• Facebook StumbleUpon
• Email

1. David Moore said:

   May 9th, 2011 at 11:17 am

   I quite honestly think that Nebraska screwed themselves with the way they soapboxed themselves (no pun intended!) last year through this entire process of league realignment. I think calling such attention to themselves pissed-off a number of fellow AAU presidents/chancellors, and Nebraska was one of the lowest ranking AAU members with reswpects to federal funded research $$$.
   http://bleacherreport.com/articles/693354-nebraska-sacked-was-expulsion-from-the-aau-reprisal-for-leaving-the-big-12
2. TaylorTRoom said:

   May 9th, 2011 at 12:29 pm

   I think AAU membership is valuable and important. I also think our governor is trying to put UT and TAMU on track to be kicked out.
3. Kilgore Trout said:

   May 9th, 2011 at 7:58 pm

   Taylor, isn’t your boy Jeff Sandefer leading the charge? I know him from high school. I think he wants to turn our collective schools into Community College’s. Perry has mainlined too much cash from Sandefer to tell him no I guess. Neither one of them has an intellectual bone in their bodies.
4. TaylorTRoom said:

   May 10th, 2011 at 6:15 am

   Yeah, Sandefer got his feelings hurt at McCombs, and $400k donations to Perry later, is about to exact vengeance.

   It’s becoming clear that Perry takes the conservative side on individual issues, for political triangulation reasons in a conservative state. He really isn’t a conservative philosophically. He likes state managed economies and is against limited government (at least for himself).
5. Ag_in_TX said:

   May 10th, 2011 at 7:28 am

   In the last GOP primary for Governor, we had a choice between a blonde or a brunette former cheerleader. I think we chose poorly.

   That being said, both Boards of Regents are filled with people politically indebted to the Governor. And the presidents of the two flagship schools serve at the leisure of these boards. So there will be a lot of impetus to incorporate most, if not all, of the TPPF list.

   Check out these comments:

   http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/04/ut-and-am-presidents-defend-re.html

   University of Texas president Bill Powers and Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin told a gathering hosted by the Texas Tribune on Thursday morning that they share many of the goals of the TPPF manifesto, but differ on how to get there.

   Perry, whose higher education appointees showed up en masse to a May 2008 TPPF conference that laid out the goals, has shown some impatience with the reluctance of A&M and UT to move forward. Good friend and political donor Jeff Sandefer is credited with helping create the TPPF list and has dealt directly with the A&M’s chancellor in trying to hasten their adoption.

   And UT regent chairman Gene Powell hired TPPF’s Rick O’Donnell for a $200,000 advisor’s slot this year. O’Donnell’s job was seen as helping lay the framework for the seven solutions, but after questions arose about creating such a job during a hiring freeze and other criticisms, O’Donnell abruptly left this month.

   The seven solutions largely are seen as de-emphasizing research and promoting instruction. They would separate those two arms in budgeting, and would base more pay on good teaching. Professors also would be assessed on their monetary value to a university. When A&M produced its list of professors and their cost benefit to the university, it immediately received a rebuke from the prestigous American Association of Universities.

   Loftin said two of the seven items are policy issues about tuition, which he can’t set or affect. Of the remaining five, he called them “very noble” and said they are about good teaching.

   Both Powers and Loftin said their institutions currently reward good teaching through awards and recognition. “It ought to be part of the salary structure,” Powers said.

   Graduating more students and doing it quicker, offering affordable tuition, improving the quality of instruction and access to the best professors are imperatives for the future of higher education, Powers said. “We have to reinvent some of the things we do,” he said.

   But both said there are better ways than the solutions might suggest of getting “from point A to point B,” as Powers put it.

   “Research is a critical part of what a major research institution does,” he said.

   Here is a link to a group I know nothing about, so take it with a grain of salt, but they claim to have info from the letter sent to A&M from the AAU:

   http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/05/10/texas_faculty_and_president_criticize_regents_measurement_of_professors

   The Association of American Universities also weighed in, though privately. In a letter to the chancellor of the Texas A&M system, Robert M. Berdahl, AAU’s president, observed that “the key to the success of the American research university is the close alliance between research and teaching, especially the teaching of graduate students.”

   Berdahl criticized related proposals that were advanced by the Texas Public Policy Foundation for further severing the connection between research and education. “Separating research from teaching and oversimplifying the evaluation of faculty does violence to the values that have produced the American universities that are envied and emulated across the globe,” he wrote.

   So, I don’t think A&M or UT or getting ready to be ousted from the AAU – but we both are taking steps down paths that will cause our academic standing to begin to erode.

   I have found myself wondering why Perry is choosing to attack these two great success stories of Texas. Of course, it’s all political. I found the comments of the Dallas Morning News story above quite illuminating. There’s a lot of anger out there amongst voters over our alma maters.

   These two college presidents, along with most others in Texas, seem unwilling or incapable of meeting the one goal mentioned that makes sense: “Graduating more students and doing it quicker, offering affordable tuition, improving the quality of instruction and access to the best professors are imperatives for the future of higher education”. That should be all these guys think about from the time they get up until they go to bed at night.

   I just know that my two children who graduated from A&M & North Texas had to put up with fickle advisors and instructors, and degree programs that changed on a dime, forcing them to take still more classes, which were often taught by grad students or foreigners who could barely speak english and who didn’t care. They rarely saw many of their professors, who were busy researching whatever. I paid the tuition, but they often didn’t get their money’s worth.

   On the other hand, my third child went to a small private university where she was taught and counseled by full professors the entire time. They took an interest and gave her guidance. She emerged educated.
6. TaylorTRoom said:

   May 10th, 2011 at 8:38 am

   Interesting reply. I can’t believe that the two flagship schools need to be “fixed” so as to provide more value. The fact that they reject so many applicants (with many more that would like to attend, but don’t bother to apply) proves that point. There is a place for value reforms, but not at the flagship schools.

   The guy complaining that his child got more attention at a private university than at a state university forgot to mention that the private university cost over $20k in tuition per year ($30K if it was SMU), and the state schools cost about $11k. So, he wants to pay $3k per year to a state school, and get the attention that the schools that charge $20k per year provide? I see a flaw in that plan.
7. Grunts: Texas to SEC — Why Not? « – more – said:

   September 17th, 2011 at 10:40 am

   [...] and Kansas to join the ride. Why those two? All of a sudden, SEC universities in the prestigious American Association of Universities would increase from three (Vanderbilt, Florida and A&M) to six and take the conference from a [...]
8. Jessica Liu said:

   January 22nd, 2012 at 7:14 pm

   hi – fantastic blog post. Really shed some light on great info – I enjoyed reading. Thanks!

Leave a Reply