Posted on 07/09/2011 3:16:23 AM PDT by 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.”
Thank you for your honesty and sportsmanship.
That’s what FReepers do.
I fully expect we’ll be on the same team by this time next year, but you’re right, we can have honest disagreements here.
I also learn from all the articles that you post and link.
Bottom line:
Obama must be voted out.
Are you thinking that Palin will go head to head with Perry in Iowa, New Hampshire etc and beat her? Or are you thinking that Palin has a strategy of not entering the race until after the primaries since it doesn't appear that she's making any plans for Iowa. (All this assuming they both will decide to run)
Have you ever noticed that our educational system is like a box of laundry soap?
Ever since I was a little boy, I always noticed that each month they all had “NEW AND IMPROVED” on the boxes. This has gone on for every day, week, month, and year since 1950 and I have trouble understanding just how they can improve the soap to a better level so many times in so many years...while the soap seems to be exactly like it was in the beginning.
The same ALMOST applies to education. All I’ve heard is it’s new and improved yet the quality of the product gets worse every time the government “improves” it.
Ever notice that?
No, the bottom line is that liberalism must be voted out. If Obama was replaced by a statist Republican, we would be worse off than if Obama was re-elected.
Our enemy is LIBERALISM and STATISM. Liberals in the Democrat party cannot hurt conservatives or the Republican party. Liberals and statists in the Republican party are the bigger threat to our nation because they sabotage on a Trojan Horse basis the political party that voters are begging to represent, stand for, and fight for, limited government conservatism.
Statists and liberals in the Republican party poison the Republican party's appeal to Regular Joe Americans as a real alternative to big, intrusive government and enslavement to it. Liberal and statist Democrats cannot EVER do the damage that Liberal and statist Republicans have done and continue to do -- that is, create, promote, and exacerbate cynicism and despair in Americans who WITH JUSTIFICATION think their votes are meaningless because "there's not a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats."
The enemy is not Obama, and it is not the Democrat party. THE ENEMY IS LIBERALISM AND STATISM in BOTH parties. The bottom line is that THEY must be voted out.
As for me, I vow to vote such that liberal, statist Republicans LOSE. Only when they LOSE will the Republican party -- and the nation -- start winning.
This is just my opinion but I don’t think Palin is going to run. She has a young family to support, and she’s making a lot more money doing what she’s doing than she will as President. From outside the presidency she can continue to publicly address conservative issues and do a lot of good.
I don’t have a crystal ball. I just don’t think she’s going to run. The campaign would be NASTY.
What’s in the Chronicle is not much of a “laud.” It’s pretty much a simple statement of fact. In the context of the times, he wasn’t liberal. At A&M, he has always been at the top of the admired and respected figures list.
I certainly have.
And as the classes get larger, more money flows their way.
As more money flows their way, the more they need.
The palaces they’ve built for themselves, where the teaching assistants do their work — I guess that so they’re freed up to churn out all those anti-American, pro-globalization text books the students have to buy; and gives them time to attend seminars around the world and show up to support “re-elect Obama” fundraisers.
The students they’re turning out are not getting a quality education (look at how other countries are moving ahead of us) and when they do graduate (many, many don’t), they can’t find a job, a. because there aren’t any, b. because they aren’t qualified. Most of these institutions are money making, anti-American indoctrination camps, inside liberal employment factories. And now student loans will be completely controlled by the federal government. Scary.
Obama has tossed away the one agency that America called theirs, NASA. It is now “green” and monitoring Earth, searching for “life” rather than moving man into space, and will for a time (until they say we can’t) hitch rides on Russian ships to ISS. Obama is engaged in crony capitalism (Elon Musk - Space X - gave a big D.C. party 1st inauguration blow out for Obama and now holds fundraiser events at about $4K a seat for his re-electon). So for now the taxpayer’s space dollars will flow to Elon Musk.
Obama (who hates capitalism down to his toes) tells us commercial rockets are the way — will be on the way — that when (if) they fly, someone will think of a way to use them — create a market out of thin air. But he’ll squeeze them too and manned flight will die on schedule. He’s snuffing out all our pride. He’s hobbled our nation. The country is being destroyed.
