity of the blistering Texas heat. Students, alumni, and faculty members have weighed in, along with new coalitions consisting of former university presidents, chancellors, regents, and business leaders.
The political fight largely centers on a series of reforms dubbed the “Seven Breakthrough Solutions,” pushed by Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin.
The proposals, which are based on the premise that professors spend too much time on esoteric research and not enough time in the classroom, would separate teaching and research budgets, give professors pay raises based on student evaluations, and treat students as customers.
The debate intensified this spring after a series of controversial comments and actions by Gene Powell, chairman of the University of Texas system’s Board of Regents.
In addition to expressing support for the governor’s call to develop a $10,000, four-year degree, he floated the idea of increasing undergraduate enrollment at the flagship campus by 10 percent a year for four years and cutting tuition in half.
And in March, Mr. Powell hired Rick O’Donnell, a former fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, as a $200,000-a- year special adviser to the university’s governing board. Mr. O’Donnell was fired six weeks later after complaining that university officials were suppressing data on how much professors earned, how many students they taught, and how much grant money they received.
Last month the system reached a $70,000 settlement with Mr. O’Donnell, a decision that Barry D. Burgdorf, vice chancellor and general counsel for the university system, said was based on “pure and simple economics” because Mr. O’Donnell had made it clear that he planned to sue the system.
Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat who chairs the state’s Senate Higher Education Committee, says that rather than cooling the controversy, the settlement fanned the flames when the former adviser came out swinging, accusing university officials of orchestrating a smear campaign against him and the regents who supported his efforts to gather faculty-productivity data, which were eventually published.
“Higher-education administrators and faculty generally like to be left alone,” Mr. O’Donnell said in an interview last month. “These are people who enjoy enormous privileges at taxpayer expense, and someone wants to question how much that costs and what we’re getting in response.”
Senator Zaffirini says the policy foundation and Jeff Sandefer—a board member who wrote the “breakthrough solutions” it promotes —are the ones hiding from public scrutiny. She co-chairs a new legislative oversight committee on higher education.
“They talk about transparency,” she says, “but meanwhile, they’re working with the governor behind closed doors in an attempt to hijack the higher-education agenda.” Mr. Sandefer and foundation executives deny that accusation, and Mr. Perry’s office did not reply to a request for comment last month.
Senator Zaffirini adds that the foundation’s actions could harm the efforts of seven “emerging research universities” to gain “tier one” status.
David Guenthner, a spokesman for the public-policy foundation, scoffs at that idea. “Barely one in five faculty members is involved in research that relates to the university’s tier-one status,” he says. Taxpayers deserve to know why many professors teach less than a full load and “where their research is being published, how many people are reading it, how much is it being cited, or is it, for lack of a better term, a publication for the sake of a publication—or worse, a vanity project?” Read More
The effect of technology on college costs is a source of great debate, but the two sides are basically arguing past each other.
On the one side, we have people describing actual university behavior. This is why people like Archibald and Feldman can claim with some legitimacy that technology costs are one of the sources of higher costs in higher ed.
On the other side, we have people like Burck Smith and I, who focus on how universities should behave:
“every successful technology innovation in the history of humankind has enabled people to do more with less. Education should be no exception.”
But education, especially higher education is an exception. Our side’s argument is that if technology is driving your costs higher rather than lower, you’re doing it wrong.
In the past, I’ve focused on the tendency of higher ed to treat technology as an add on – and I can’t resist plugging my favorite quote from Hammer and Champy again:
“the fundamental error that most companies commit when they look at technology is to view it through the lens of existing processes…. The real power of technology is not that it can make the old processes work better, but that it enables organizations to break old rules and create new ways of working.”
But it is actually even worse. Even when colleges do create new ways of working, they do that wrong too. And they do it wrong largely because:
“Most large universities tend to have a culture of ‘grow your own,’ when it comes to technology tools.”
Growing your own has the effect of switching technology from being a cost reducer to a costly add on. Take email systems. How many companies develop their own email system? Hardly any, mostly because they don’t have a comparative advantage in IT development, and they can’t take advantage of economies of scale. And yet their per user costs for email are low because of the economies of scale and competition among commercially successful systems, and low marginal costs. Read More
Interesting perspective, but we don’t believe it for a moment.
Debt has become a way of life for American college students. The average student loan debt among graduating college seniors was more than $23,000 in 2008, according to FinAid.org. In addition, the student lender Sallie Mae says the average graduating senior with at least one credit card had $4,138 in debt on the card.
