UT on the Cover of New Texas Monthly [Unveiled]
For those of us who follow University of Texas news closely, we’ve known since the beginning of the summer that Texas Monthly has been working on an article about UT, and that none other than Paul Burka was going to write it.
Burka is a UT law grad and a lecturer in UT’s Plan II Honors Program. He can also rightly be called one of the deans (so to speak) of Texas political journalism. You might be wondering, then, why is a politico writing about higher education?
Because for the last two years, higher education—and especially The University of Texas at Austin—has been the subject of some fierce political battles. Those battles still rage, as Texas Monthly’s October cover quite clearly illustrates, and they are battles that all Texas Exes everywhere should know about.
For close UT watchers and supporters, there isn’t much new in this article. But it is without question the most comprehensive telling of what has transpired in recent years, which is why the Texas Exes and The Alcalde are delighted to bring you this exclusive excerpt—and to encourage you to read the full thing.
If you haven’t been following this debate, this is a good opportunity to get caught up. If you didn’t even know there was a debate, even better. Read this, and you’ll get the gist of it.
We encourage Texas Exes everywhere to inform themselves and, if willing, to get involved. The battle is indeed for soul of The University of Texas.
Tuition is skyrocketing. Enrollments are exploding. And the street value of a college degree is up for debate. Don’t look now, but a pitched battle is under way over the future of higher education in Texas. Ground zero is UT and Texas A&M, where a powerful group of reformers backed by Rick Perry is trying to rethink the way universities work—over the screams and howls of the faculty and staff. Will they destroy the university in order to save it? Or will they actually save it?
Last August, on the first day of classes for the fall 2011 semester at the University of Texas at Austin, I stood on a pebbled apron of the UT Tower in a patch of shade and took in a timeless scene. A parade of youth passed before me, their backs bent to accommodate the weight of their packs. Guys in baseball caps and baggy shorts sailed a Frisbee across a parched lawn beneath a flagpole. Girls with ponytails and jogging shorts screamed with delight when they spotted a familiar face.
The setting was at once uplifting and reassuring. In any year, on any campus, the first day of class is a moment, like the first day of spring training, when all things are still possible, when everything seems poised to turn out exactly as we want it. The entire world is nothing but promise. Looking out at the students’ faces, I recalled the days four decades ago when I was the one walking across this very campus as a law student. I remembered something Paul Woodruff, the dean of undergraduate studies, had once told me: “UT,” he said, “is the largest concentration of smart young people in the world.”
Behind me loomed the Main Building and the Tower, the symbol of the pride and power and prestige of the university (notwithstanding the damning description by the late folklorist and UT professor J. Frank Dobie, who once said its top resembled a “Greek outhouse”). Occasionally students would glance up at the arcade that shades the entrance to the Tower, above which an inscription from John 8:32 reads, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” It is a noble sentiment that is at the core of any liberal arts education, yet from where I stood, it was freighted with irony: though they gazed upon this line of scripture, few of the students crossing before me knew the truth about what was happening inside the citadel on which the words are carved. Few were aware that a high-stakes battle over the future of the university—and perhaps the future of higher education in Texas—was raging inside, pitting President William Powers Jr. and much of his faculty against reform-minded members of the UT System Board of Regents, who had been appointed by, and were loyal to, Governor Rick Perry. Few realized that over the course of the academic year that lay ahead, this battle would upset the seemingly placid grounds of the Forty Acres.
Ah, the happy ignorance of youth. What most of the students walking past me that day were blissfully unaware of is that higher education in Texas is at a crossroads. Among the sweeping reforms that were being advocated for UT were tying professors’ salaries to student evaluations, increasing the workload of professors, quantifying the amount of work that professors do and the value they add to the university, and generally bringing the efficiency of a major corporation to the academic sphere. Reforms, in other words, that would radically transform how our big public universities operate.
The students could be forgiven for not having a clue about any of this. UT appears to be an icon of stability and prominence—the embodiment of the establishment itself. Along with Texas A&M University, the state’s other flagship university, it seems to grow richer, more successful, and more powerful every year. The two schools have arguably the strongest brands in the state, with a passionate network of alumni who feel intimately connected decades after they graduate. Both are proud members of the Association of American Universities, the most exclusive club in academia, whose membership is restricted to 61 leading research institutions. In the most recent edition of U.S. News & World Report’s list of the top American universities, A&M was ranked 58th, UT was 45th. When you factor out the elite private universities, UT ranked around number 15, the same spot as the Longhorn football team in the 2012 preseason poll. All, it would seem, is well.
