Higher Education Coalition attack on [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry raises eyebrows

Lone Star Report ^ | July 8, 2011 | William Lutz

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The Coalition for Higher Excellence in Higher Education – a group that supports higher education reform ideas offered by the state’s university presidents and chancellors and has expressed concerns with some higher education reform ideas offered from outside academia – fired a rhetorical howitzer at Gov. Rick Perry yesterday. Political observers in Texas are left wondering why the organization chose to attack Perry by name and how this will play out.

The coalition’s main communications consultants used to work for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former president George W. Bush, two elected officials whose political interests have not always aligned perfectly with those of Perry. A member of the coalition’s operating committee, former ambassador and Higher Education Coordinating Board Chair Pamela Willeford, said she has supported Perry, and the organization is bipartisan and is about higher education, not partisan politics. She also said that decisions about what statements to issue are made by the organization’s operating committee, not its consultants.

Wednesday, the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl issued a report blasting “7 Breakthrough Solutions for Higher Education” proposed by Texas philanthropist Jeff Sandefer and supported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The coalition issued a statement supporting the report and calling on elected officials to distance themselves from the 7 Solutions.

Perry’s communications director Mark Miner issued a statement expressing disappointment that University of Texas administrators are so resistant to the governor’s cost control and reform ideas. "University faculty and their allies should join the reform efforts and recommend ways to innovate, improve graduation rates, and enhance accountability and efficiency at Texas colleges and universities,” Miner said. “We all have an obligation to meet the needs of Texas students, employers, taxpayers and our fast-growing economy. Resisting reform and accountability is an unsustainable recipe for mediocrity and stagnation. Texas deserves better."

Some Austin observers thought that finished that story.

But then on Thursday, the Coalition sent out a response to Miner’s statement that has grass-roots conservatives scratching their heads. The statement both attacks Perry by name and also attacks the Texas K-12 education system.

[snip]

Many grass-roots conservatives, meanwhile, are praising Perry for taking on the higher education bureaucracy. “Those of us who are attending our state's universities or who have recently graduated know that our current system of higher education is morally bankrupt,” said Tony McDonald, senior vice president of the Young Conservatives of Texas. “The system puts undergraduate education on a back-burner in favor of the mass publication of largely useless scholarly articles. The system consumes large sums of tax revenue, while saddling graduates with massive student-loan debt. It is refreshing to see Governor Perry take the bold step of calling out our universities and demanding that they implement reform and accountability measures which will serve to protect both students and taxpayers.” Here’s one thing we do know: the Coalition, and its supporters some of whom are prominent members of the Texas business community, has upped the ante by singling out Perry by name and responding to his chief spokesman in that manner.

When asked about this issue by LSR, the governor’s office replied that the purpose of the statement was merely to underscore the governor’s priorities for Texas public colleges and universities. “[The governor’s plan] for higher education is to improve accountability, affordability, transparency, and accessibility,” said Catherine Frazier with the Governor’s Press Office. “Where we are right now is not cutting it … The governor is simply calling on university leaders to adopt these goals and work towards finding the best way to accomplish them for their respective universities. And he will continue holding those universities accountable to pursuing those goals until progress is made.”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Big Education doesn't like to be messed with.

[Diogenesis]

The article is not clear about what Gov. Perry wants that
they do NOT. Would you clarify?

[samtheman]

Maybe the group favors vouchers and Perry is against them?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

YOU Diogenesis, YOU, who believes I can't think my way out of a paper bag, a shill for Perry, a dumb poster, YOU want ME to clarify something for YOU.

Now we're making progress.

I'll be glad to help.

Seven Solutions to Strengthen Higher Education

For starters, Gov. Rick Perry wants to give students and their parents power as "customers" of higher education. He also wants institutions of higher learning to TEACH not just serve as protected, personal political fiefdoms built-up with grant money (my interpretation).

And here's a OpEd from the MSM helping out their friends in education fight education reform: Perry's pal pressing his 'seven solutions'

**************

An instructive and recent example: Texas A&M has slowly been torqued away from being a strong conservative university to a more "normal" university -- just like the left likes 'em so they can "teach" the kids. Here is the last 2 paragraphs in the OpEd linked just above.

Sixteen years later, Rudder vowed as president of Texas A&M College to transform it from a second-rate school with declining enrollment into a first-class university. Rudder banished entrenched provincialism and never wavered from his conviction that an "immutable marriage" existed between teaching and research.

"It is not water or real estate or labor or power or cheap taxes alone that attracts industry," Rudder once said. "It's brainpower."

The "elite" see Americans as unrefined and provincial.

