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

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

[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.