Higher Education Coalition attack on [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry raises eyebrows

Lone Star Report ^ | July 8, 2011 | William Lutz

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The Coalition for Higher Excellence in Higher Education – a group that supports higher education reform ideas offered by the state’s university presidents and chancellors and has expressed concerns with some higher education reform ideas offered from outside academia – fired a rhetorical howitzer at Gov. Rick Perry yesterday. Political observers in Texas are left wondering why the organization chose to attack Perry by name and how this will play out.

The coalition’s main communications consultants used to work for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former president George W. Bush, two elected officials whose political interests have not always aligned perfectly with those of Perry. A member of the coalition’s operating committee, former ambassador and Higher Education Coordinating Board Chair Pamela Willeford, said she has supported Perry, and the organization is bipartisan and is about higher education, not partisan politics. She also said that decisions about what statements to issue are made by the organization’s operating committee, not its consultants.

Wednesday, the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl issued a report blasting “7 Breakthrough Solutions for Higher Education” proposed by Texas philanthropist Jeff Sandefer and supported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The coalition issued a statement supporting the report and calling on elected officials to distance themselves from the 7 Solutions.

Perry’s communications director Mark Miner issued a statement expressing disappointment that University of Texas administrators are so resistant to the governor’s cost control and reform ideas. "University faculty and their allies should join the reform efforts and recommend ways to innovate, improve graduation rates, and enhance accountability and efficiency at Texas colleges and universities,” Miner said. “We all have an obligation to meet the needs of Texas students, employers, taxpayers and our fast-growing economy. Resisting reform and accountability is an unsustainable recipe for mediocrity and stagnation. Texas deserves better."

Some Austin observers thought that finished that story.

But then on Thursday, the Coalition sent out a response to Miner’s statement that has grass-roots conservatives scratching their heads. The statement both attacks Perry by name and also attacks the Texas K-12 education system.

[snip]

Many grass-roots conservatives, meanwhile, are praising Perry for taking on the higher education bureaucracy. “Those of us who are attending our state's universities or who have recently graduated know that our current system of higher education is morally bankrupt,” said Tony McDonald, senior vice president of the Young Conservatives of Texas. “The system puts undergraduate education on a back-burner in favor of the mass publication of largely useless scholarly articles. The system consumes large sums of tax revenue, while saddling graduates with massive student-loan debt. It is refreshing to see Governor Perry take the bold step of calling out our universities and demanding that they implement reform and accountability measures which will serve to protect both students and taxpayers.” Here’s one thing we do know: the Coalition, and its supporters some of whom are prominent members of the Texas business community, has upped the ante by singling out Perry by name and responding to his chief spokesman in that manner.

When asked about this issue by LSR, the governor’s office replied that the purpose of the statement was merely to underscore the governor’s priorities for Texas public colleges and universities. “[The governor’s plan] for higher education is to improve accountability, affordability, transparency, and accessibility,” said Catherine Frazier with the Governor’s Press Office. “Where we are right now is not cutting it … The governor is simply calling on university leaders to adopt these goals and work towards finding the best way to accomplish them for their respective universities. And he will continue holding those universities accountable to pursuing those goals until progress is made.”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Big Education doesn't like to be messed with.

[Diogenesis]

The article is not clear about what Gov. Perry wants that
they do NOT. Would you clarify?

[samtheman]

Maybe the group favors vouchers and Perry is against them?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

YOU Diogenesis, YOU, who believes I can't think my way out of a paper bag, a shill for Perry, a dumb poster, YOU want ME to clarify something for YOU.

Now we're making progress.

I'll be glad to help.

Seven Solutions to Strengthen Higher Education

For starters, Gov. Rick Perry wants to give students and their parents power as "customers" of higher education. He also wants institutions of higher learning to TEACH not just serve as protected, personal political fiefdoms built-up with grant money (my interpretation).

And here's a OpEd from the MSM helping out their friends in education fight education reform: Perry's pal pressing his 'seven solutions'

**************

An instructive and recent example: Texas A&M has slowly been torqued away from being a strong conservative university to a more "normal" university -- just like the left likes 'em so they can "teach" the kids. Here is the last 2 paragraphs in the OpEd linked just above.

Sixteen years later, Rudder vowed as president of Texas A&M College to transform it from a second-rate school with declining enrollment into a first-class university. Rudder banished entrenched provincialism and never wavered from his conviction that an "immutable marriage" existed between teaching and research.

"It is not water or real estate or labor or power or cheap taxes alone that attracts industry," Rudder once said. "It's brainpower."

The "elite" see Americans as unrefined and provincial.