Yet seen from a different angle, the world in which these two institutions exist is in distress, beset by skyrocketing tuition costs, tight budgets, and an existential crisis about the value of a college degree. Though a diploma is still seen as the surest ticket to the American dream, the price of admission has exploded over the past decade. Now too many families find themselves uncertain about how to pay for tuition—or can’t afford it in the first place. And for those students who do enroll, many end up with a huge debt after they graduate and limited options for finding a job. Enter the reformers, who contend that this situation is unacceptable and that universities must reinvent themselves if they are to survive, that they must adapt to the changing world around them.
The view from inside the ivory tower is that universities are like the monasteries of medieval Europe, where monks labored to save civilization during the Dark Ages by copying and preserving the texts of antiquity. UT’s motto, “Disciplina praesidium civitatis” (roughly translated as “A cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy”), is an echo from that era. The college’s administrators and faculty take that belief seriously—UT always takes itself seriously—just as they take seriously the state constitution’s injunction that UT shall be a “university of the first class.” This is, after all, a state where education has not always occupied a revered place in the state’s pantheon of values, and within UT there exists the sentiment that without the university, intellectual life in Texas would leave much to be desired. Deans and department heads consider it their duty to recruit the best and brightest minds, students and faculty, and to send professors forth to pass along their wisdom to students, thereby assuring the survival of civilization and progress. The most elite faculty members conduct research that is designed to improve the human condition. The American university system, its admirers say, is the envy of the world.
The view from outside the ivory tower is quite different. Critics of higher education say that those who inhabit these contemporary temples are living off the fat of the land; that they answer to no one except one another; that, like the monks of old, they cultivate their vineyards, sniff heady wines, and raise lush crops on fecund soil while doing . . . what, exactly? Publishing papers few people will read? Conducting research of questionable value? Lecturing a couple days a week for nine months out of the year? The critics argue, with some justification, that the university is not responsive to its “customers”—the students, who have come in pursuit of a certain piece of parchment, and their parents, who often underwrite the cost. In their view, for the university to continue on its current course would bring great peril, and the only way to ensure the future success of UT, A&M, and other major public institutions of higher education across the country is to pursue an aggressive reform agenda that stresses accountability, efficiency, and productivity.
In Texas over the past four years, these critics have made a series of attempts, some more overt than others, to enact that agenda. The reforms were first rolled out at Texas A&M, during the 2010–2011 academic year, causing a major uprising among the faculty and endangering the school’s hard-won academic reputation. At the end of that year, the chancellor for the Texas A&M University System resigned, and many speculated that it was because he was unwilling to move fast enough on the reform agenda.
The next year, the reformers turned their attention to UT. Just as had happened in College Station, members of the administration and the faculty in Austin resisted the proposals, and a battle ensued that continues to this day. As the semesters unfolded, and as the students whom I’d watched on the first day of school wrote their papers and took their exams, the struggle spilled out into the public eye again and again, in boisterous faculty meetings, online campaigns, long-range plans from Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, statements by the board of regents, resistance by Powers, and countless stories in the local and national press. Today, as I write this, another school year has begun. But the resolution of the struggle remains very much up in the air. The sides have been chosen. The stakes are clear. Yet the victor is far from certain.
Read the full article at TexasMonthly.com. Or look for the magazine on newsstands on Thursday.
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19 Comments
Tying professor’s salaries to student evaluations is a terrible idea. What pedagogical position is a student in to tell how well a professor is conveying information the student doesn’t know? This makes no sense. Peer evaluation would be a better metric. Student evaluations only make administrators happy, but they don’t actually accomplish anything except maybe a popularity contest.
@Kyle- It comes right from the Bush era. It was applied to the public school system in Texas, which used to be pretty good in the 1980s, then it was forced upon the rest of the country after Bush v. Gore in 2000 (no actual teacher thinks it’s useful, even in Texas). It is only natural that it now be forced on the public universities. “accountability, efficiency, and productivity” are code words for PRIVATIZE and profit under the guise of social well being.
The less educated the populace as a whole, the better off for the “organizations” that profit from it; no pesky questions about policies, just people left to vote against their best interests because they were “sold” something :\
I am an alumnus of UT, where I studied Biology and Business. In my opinion the Professors have no interest in winning votes from students based on the idea of popularity. Also, students are completely capable of gauging the quality of the education they are obtaining; the college student is not a toddler after all.