Yet, instead of feeling stressed about owing all that money, many students actually feel “empowered,” says a new study from Ohio State University, based on data collected for the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The study, published in the journal Social Science Research, surveyed 3,079 students, the majority of whom were in their early- to mid-20s.
That’s right. The more college loans and credit-card debt that young adults 18 to 27 have, the higher their self-esteem — and the more control they feel they have over their lives. They tend to view debt positively, rather than as a burden.
Come again?
Rachel Dwyer, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State and the study’s lead author, says it’s not entirely clear why debt seems to have that effect. But the finding is consistent with earlier research suggesting that student loans, in particular, represent the cost of opportunity for some students, and so can be seen in a positive light. “Educational debt can represent an investment in the future,” she said.
That seems to hold true for credit-card debt, too. It may be because students use credit cards for educational purposes, she said. Some students, for instance, may use cards to buy books or even “that nice interview suit.” Read More
By Mike Collins
For the last 40 years the mantra has been “if you want to get ahead, just go to college”. It is partially based on the widely published assumption that those who do get a college degree will make 84 percent more than high school graduates in their careers. But the economy has changed radically in the last 40 years, and universities have not kept up with the times.
A recent New York Times article reported how student debt will exceed credit card debt and is projected to be more than $1 trillion in 2011. Student debt was $200 billion in 2000 and has grown more than $800 billion in 10 years. This leaves many students either unable to pay off their debt (defaults) or struggling with it for most of their adult lives.
This has become a serious problem.
The second problem: If you go to college which major will give you the best chance of getting a job with a wage to support a family? It probably doesn’t matter when the student remains single, but as soon as they get married and have children; they will need higher wages and benefits. Another question to ask: When you choose a major how much money should you borrow to graduate in the major?
I have written about problems of student debt and majors many times but up until recently there was no data to connect wages to majors and to student loans until a Census study from 2009 came out with data that connected wages and majors. It was the first time the Census asked people about their undergraduate majors enabling researchers to tie in salary data.
The study is “What’s it Worth? The Economic Value of College Majors”, and analyzes 171 college majors combined into 15 fields. It describes each field in terms of a median wage, which is misleading because the data is from an age group from 18 to 64 years old. Median wages could represent wages from someone who has worked 30 years out of college.
This article focuses on young people who are in college or about to graduate and find a job. So, I will use the lower wages on the scale that the study identifies as the 25th percentile as representation of entry level wages.
In this study the majors that pay the lowest starting wages below $33,000 per year are psychology and social work, arts, education, humanities and liberal arts, communication, journalism, industrial arts, and consumer services. According to the survey, these majors are 38 percent of all majors in the study.
The three highest starting salaries for majors are engineering, computer science and mathematics, and health care. The starting wages begin at $45,000 and represent 20 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded. The rest of the majors (42 percent) have starting wages from $33,000 to $45,000 per year.
One of the authors of the study, Anthony Carnevalle states the obvious, “We don’t have a system in the U.S. where we align what you take with career prospects. Nobody ever tells you when you go to college what happened to the other people who took it before you.”
When students talk to their advisors about financial problems, the answer is usually to just get a student loan. This decision is about staying in school and has little to do with the starting wages of the major. If the student is in a major that has low starting wages, he or she may have to spend many years paying off the loan and struggling financially to make ends meet when they get married and start a family.
The Horrors of Student Debt Read More
Cassidy Whitaker Thompson had a dilemma. The incoming freshman at Purdue University wanted to know whether she needed to register for a first semester physics course.
So, instead of waiting until orientation or slogging through a list of campus phone numbers, Whitaker Thompson, who will major in engineering, presented the question last month to members of the “Purdue Engineering Class of 2015″ Facebook page.
Within two minutes, fellow engineering major Aharon Hannan replied. Having already attended the Summer Transition, Advising and Registration (STAR) program, where students meet with their academic advisers and register for classes, Hannan recommended she take the course, which is a pre-requisite for higher-level physics courses.
That exchange was part of an online friendship that has continued through summer break. And it’s part of growing trend of universities using social media methods to help incoming students get acclimated long before they move into a residence hall.
Hannan had first helped Whitaker Thompson in March, when she had a question about a visual spatial reasoning test that had to be completed before the STAR date.
The newfound friends — he’s from Hamilton Southeastern High School in Fishers (enrollment: 2,700 students), and she’s a graduate of Brown County High School in Nashville, with 758 students — met face to face for the first time last week, coming to the West Lafayette campus to get the lay of the land.
