For accountability, productivity in higher education

March 21, 2011

I’ve blogged about higher education here and here, and I commend to your attention this post by Jane S. Shaw. She writes:

Last fall, Texas A&M alarmed the higher-education establishment by measuring the costs of its academic departments—it compared faculty salaries with the revenues earned from student tuition and research grants. By making the costs explicit, the university broke the unwritten rule that students, parents, and taxpayers should simply trust American universities (the “envy of the world”) to spend state money efficiently.

In the Lone Star State, it looks as though that was just the beginning. According to Paul Burka of the Texas Monthly, Texas governor Rick Perry is “waging an undeclared war on higher education.” Burka reports that Perry has engaged the Texas Public Policy Foundation to write a “blueprint” for overhauling higher education: “The objectives are accountability, transparency, and productivity.”