UT System Celebrates, Others Question "Framework"
At a tense meeting of the University of Texas System Board of Regents on Aug. 25, 2011, after several months in which the board was at the center of a tug-of-war between groups with differing approaches to higher-education reform, Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa unveiled his “Framework for Advancing Excellence.”
The policy called for strategies to improve graduation rates, lower the costs of a degree and increase the use of technology in the classroom, among other things.
Almost a year to the day after laying out his proposal, Cigarroa, during an interview in his Austin office, said, “As soon as the board ...
Comments (2)
T D
An unelected expert whose salary and marching orders come from unnamed sources is perhaps the definition of a "micromanager."
The business community would be very happy to have all education turn into job training, though it rarely concedes that jobs change too rapidly for that to be practical. It wheels out "the world is changing!" only when it wants to criticize Higher Ed.
A college education isn't a four-year race with a stopwatch at the end. It helps prepare students for a lifetime of learning and civic life. To turn it into high school, with standardized achievement tests, would be ruinous to what generations of Americans have worked so hard to build.
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
Although Lindsay still supports the framework, he says it does not adequately address a crucial question: “How much are students increasing in their knowledge from their freshman to their senior year?”
This is the stupid idea that we are creating widgets in our universities and we should be able to measure the number of widgets. Lindsay is an idiot. Prior to getting hired by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he was president of Shimer College, prior to being fired.
"Shimer attracted national attention in 2009 when the school became embroiled in "a battle over what some saw as a right-wing attempt to take over its board and administration". Students, organized under the name Shimer Student Alliance, protested at the February 2010 Board meeting. Following votes of no confidence by the faculty, the alumni, and the Assembly (Shimer's democratic governing body), president Thomas Lindsay stepped down in April 2010."
This is the guy we should be listening to regarding the direction of our flagship universities? He should be run out of the state.