Having followed the university’s Facebook accounts and using them to interact with future classmates, the friends said they would feel more comfortable meeting new people once classes begin this fall.
“You say, ‘Oh, I’ve talked to you online before,’ ” Hannan said.
Purdue’s status on Facebook
Incoming Purdue students are using Facebook in droves to learn more about the college freshmen experience. And the university is accommodating discussion between the new Boilermakers, helping them find answers to all kinds of questions.
As of last week, some 2,600 students were members of the “Purdue University Class of 2015″ group. Recent posts include questions about meal plans and students comparing schedules to find common classes.
One student asked what the age limit was to go to a bar in West Lafayette. Classmates were quick to respond that it’s 21, with some branding Indiana’s law prohibiting younger patrons as “lame.”
The Office of Admissions sets up a Facebook page for each upcoming class each December. Invitations to join the page are e-mailed to class members. Eventually, students are handed control of the group.
Ashley Scott, assistant director of admissions, coordinates the office’s social media outreach. She continues to monitor the page, but typically allows students to discuss questions and concerns among themselves.
“It’s become a great way to learn more about the university in an informal way,” Scott said. Read More
EL PASO, TEXAS — A while back, Principal Lucia Borrego and some of her teachers from Helen Ball Elementary School in El Paso, Texas, crossed the border into Mexico to visit a factory.
The first step on the assembly line at this factory, which produced four-wheelers, was to stamp a serial number on the vehicle’s chassis. Once that number was stamped, the vehicle was “alive” and had to make it to the end of the production line, the factory’s manager told Borrego and her teachers.
There were times when a vehicle might need to be pulled off the line for a little extra work, but once the issue was fixed, the four-wheeler was put back on track to reach the end of the production line in top-notch, top-quality form, said Borrego.
When Borrego told this story recently, it wasn’t clear at first where she was going with it, the parallels between assembly lines and elementary schools not being immediately obvious.
However, she made the point that, if a factory can ensure that every single four-wheeler makes it to the end of the line in top form, shouldn’t a school system have the same level of commitment to its students?
“So our kids are going to go through the school system, and we might have to pull them aside and work with them individually. … But they have to make it; they have to graduate,” said Borrego.
“They have a number; they’re born; they’re alive. We can’t just discard them. And I think it’s too easy for us to do that with kids, and so that’s kind of the mentality we’ve taken, little things like that. No excuses.”
Borrego’s analogy neatly captures one of the guiding principles in the Socorro Independent School District in El Paso County, Texas: that the district has a responsibility to graduate all of its students and, in order to achieve that, students should be given additional assistance from the moment issues crop up.
Since 1995, Texas has had, in its legislature-adopted education code, a list of 13 criteria it believes indicate a student is at risk of dropping out of school.
This list includes criteria related to academic performance — a student who was held back at least once meets the criteria as does a student in grades 7 through 12 whose average grades in two core classes fall below 70 — as well as indicators linked to a student’s socioeconomic standing (a child who is homeless automatically would be at risk in Texas) or behavior (expulsion during the current or previous school year is an indicator).
About six years ago, the Soccoro district developed a system for tracking students at all grade levels who are deemed “at risk” of dropping out and paired it with a mentoring program at the middle and high school levels; individual schools have developed unique approaches to getting their students extra help, ensuring that students do not fall too far behind.
“Something that I’ve always believed in is that all kids, all kids will meet our expectations,” said Borrego. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re ADHD, whether they have divorced parents, whether they come from a broken home, whether their parents have never had any education.”
Borrego continued later: “I tell (my teachers), ‘Do not accept excuses, and do not make excuses.’ I don’t care if they have three eyes, I don’t care if they’re missing a leg, I don’t care, I don’t care. They have to be successful, and it’s our responsibility to make sure they’re successful, and we can’t make excuses for them. ” Read More
Register for Webinar on July 13th:
In this webinar, you’ll learn how innovative STEM teachers are locating and coordinating outside materials and expertise and integrating them into their curriculum and instruction—becoming more of a project manager. The presentation will also explore how the effective use of such resources can enhance students’ problem-solving skills.
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=321889&sessionid=1&key=029D6A6A3AEE07DDD7DB44809039A3C7
Read More
After months of arduous negotiation and partisan squabbling, states across the country have produced budgets for the new fiscal year that in many cases will bring deep cuts to state spending, including money for schools.