PROVINCIAL -- a person of local or restricted interests or outlook; a person lacking urban polish or refinement

Related to PROVINCIAL
Synonyms: bumpkin, chawbacon, churl, clodhopper, cornball, countryman, hayseed, hillbilly, hick, rube, rustic, yokel

Antonyms: cosmopolitan, cosmopolite, sophisticate

[Tax-chick]

Gov. Perry’s taking an interest in reform proposals from “outside academia” makes me like him better.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Yes.

Perry “sees it.”

He “gets it.”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....“7 Breakthrough Solutions for Higher Education” proposed by Texas philanthropist Jeff Sandefer and supported by the Texas Public Policy Foundation....

Texas Public Policy Foundation July 7, 2011 --- "The Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education recently formed to defend the status quo against the efforts of university regents to promote transparency and accountability in higher education.

Yet there is much about the status quo that simply cannot be defended.

Higher education today needs reform in two ways. First, by reducing its staggeringly and unnecessarily high costs; and second, by increasing instructional quality, which has suffered as many good professors have taken themselves out of the classroom to be replaced with inexperienced part-timers and teaching assistants.

When I began university teaching in the 1960s, the average teaching load was five classes per semester. It then dropped to four classes, then to three, and now commonly to two or even one class per semester. Reduced teaching loads permitted professors to conduct research.

The 1970s began a glut of Ph.D. graduates. I watched it happen with my colleagues. With more applicants applying for fewer positions, administrators needed new ways to distinguish among qualified candidates. It became difficult to assess teaching abilities of new Ph.D. graduates, and the focus switched to their publications...............[Ronald L. Towbridge continues]....................."

Ronald L. Trowbridge, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. Trowbridge formerly served as vice president of Hillsdale College in Michigan.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Trowbridge: “....It logically followed that publication began to supersede teaching – education was in large measure replaced with research, and publishing took priority over teaching. Prestige and image outside the classroom became more important than teaching within it. It was now the external image of the university that mattered more than the internal education of students.......”

http://www.texaspolicy.com/commentaries_single.php?report_id=3932

[Cincinatus' Wife]

James Earl Rudder: ....." Rudder vowed as president of Texas A&M College to transform it from a second-rate school with declining enrollment into a first-class university."

[Exactly the "elevation" of the university and the "system" over the students and their education, that Trowbridge explains in his essay above]

[Diogenesis]

Thank you.

Why is Perry’s name not on “Seven Solutions to Strengthen Higher Education”?

Is this another plagiarism by you and RINO Perry?
like you did with the headline on another thread
where you were remanded by the Adm. Moderator?

Why are you showing something that does not even have
Perry’s name, yet claiming it is HIS?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Perry has made some powerful enemies by taking on the trial lawyers and entrenched teachers.

Think of it!

The trial lawyers and teachers and teachers unions are the #1 and #2 backers of Democratic candidates.

Lawyers and teachers (all unions will lock arms with them) are the money and the muscle of "get out the vote" for Democratic Party candidates and 2012 Obama.

Rick Perry has been fighting them for some time now.

The push-back will be fierce.

[Tax-chick]

Yet there is much about the status quo that simply cannot be defended.

Exactly. "Higher education" will no more reform itself than K-12 "education" will, and for the same reason. The main beneficiaries of the system - the tenured or unionized employees - have no motivation other than to increase their compensation and reduce their productivity.

There are individuals doing outstanding work in both systems, motivated by personal character, but the institutional incentives are all toward demanding more and doing less.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

What I added is in [-——].

Stop trying to confuse the thread.

All you have to do is go to the links.

You come on every Rick Perry thread to disrupt.

I have never done that to another GOP candidate on another thread.

Yet you will not name a candidate.

I’ve asked you who you support every time you appear.

{{{Crickets}}}

Why is that Diogenesis?

Are you a teacher?

A lawyer?

A Democrat for Obama?

[Tax-chick]

She didn’t claim Gov. Perry was the author of this report, only that he supported using its recommendations to guide reform of the state university system. The authorship of the document has been made perfectly clear in this and other articles on the subject.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

...Is this another plagiarism by you and RINO Perry? like you did with the headline on another thread where you were remanded by the Adm. Moderator?...

You mean this thread?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....There are individuals doing outstanding work in both systems, motivated by personal character, but the institutional incentives are all toward demanding more and doing less.

Bump!

[AppyPappy]

He’s taking flak so he must be over the target

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Exactly!

What a great way to say it.

[AppyPappy]

Our professors concentrate on bringing money into the university via writing or grants. Graduate Teaching Assistants do the teaching.

[Diogenesis]

First, you falsely purported the 7 Solutions
were from RINO Perry.

