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Higher Education
Coverage of universities, colleges, student issues, and education policy shaping Texas’ campuses, from The Texas Tribune.
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Higher Education
Going the Distance
Increasing numbers of college students are attending classes, and even completing some degree programs, online — an innovation that could be welcome in an era of rising enrollments and shrinking budgets. But virtual higher ed has its critics, who say the distance learning model will never match what one lawmaker terms the “interpersonal Aristotle style” of education.
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Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Ramsey on what the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll says about the governor’s race, education, immigration, and other issues; Grissom on a far West Texas county divided over Arizona’s immigration law; Ramshaw talks health care reform and obesity in Texas with a legendary Dallas doctor; M. Smith on the Collin County community that’s about to break ground on a $60 million high school football stadium; Aguilar on the backlog of cases in the federal immigration detention system; Philpott of the Green Party’s plans to get back on the ballot; Hu on the latest in the Division of Workers’ Comp contretemps; Mulvaney on the punishing process of getting compensated for time spent in jail when you didn’t commit a crime; Hamilton on the fight over higher ed formula funding; and my sit-down with state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin: The best of our best from May 24-28, 2010.
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Higher Education
Gaming the Systems
Should we base the funding of state universities on course completion rather than enrollment? The commissioner of higher education says yes. Some state lawmakers say no — not until we attack the manipulation of the financing formula by the higher ed lobby.
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Economy
A Lousy Grade
More than two-thirds of Texans say their confidence in the state’s public schools ranges from shaky to nonexistent, according to the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. A majority of Texans believe that crime, low academic standards, lack of parental involvement and not enough funding are “major” problems that public schools face — but two-thirds say “too much religion in the schools” is not a problem.
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Higher Education
Data App: More University Pay
The top professors and administrators at Texas universities routinely earn between to $250,000 and $500,000 year, while presidents and chancellors earn up to $900,000, according to salary data for more than a dozen universities and university systems added today to the Tribune’s public employee salary database. Some 57 employees at the University of Texas make more than $250,000; by contrast, only 13 employees at Texas Tech make that much.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Paycheck U.
Today we’re adding another 17 agencies to our government salaries database, an extra 67,000 workers who collectively earn $2.9 billion in public payroll. The database now has records on more than 550,000 employees working at 62 of the largest state agencies, cities, universities, counties and mass-transit authorities.
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Health care
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Grissom on the transgender marriage conundrum, Hu on the workers’ comp whistleblowers, M. Smith on the Texas GOP’s brush with debt, Garcia-Ditta on why student regents should vote, Aguilar on the tripling of the number of visas given by the feds to undocumented crime victims, Hamilton on the paltry number of state universities with graduation rates above 50 percent, Ramshaw and Stiles on the high percentage of Texas doctors trained in another country, Ramsey and Stiles on congressmen giving to congressmen, Galbraith on how prepared Texas is (very) for a BP-like oil spill, and my conversation with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst: The best of our best from May 10 to 14, 2010.
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Higher Education
Guest Column: Why Student Regents Shouldn’t Vote
Would you turn all of your family’s assets, its health and safety and future, or those of your friends and neighbors, over to an unknown university student, even one carefully selected? Of course not.