The report on UT teachers’ productivity by Richard Vedder and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity is technically accurate — but substantively misleading. A deeper analysis raises troubling questions about how Vedder would change UT.
Higher Education
Coverage of universities, colleges, student issues, and education policy shaping Texas’ campuses, from The Texas Tribune.
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Higher Education
Redistricting: A Better Way? Many Think So
Tuesday’s contentious debate on the state Senate floor over a proposed congressional redistricting map, which passed on a party line vote, was just a hint of why graduate students at Texas A&M University — and even some lawmakers — are studying alternative ways to handle the process.
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Higher Education
Outcomes-Based Higher Ed Funding Seems Right — But Which Outcomes?
During the regular session, Gov. Rick Perry’s top legislative priority for higher education was the implementation of a new financing system that rewards universities for graduating more students, not just for getting students into classes. Why didn’t that happen?
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Higher Education
A Second Chance for Campus Construction Projects?
Early in the session, there was much talk about how the time was right to invest in new university campus facilities. But a bill to issue bonds to get projects off the ground never managed to do so itself. Could it get another chance in the special session?
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Criminal Justice
20 Weeks in Which the Budget Held Sway
The 82nd Texas Legislature’s regular session ends as it started, with lawmakers arguing about a shrunken state budget and redistricting.
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Demographics
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Root profiles conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan, Aaronson on the Senate’s flare-up over an airport groping ban, Grissom on some twisted logic in the state’s same-sex marriage laws, Murphy and Macrander expand and refresh our public employee salary database, yours truly with the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll results on politics, issues, the state’s finances, and race, Ramshaw’s report on how some of the governor’s former aides now represent clients who want more money in the state budget, M. Smith on last-minute efforts to save education legislation that didn’t make it through the process, Tan reports on efforts to finish the state budget before the session ends on Monday, and Dehn with the video week in review: The best of our best from May 9 to 13, 2011.
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Higher Education
A&M Regent Willing to Throw Out Controversial “Solution”?
A side comment by Texas A&M University System regent that was caught on camera during Thursday’s board of regents meeting indicates that the group might be willing to eliminate a controversial teaching award program.
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Higher Education
Budget Deal Preserves Much, but Not All, of TEXAS Grants
A proposal adopted by the Legislature’s budget conference committee Thursday would provide funding for TEXAS Grants for about 33,100 incoming freshmen — far less than the number of eligible students but better than what the House originally proposed.
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Higher Education
Updated: “Seven Solutions” Are “Distraction,” A&M Regents Chairman Says
At a meeting of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, chairman Richard Box appeared to shrug off a controversial set of “breakthrough solutions” for higher education, saying it is time to “move on.”
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Higher Education
Tier-One Prize Money Bill Passes State Senate
After hitting a brief snag, the bill that creates a mechanism for the leaders in the race to become the state’s next tier-one university passed the state Senate today.