The idiots thinking they’ve got their hands in our pockets are in for a big surprise once we’re tapped out and Democrats begin to call them mere party members and tell them to get in the bread lines. They will no longer be considered “victims” of the rich, because we will all be equal.
And education has played a major role in bringing us to this place.
I love Aggies Clara Lou.
I have an Aggie graduate daughter.
I said “laud” because he has served our country.
But that does not make him understand education and the raising up of good citizens.
TX A&M has changed.
The raccoon is in the henhouse.
This country needs Palin and the presidency is where she can do the most good.
She’s been making plenty of money over the past two years to support her family and she’d make plenty more as a president and former president. She’s got Todd as a dedicated spouse to help attend to the family as well.
I’ve never heard any, let alone so much, claptrap about another pol doing good outside of the presidency, making plenty of money as it is, or having a young family to raise—let alone the BS about all three of those non-issue excuses.
OK— so I take it you disagree with me. That’s fine. Palin is a good conservative, and I can vote for her with a clear conscience if she runs.
Sorry my opinion upsets you so. Like I said, it’s just an opinion.
Yes, it’s just an opinion, but it’s an opinion that has been pushed by the pundits in the media about Palin and solely about Palin.
Doesn’t that in the least make you wonder how you’ve coincidentally come to the same opinon (talking points) about Palin (despite the evidence of her preparing for a run otherwise) that has never applied to another politician before?
Oh my, along with all the concern about Palin’s young family, making money otherwise and having influence other than through the presidency, I see that you are a pervent Perry supporter from Texas. Could that possibly influence your concern trolling about Palin as well?
It would be for Sarah Palin (and the GOP primary field and conservative voters) to get this question of whether she’s running put to bed.
This delay keeps becoming a bigger and BIGGER problem.
It would be GOOD for Sarah Palin.....
Sorry for the dropped word.
Some college profs make big bucks for little time on the job...or so it seems.
What the heck is a “pervent [sic] Perry supporter”? Where do you get that I am “trolling”? I have supported FR monthly for years.
I am so sick of socially/emotionally delayed “adults” at this site being unable to deal with commentary they don’t necessarily agree with. Those who don’t agree with them are “trolls” and/ or part of some “conspiracy. Get your mental health checked, OK?
Last I heard, at least for the time being, this is still the United States of America. I have a right to state my opinion and observations just as you do. If you don’t like it, you can lump it. Or grow up— that’s easier and cheaper.
Just a little UT news.
July 9, 2011: “UT sues actor Ryan O’Neal for Farrah Fawcett portrait done by Andy Warhol”
An iconic artist’s portrait of an iconic actress hangs in the Blanton Museum of Art on the University of Texas campus, while its near-twin apparently hangs in a house in Malibu, Calif.
On Friday, the university went to court in an effort to seize the one in Malibu, which, like the Blanton’s, is a paint and silk-screen portrait by Andy Warhol of the late actress Farrah Fawcett.
A lawsuit filed by the UT System Board of Regents on behalf of the university in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles contends that Fawcett bequeathed both portraits to the university but that actor Ryan O’Neal “has wrongfully converted” one of them — legal language for the civil equivalent of stealing.
The university wants a jury to order him to turn it over.
O’Neal’s publicist has said that the portrait was given to O’Neal by Fawcett and that he owes nothing to the university. O’Neal and Fawcett were longtime companions; they had a child together, and O’Neal was at Fawcett’s side when she died of cancer in 2009 at the age of 62.
UT’s suit says Fawcett’s trust specified that “all of (her) artwork and any objects of art” would go to the university upon her death. O’Neal may have “converted” other works of art from her collection, according to the suit.
“Obviously, the Warhol is the big-ticket item,” said Barry Burgdorf, vice chancellor and general counsel for the UT System, which hired a private investigator as part of its effort to track down the portrait. “We think it’s quite valuable, but how valuable is hard to say.”.............
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/ut-sues-actor-ryan-oneal-for-farrah-fawcett-1593662.html
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