I am not able to count the number of times I was told to change my major just for asking a question in office hours. In microbiology, which was a subject I preferred and excelled at, I was told that if I needed to ask questions about any of the concepts such as formation of molecules pertaining to organic chemistry, etc.; then I had no hope to excel as a biologist in the future. I feel these negative statements from my professors came out of laziness towards helping the students.
From my perspective, it seems as though my future was less important to many of my professors because they were more concerned with their research or publications. After all, that is where they had the potential to make more money. UT is big research, which on the plus side opens up many opportunities for the students to rub shoulders with great minds. However, it appeared to me that there were few professors that genuinely cared about the progress of students.
I myself paid for my education. What I could not pay, I borrowed and am still working to pay back. When paying for a service, you should have the right to expect a certain level of quality. I feel that many of the professors at UT do not offer quality of teaching. It was necessary to learn many things by myself. I had to eat, sleep, and breathe what I studied or I would not excel. I had many friends that preformed this religious dedication to education with me. Thankfully, I enjoyed what I studied.
On the other hand, I found that there were a few professors that showed concern about the students. These professors were gifted as teachers, and these teachers gave something back to the students. They inspired us to move forward with our dreams and some even became heroes and role models. I think these professors inherently and naturally had a passion for teaching.
Primarily and most importantly, UT is an institution of higher education. I think many of the professors couldn’t care less about the education part. Student evaluations are important to apply pressure to refocus this attention.
I applaud this effort. Tying professor’s salaries to student evaluations will provide a motivation for professors and staff to figure out the best ways to educate students. They’ll have some skin in the game, so to speak, which will result in a better education for students – which after all, is the whole purpose of the institution to begin with. If you’re a professor that works hard with a vested interest in how well your students do, you’ll have nothing to worry about. If you’re a professor that just goes through the motions to collect a paycheck, unconcerned with how many students succeed or fail, I can understand why this sounds so awful. Afterall, who wants to work harder for the same money?
That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? Working smarter instead of harder under that system would mean handing out grades like candy because students who’ve had their GPA ruined after a semester of slacking off tend to take it out on their professor evaluations instead of self-evaluating and realizing that it’s their own fault.
@Name. Exactly right. If a professor’s ability to get tenured or promoted is placed with student evaluations, then you’ll have a HUGE shift in the rigor of every course offered at UT and in a very short time you’ll see the academic integrity drop. UT has always had high standards despite often having lazy, slacking students (including myself at some points). This evaluation process would completely change to the culture of teaching and not for the better.
This is a terrible idea. All it means is that professors will make their requirements easier so that students rate them higher.
I think tying student evaluations to a professor’s salary is a terrible idea. While I was at UT, there were many times my fellow students would advise against certain professors because they were “mean” or expected too much from students; however, those professors turned out to be the best I ever had. Yes, they were hard and they expected the best from us but also gave us their best. Those professors changed my life and helped provide me with a top notch education. I would hate to see their pay decrease because its based on their popularity with students. If they are going to be evaluated, then peer evaluations would be the best option.
Sure seems to me like the university is run like a business. How do you explain the football television contracts, hotels on campus, new buildings going up every few months. College education, like the housing market in 2008, is the next bubble to pop. Though not ideal some kind of reform is needed. The return on investment for a college education is minimal unless you are in the technical fields like engineering, computer science or business and those are hardly within the liberal arts tradition. Liberal Arts is a joke at UT. Everyone knows that. I don’t think it is honest to appeal to the Liberal Arts tradition. The real liberal arts program survives in the Plan II program but how many students get to participate in that. You can be sure professors in that program are evaluated.
Athletics is run like a business, but that doesn’t apply to every department.
Liberal arts at UT is great, the best in the state, not just Plan II. Students can coast through as in any state university, but they can also go way deep. It’s up to the student, but UT has the resources for the best and brightest.
The only reform efforts I believe in are from best practices from our peers around the world. We should benchmark our success with other state universities. UT is an elite university already and, in many ways, is looked upon as such by the rest of the world.
The biggest issue UT has is lack of state funding, which over the past three decades has not kept up with inflation. UT has become increasingly self-sufficient but is held back by state regulation, the politicization/micromanagement by amateurs and lack of leadership. Combine that with tuition deregulation, and then this year’s tuition freeze, then you have a recipe for failure.
