8/26/2011: That’s the takeway from Insidehighered‘s report on faculty productivity steps pushed by Governor Perry. They also have short takes today on the College Board head’s fat salary and Utah canceling classes for a football game. And a story about the Youngstown faculty union calling off a strike. The UO faculty union people have been quiet lately, any news on if they still plan to try a card check this fall?
And a Miami sports reporter asks the obvious question about the NCAA infractions committee:
The NCAA plays the bully in taking on the kids. Why doesn’t it take on
the adults who allowed Nevin Shapiro to run around their athletic
department?
The Texas plans being pushed by the officials may not sound like much, but you should read what the guy behind them, an oilman/entrepreneur named Jeff Sandefer, would really like to do.
Probably not much in Texas will change for now, except a new bureaucracy will be created at great cost in direct expenses and wasted faculty and staff time.
Any of that sound vaguely familiar?
An article on reverberations of the Texas plans in Florida, from a generally very conservative higher education website:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2011/08/when_texas_college_reforms_com.html
What to think of this story that really isn’t much of a story? That Rick Perry’s plans for revolutionizing Texas higher education may be “half-baked,” as the Washington Monthly’s Luzer put it, and Sandefer might be an anti-research fanatic who knows how to operate a business and a business school but doesn’t understand how academia works in general. Nonetheless, Rick Perry and Jeff Sandefer have made some Floridians in higher education very afraid