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Faculty Lounge - A tale of Sherpas and superstars [Perry's Higher Education Reform] ….”What Governor Perry actually proposed was this: 1) Students’ evaluations and some other information about faculty performance should be made public; 2) The best teachers should receive bonuses, based in part on students’ ratings; 3) The research and academic budgets should be separated, with teachers paid according to their teaching duties and researchers paid in proportion to the funding they attract; 4) Faculty should have to show that they can in fact teach before they are granted tenure; 5) Students should receive a personalized “learning contract” upon enrollment, along with information about the graduation rates and average starting salaries for students with the same major and comparable SAT scores; 6) Legislative appropriations should go to students directly rather than to the universities; 7) The universities should support an effort to develop a new national accreditation program that would evaluate institutions on measurable student progress.

You’d think that No. 6 would be the deal-breaker — it would have voucherized higher education, forcing the universities to compete for students and the dollars they bring with them, rather than treating students like not-entirely-welcome guests who are privileged to be at the party. But the reformers didn’t even make it that far down the list: No. 1 sent academia into fits.”……

Ya know what bugs me? I have 2 kids in their second & third year and it’s costing us about $3000-4000/ month, no loans, no aid, just payments & tuition management bills that come out of my account on the 10th of every month; and I don’t even feel like I’m a member of the middle class anymore, ha ha. Now they are talking about forgiving student loans? We could have taken loans out too, they would have given each kid over 10 thou/year; but I said no way. I remember too many friends still paying off student loans when they were in their late 30’s. Something ain’t right, but I still would fight the payments rather than take loans out all over again just the same. Just means no new toys and driving old vehicles forever it seems; I guess it could be worse, ha.

2) The best teachers should receive bonuses, based in part on students’ ratings;

This won't work. My kids both rated one math teacher as "He's evil, but you learn a lot." The rest of the kids just said 'evil'. Evil meant that if he gave a deadline, he stuck to it, among other high standards of behavior.

Demanding teachers don't tend to get rated well, even if they are effective in getting the kids to learn.

The students will tend to reward the easier teachers, not the best.

Just kill public education, then it will all be based on the parents ratings. The teachers will be rated by those who pay the bill.