But his name is not there.

When this was brought out to you, you attacked the poster.

Second, yes, that was the thread that you changed the name
to include RINO Perry (and the Ad Mod admonished you).
These are not good characteristics for a PerryBOT.

[AppyPappy]

RINO?

Big talk for a man who says he will vote for Obama.

[AppyPappy]

In case you forgot what you said

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2745719/posts?page=14#14

[Clara Lou]

Do you know who James Earl Rudder is? I mean before he came to Texas A&M? Do you know Texas A&M’s condition when Rudder arrived? [This is not a challenge. This is about the “big picture.”]

[Diogenesis]

Dear FRiend AppyPappy,
I said,

"We will vote for Obama before the RINO Romney (*)....
At least Obama is more honest.
.... (*) and write in Gov. Palin's name first."

please, stop taking it out of context as you have done
by incorrectly removing what was written.
AppyPappy: "Big talk for a man who says he will vote for Obama."
because YOU KNOW that is not what the post said.

dio

[Clara Lou]

PerryBOT
I despise name callers with their own agenda.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I’ve answered your lies and your character assassinations. You think it’s productive to disrupt my threads. You don’t want others to follow what I’ve found.

It’s typical Leftists’ tactics.

You fear others might learn something, so you feel by clogging up threads with your posts, FReepers won’t want to stick around.

You come on my threads (where I provide information and LINKS) meant to educate fellow FReepers about a GOP conservative (as I have also done for Sarah Palin) and spam them with multiple Gardasil HPV vaccine links, titled to make a shock statement, thinking FReepers read headlines and not the content.

My conclusion: You’re a bully and you hold contempt for others, and see FReepers as too stupid to read what I’ve put out there — lazy and merely content to buy what you’re selling.

What are you selling Diogensis?

Obama 2012?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I'm not a mind reader but it strikes me that Gov. Rick Perry truly believed the HPV vaccine would have helped a lot of Texans who otherwise would not have gotten this protection against cervical cancer (it was to help with 3 strains of the human papilloma virus HPV).

Rick Perry's wife Anita Perry was a nurse for many years and still is involved in health care as First Lady of Texas, so I imagine health care is something this governor is more aware of than maybe your "average" governor and understood this to be a vaccine that would combat cervical cancer and cut heath care costs.

Then too Rick Perry grew up hard scrabble with little luxury as many have, yet vaccines traditionally have been made available to all.

Instead of applying the worst motives to Rick Perry, perhaps his critics could consider that his motives were good ones.

Another FReeper had some thoughts on this issue.

However, there are some here on FR who prefer to apply the worst motives to Rick Perry.

The most "vocal" either won't name a candidate they would support; say they would vote for Huntsman or Romney over Perry; say they would rather Obama stay in the White House than vote for Rick Perry.

The HPV vaccine was always Opt-Out. And according to this report had been changed to Opt-In, before being dropped entirely.

90 days after his EO, Gov. Rick Perry let stand legislation undoing the EO.

"..Ann Hettinger, Concerned Women for America's state director of Texas, was instrumental in convincing Perry to change his proposal to an opt-in provision. When asked if Perry's original plans for the HPV vaccine would be an issue if he were to run for president, [Penny] Nance [CEO of Concerned Women for America] replied, “It would've been an issue IF HE HAD NOT FIXED IT.”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

“Do you know who James Earl Rudder is?.....”

Yes.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7515817.html

He’s lauded here in the Houston Chronicle article linked above — “The Perry Pal Presses.....”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Our professors concentrate on bringing money into the university via writing or grants. Graduate Teaching Assistants do the teaching.

Exactly!

The universities use them as "rainmakers" to bring in the students and their $$$$$!

[AppyPappy]

That’s exactly what it said. You said you would vote for Obama rather than the Republican if it was Romney. A vote for Obama is a vote for Obama.

And you bash Perry????!!!

[Diogenesis]

To your post #26:

I asked a respectful question (post #2) and got no answer
after you revealed yourself as snarky (post #4) without
answering.

Upon review, you were found to be claiming something
for your candidate Gov. Perry which had nothing to do
with him based upon what was at THAT url (post #10).

So you attacked me.

You say you have fear that others might learn the truth about RINO Perry, although you might mean
that you have fear that others might learn that you
are plagiarizing for him
(like you did on that other thread).

Why are you bringing up Gardasil?

[Diogenesis]

To your post #27:

Why are you bringing up Gardasil?