The budget blueprints adopted by numerous states were postscripts to divisive legislative sessions that saw newly elected Republican governors and lawmakers successfully push for big policy changes, including reductions in teachers’ collective bargaining rights. Proponents argue that change will save districts money over time. Read More
Editor’s note: Among the many proposed reforms to Texas higher education are some that would modify or eliminate the current tenure system employed by colleges and universities. We asked UT philosophy lecturer Jeffrey C. Leon and former Wall Street Journal editor Naomi Riley for their views on the tenure system and asked, “Should Texas universities continue to employ the tenure system? Why or why not?”
I am a non-tenure-track faculty member teaching in liberal arts. As such, it would seem that I would be likely to endorse higher education reform that includes abolishing tenure for senior faculty. In fact, many of the education reforms being kicked around, including the “Breakthrough Solutions” promoted by the governor’s higher education summit, would be to my advantage. As a lecturer who taught approximately 600 students last year, it would be in my financial interests to support one of the recommendations that endorses paying teaching faculty based on the numbers of students taught. I presume this is an effort to increase efficiency and control the cost of education, as well as to reward teachers for their contributions. However, as a supporter of the mission of higher education in general and public higher education in particular, I am willing to forgo the personal benefits of such a recommendation in exchange for a higher quality classroom experience at UT. These sorts of incentives could reasonably be expected to yield larger and larger class sizes, and, as any classroom teacher knows, this is not a recipe for improved educational quality.
Similarly, abolishing tenure would place teachers like me in a more favorable position with respect to formerly tenured colleagues. We could all, presumably, be evaluated continuously based on our contributions, with non-tenured lecturers losing their unenviable status as most easily downsized. However, the costs would not be worth the benefits, even from my perspective. I cannot quantify the value to me and to my students of teaching among an active research faculty of the first class. The tenure system is intended to support faculty-driven independent research, and while this is obviously beneficial to society at large and to the disciplines the faculty serve, it is also clearly beneficial to the mission of undergraduate teaching. I know the “live problems” of my discipline (philosophy), and I can pass this information along to my students. In addition, my TAs are attracted by our highly ranked department, and both my students and I are better for the opportunity to work with these burgeoning philosophers. Although I am not required to do so, I maintain active research interests myself, and this is a positive benefit to my students. All of this is a direct result of the tenured faculty who are my colleagues.
Is there a better way to promote independent research and attract first-class faculty? Possibly. What problem would abolishing the tenure system solve? Would it make it easier to get rid of or to prod senior faculty who seem to be unproductive? On paper, the answer seems to be in the affirmative. However, as someone who has experience in the private sector (10 years experience in software engineering, a spouse who is a small business owner), the problems associated with evaluating a senior employee’s contributions and then, if the evaluation is more negative than positive, dismissing said employee, do not disappear simply because there is not tenure in private enterprise. Read More
Editor’s note: Among the many proposed reforms to Texas higher education are some that would modify or eliminate the current tenure system employed by colleges and universities. We asked UT philosophy lecturer Jeffrey C. Leon and former Wall Street Journal editor Naomi Riley for their views on the tenure system and asked, “Should Texas universities continue to employ the tenure system? Why or why not?”
Last month, UT-Dallas President David Daniel appeared on a panel lamenting the state of research universities in Texas. Daniel said the “biggest disappointment” of his lifetime was that people consider higher education an individual benefit rather than a public good. If this is the case, the universities have only themselves to blame. And the system of tenure has done more than anything else to devalue undergraduate education and promote trivial research.
While Daniel and his fellow panelists wondered why there wasn’t support for some new Sputnik-like project, watchers of higher education were wondering how we ended up with universities producing works such as these by UT scholars: “An Archive of Feelings: Trauma Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures” or “Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace.” Or this one, which received $300,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation: “Blue Highways: Evaluating Middle Stone Age Riverine Based Foraging, Mobility and Technology Along the Trunk Tributaries of the Blue Nile.” Even if there is an argument for studying the anthropology of ancient Ethiopia, how do you explain to taxpayers or tuition-paying students and parents the most recent study touted on the UT website: “Chocolate Milk Gives Athletes Leg-up After Exercise.” Sputnik this ain’t.
Higher education has become a game of prestige and the only thing that brings prestige is publication. A 2005 report in the Journal of Higher Education found that college professors actually get paid less for every additional hour they spend in a classroom. This finding was true not only at large research universities but at state “teaching universities” and small liberal arts colleges. The institution of tenure encourages this problem. Tenure should be replaced by a system of multiyear renewable contracts for all instructors instead of shifting the burden of teaching to lesser-paid adjunct professors.