PROVINCIAL -- a person of local or restricted interests or outlook; a person lacking urban polish or refinement

Related to PROVINCIAL
Synonyms: bumpkin, chawbacon, churl, clodhopper, cornball, countryman, hayseed, hillbilly, hick, rube, rustic, yokel

Antonyms: cosmopolitan, cosmopolite, sophisticate

[Tax-chick]

Gov. Perry’s taking an interest in reform proposals from “outside academia” makes me like him better.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Yes.

Perry “sees it.”

He “gets it.”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....“7 Breakthrough Solutions for Higher Education” proposed by Texas philanthropist Jeff Sandefer and supported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation....

Texas Public Policy Foundation July 7, 2011 --- "The Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education recently formed to defend the status quo against the efforts of university regents to promote transparency and accountability in higher education.

Yet there is much about the status quo that simply cannot be defended.

Higher education today needs reform in two ways. First, by reducing its staggeringly and unnecessarily high costs; and second, by increasing instructional quality, which has suffered as many good professors have taken themselves out of the classroom to be replaced with inexperienced part-timers and teaching assistants.

When I began university teaching in the 1960s, the average teaching load was five classes per semester. It then dropped to four classes, then to three, and now commonly to two or even one class per semester. Reduced teaching loads permitted professors to conduct research.

The 1970s began a glut of Ph.D. graduates. I watched it happen with my colleagues. With more applicants applying for fewer positions, administrators needed new ways to distinguish among qualified candidates. It became difficult to assess teaching abilities of new Ph.D. graduates, and the focus switched to their publications...............[Ronald L. Towbridge continues]....................."

Ronald L. Trowbridge, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. Trowbridge formerly served as vice president of Hillsdale College in Michigan.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Trowbridge: “....It logically followed that publication began to supersede teaching – education was in large measure replaced with research, and publishing took priority over teaching. Prestige and image outside the classroom became more important than teaching within it. It was now the external image of the university that mattered more than the internal education of students.......”

http://www.texaspolicy.com/commentaries_single.php?report_id=3932

[Cincinatus' Wife]

James Earl Rudder: ....." Rudder vowed as president of Texas A&M College to transform it from a second-rate school with declining enrollment into a first-class university."

[Exactly the "elevation" of the university and the "system" over the students and their education, that Trowbridge explains in his essay above]

[Diogenesis]

Thank you.

Why is Perry’s name not on “Seven Solutions to Strengthen Higher Education”?

Is this another plagiarism by you and RINO Perry?
like you did with the headline on another thread
where you were remanded by the Adm. Moderator?

Why are you showing something that does not even have
Perry’s name, yet claiming it is HIS?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Perry has made some powerful enemies by taking on the trial lawyers and entrenched teachers.

Think of it!

The trial lawyers and teachers and teachers unions are the #1 and #2 backers of Democratic candidates.

Lawyers and teachers (all unions will lock arms with them) are the money and the muscle of "get out the vote" for Democratic Party candidates and 2012 Obama.

Rick Perry has been fighting them for some time now.

The push-back will be fierce.

[Tax-chick]

Yet there is much about the status quo that simply cannot be defended.

Exactly. "Higher education" will no more reform itself than K-12 "education" will, and for the same reason. The main beneficiaries of the system - the tenured or unionized employees - have no motivation other than to increase their compensation and reduce their productivity.

There are individuals doing outstanding work in both systems, motivated by personal character, but the institutional incentives are all toward demanding more and doing less.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

What I added is in [-——].

Stop trying to confuse the thread.

All you have to do is go to the links.

You come on every Rick Perry thread to disrupt.

I have never done that to another GOP candidate on another thread.

Yet you will not name a candidate.

I’ve asked you who you support every time you appear.

{{{Crickets}}}

Why is that Diogenesis?

Are you a teacher?

A lawyer?

A Democrat for Obama?

[Tax-chick]

She didn’t claim Gov. Perry was the author of this report, only that he supported using its recommendations to guide reform of the state university system. The authorship of the document has been made perfectly clear in this and other articles on the subject.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

...Is this another plagiarism by you and RINO Perry? like you did with the headline on another thread where you were remanded by the Adm. Moderator?...

You mean this thread?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....There are individuals doing outstanding work in both systems, motivated by personal character, but the institutional incentives are all toward demanding more and doing less.

Bump!

[AppyPappy]

He’s taking flak so he must be over the target

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Exactly!

What a great way to say it.

[AppyPappy]

Our professors concentrate on bringing money into the university via writing or grants. Graduate Teaching Assistants do the teaching.

[Diogenesis]

First, you falsely purported the 7 Solutions
were from RINO Perry.

But his name is not there.

When this was brought out to you, you attacked the poster.

Second, yes, that was the thread that you changed the name
to include RINO Perry (and the Ad Mod admonished you).
These are not good characteristics for a PerryBOT.