State funding and easy financing are a huge reason why the cost of the college degree is exploding. Professors requiring the reading of their own books and creating new editions each year for profit is absurd.
Point: There is much that needs to be reformed as we move into this more technological age. There are costs we can cut so intelligent students of all economies can afford the quality education and experience that UT has to offer.
I’m not sure how it will look but I am happy that the debate is happening.
After all, what good is an education if no body can afford it.
???
Really? So state funding is responsible for Harvard, Yale and other private universities costing more than twice that of public universities? And aren’t grads of public universities the true patriots, the taxpayers, who pay for the sins of the privileged, many of whom are our LEADERS? Yeah, you know, the 1-2%ers.
I have hired lots of public school grads over the years and they are the heroes of this country. It’s easy to criticize but please offer suggestions, not platitudes.
Not everyone needs to go to UT, a university considered by many as one of the top 50 in the world. There are other public schools that are less expensive such as a community college. Heck even an HVAC guy can become a majority leader…
Nick C
MSCE 1978
Exactly. All the TPPF twits who complain about tuition act as if UT and a&m are the only schools in Texas. Then they complain that they’re too focused on research and that tuition is high. Well, shucks, they aren’t the only schools in town.
If you can’t afford a sports car, no one forces you to take out loans to get that sports car.
If research and flagship universities aren’t your cup of tea, than the TPPF twits should go to community colleges. Of course, tuition is rising at community colleges because Perry prefers to give state money to his business friends rather than invest in the next generation of innovators and workers.
I have to say that J’s comments above ignores that fact that the University was built and nurtured from “statewide” grants and provisions so there is a reasonable expectation that an effort should be put forward by “all parties” to make the UT and A&M systems reasonably available to Texas citizens. That said, J does seem to raise the idea of tiered education delivery.
I agree with many of the comments above around it will be challenging to integrate student evaluation into faculty ratings but I do feel that along with peer performance evaluation, some student feedback is important, even if filtered through peers or administration. Second, I think there should be room for exploring best practices from around the world.
I don’t know what the right answer is but I don’t think building a complete meritocracy is the right answer. I truly believe there is value in research in all fields and support the motto and thank goodness I’m not part of this process!
Reginald, state funding in years past accounted for most of UT’s budget. Now professors and outside grants bring in more money. The state does not contribute enough money per student the way it used it, and it is transferring the burden of financing to the individual student. A university of the first class can be efficient and affordable, but it cannot be abandoned by the state.
Student feedback AND peer evaluation, along with the best practices from around the world, are already being implemented. It is the ignorant reform minded people who are learning little by little what really works in higher education, yet they scream so loudly about all the small-minded ideas that pop into their head and expect that everyone agrees with them.
The issues are proper funding from the state and continued trust in the administrators, faculties, and students who have made UT what it is. Outside interference from people who want to profit from untested online programs must be rejected.
I am a Texas-ex from 1963, so I am getting old. I have no idea about what would always be best for the university I love. This is what I do know about education. In order for a person to develop to full potential, struggle is required. One might wish he could be spoonfed knowledge, but that is not the way it must be done. I hated the UT admin in 1963. Now, I realize, that was a very important part of my educational experience that since, has served me very well.
In my honest opinion, the only way to evaluate professors is by anonymously electing a diverse and unbiased group of students from each school (e.g business, liberal arts, engineering, etc.) and have these students evaluate their professors and their semester based on academic rigorousness, value contributed to finding employment after graduation, etc. The actual number of students to implement this may be in hundreds, but I feel that this “committee” of anonymously elected students could give a more accurate depiction of classroom quality than student evaluations. In order for this to work, the students must attend class regularly, visit office hours occasionally, and communicate with the professors to gain insight about how much they “care.” Additionally, the group must be diverse and significantly represent a random sample of the student population in each school.
The professor evaluations are a joke. The burnt-orange scantron with bubbles and a comment box is hardly taken seriously by exhausted undergrads too worried about final exams. These evaluations are not correlated with teaching quality and UT professors know this; our most coveted professors will resign and flock to other universities.
Just like cost of living, tuition also increases given inflation. As long as the Fed continues to create money out of thin air, the dollar will devalue. From a micro level, if students today paid 1990′s tuition, tuition left for professor salaries will equate to nothing after factoring inflation. These professors will eventually flock to universities overseas that will pay better. This will ultimately undermine the American university system and thus the eventual demise of our nation’s strength.