Some professors claim the reason we reward publication is that there’s no objective measure for good teaching. We simply know it when we see it. This is plainly false. Good teaching is more than just entertaining in the classroom. It involves preparation for lectures and discussions, extensive work in grading and contact with students. It is something that students as well as faculty and administrators can recognize and reward if they chose, and it requires consistent evaluation. Tenure is a static system of promotion that gives people a permanent job for what they’ve already accomplished. Teaching is a dynamic profession. As any good teacher will tell you, there is no resting on your laurels. Read More
By MELISSA LUDWIG
Lazy professor, beware.
Your time delivering droning lectures and writing overwrought articles for obscure journals draws nigh. A posse of free-market thinkers led by a conservative Austin think tank wants to hold higher education accountable by weeding out bad teachers and unproductive researchers.
But how do you corner these elusive creatures? Their peers characterize the lazy professor as a rarity, quietly culled from the herd before earning tenure.
Critics, however, believe they are far more commonplace, and can be exposed by crunching numbers on teaching loads, research grants and student evaluations.
Some would like to do away with tenure, reasoning that professors would work harder if their contract came up every few years. Others, including Gov. Rick Perry, have suggested that professors should stick to research that “delivers real dollars.”
Yet academics and a new coalition of higher education boosters say critics are on the wrong track if their goal is to improve Texas universities.
Those kinds of remarks about research, coupled with the release of reams of detailed salary and workload data for thousands of professors in the Texas A&M University and University of Texas Systems, have already bruised the national reputation of two well-regarded university systems, said John Curtis, director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors.
“People around the country are watching that and would be leery of taking a job at A&M or UT,” Curtis said. “If it continues that way, it may be a detriment for all of public higher education.”
Those who seek greater productivity insist the scrutiny is long overdue.
“All we’ve ever wanted to do with this issue is just have an open discussion about ‘Are the taxpayers of the state of Texas getting a good return on their investment?’ ” Perry has said. “To be honest with you, we can’t answer that unless we have openness and transparency in higher ed, and there’s some that just block that.”
In addition to the governor, the roster of change-seekers includes several university regents, some conservative lawmakers and wealthy Austin entrepreneur Jeff Sandefer. Many have ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative Austin think tank that has acted as the movement’s brain trust.
David Guenthner, a TPPF spokesman, said the cost of higher education has spiraled out of control, and many students are questioning whether it’s a worthy investment.
In his view, tuition and state dollars subsidize the time professors spend writing journal articles of questionable value to society.
The system, he said, is set up to reward research with higher pay, professional kudos and a job for life, while good teaching often goes unrecognized.
As a result, Guenthner declared, students who pay top dollar for a flagship education spend a good deal of their first two years in huge lecture halls being taught by adjuncts rather than by tenured professors.
“The pendulum has probably swung more in the direction of research in recent years, to the detriment of teaching,” he said. “We think there needs to be a better balance for the sake of Texas students.” Read More
With freshman orientation right around the corner, many college students and their parents are about to get a surprise that could derail years of careful financial planning: last-minute tuition increases and cuts to financial aid packages promised just a few short months ago.
As states have finalized their budgets in recent weeks and months, cuts to public college funding have started to trickle down to parents and students. Since March, at least 19 states have cut money for public colleges. Some states, including Illinois and Georgia, are also slashing grants awarded to students just a few months ago. Still more families won’t find out about changes to tuition and financial aid packages until the end of the summer or even after the semester begins — what experts say is the longest delay ever. “This will create real hardship for these students and may impact directly on their ability to enroll this fall,” says Tom Horgan, president of the New Hampshire College and University Council.
Long the affordable alternative to private colleges, tuition and fees for public schools have already been climbing rapidly. They’re still much cheaper — tuition and fees averaged about $7,600 for the 2010-2011 school year, compared to $27,300 at private colleges, according to the College Board — but the new increases aren’t trivial. Last month, Texas and New Hampshire announced 6% to 10% tuition hikes at some public universities. A spokesman for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board says as of now, the hikes impact two out of 35 colleges, with the potential for more to come. This month, California’s four-year colleges are seeking to increase tuition by up to 12%, on top of an 8% to 10% increase that was announced earlier this year. “Public colleges and universities across the country have been put in a terrible bind,” says Daniel Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “This academic year will be the worst on record in terms of public higher education funding.” Read More