The REAL point of what is behind these posts is original intent--not what
ultimately happened. RINO Perry's seeming intent was to
(1) reward his political allies inc. Chief of Staff and his Merck employer and
(2) to essentially shove an untested drug into the bodies of
his constituents’ pre-pubescent girls. Girls. So where was his
due diligence? Where was the informed consent?
Is there an iota of evidence that he did really care? Most importantly,
what would he do on a national level, if given the power.
Many on this forum are still waiting to hear Gov. Perry
begin to finally address this issue.

[Diogenesis]

"You bear false witness. That is not what it said.
"It said I would 'write in Gov. Palin, before that'."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

.... please, stop taking it out of context as you have done by incorrectly removing what was written....

Take a dose of that yourself Diogenesis.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

.....Many on this forum are still waiting to hear Gov. Perry begin to finally address this issue.

Contact information

Go for it!

[Diogenesis]

RINOs, like Perry, like their BOTs,
never actually, clearly answer
as post #35, and post #2, prove, again.

Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.

[KevinDavis]

That is a fair question.. Who are you supporting???

[Tax-chick]

I’m very interested in Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry. I’m somewhat interested in Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.

But by the time my primary is held (NC) there may be no Republican on the ballot, at all!

[9YearLurker]

I’m looking at Perry now as the biggest obstacle to taking back the White House in 2012, because I’m afraid he could win the primaries, thereby stopping Palin—and then he’d certainly lose to Obama. (The rest of the country is nowhere near ready to vote in a meaner-talking W.)

But I’ve got to defend C’s Wife here. She’s merely giving the info on the reform program that Perry is supporting and this group just attacked him for supporting. Nothing indirect or dishonest in her presentation.

[Mr. Lucky]

I think he pretty much nailed you on this one.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thank you for your honesty and sportsmanship.

That’s what FReepers do.

[9YearLurker]

I fully expect we’ll be on the same team by this time next year, but you’re right, we can have honest disagreements here.

I also learn from all the articles that you post and link.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bottom line:

Obama must be voted out.

[Texan]

I’m looking at Perry now as the biggest obstacle to taking back the White House in 2012, because I’m afraid he could win the primaries, thereby stopping Palin

Are you thinking that Palin will go head to head with Perry in Iowa, New Hampshire etc and beat her? Or are you thinking that Palin has a strategy of not entering the race until after the primaries since it doesn't appear that she's making any plans for Iowa. (All this assuming they both will decide to run)

[DH]

Have you ever noticed that our educational system is like a box of laundry soap?

Ever since I was a little boy, I always noticed that each month they all had “NEW AND IMPROVED” on the boxes. This has gone on for every day, week, month, and year since 1950 and I have trouble understanding just how they can improve the soap to a better level so many times in so many years...while the soap seems to be exactly like it was in the beginning.

The same ALMOST applies to education. All I’ve heard is it’s new and improved yet the quality of the product gets worse every time the government “improves” it.

Ever notice that?

[Finny]

Bottom line: Obama must be voted out.

No, the bottom line is that liberalism must be voted out. If Obama was replaced by a statist Republican, we would be worse off than if Obama was re-elected.

Our enemy is LIBERALISM and STATISM. Liberals in the Democrat party cannot hurt conservatives or the Republican party. Liberals and statists in the Republican party are the bigger threat to our nation because they sabotage on a Trojan Horse basis the political party that voters are begging to represent, stand for, and fight for, limited government conservatism.

Statists and liberals in the Republican party poison the Republican party's appeal to Regular Joe Americans as a real alternative to big, intrusive government and enslavement to it. Liberal and statist Democrats cannot EVER do the damage that Liberal and statist Republicans have done and continue to do -- that is, create, promote, and exacerbate cynicism and despair in Americans who WITH JUSTIFICATION think their votes are meaningless because "there's not a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats."

The enemy is not Obama, and it is not the Democrat party. THE ENEMY IS LIBERALISM AND STATISM in BOTH parties. The bottom line is that THEY must be voted out.

As for me, I vow to vote such that liberal, statist Republicans LOSE. Only when they LOSE will the Republican party -- and the nation -- start winning.

[Clara Lou]

This is just my opinion but I don’t think Palin is going to run. She has a young family to support, and she’s making a lot more money doing what she’s doing than she will as President. From outside the presidency she can continue to publicly address conservative issues and do a lot of good.

I don’t have a crystal ball. I just don’t think she’s going to run. The campaign would be NASTY.

[Clara Lou]

What’s in the Chronicle is not much of a “laud.” It’s pretty much a simple statement of fact. In the context of the times, he wasn’t liberal. At A&M, he has always been at the top of the admired and respected figures list.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I certainly have.

And as the classes get larger, more money flows their way.

As more money flows their way, the more they need.

The palaces they’ve built for themselves, where the teaching assistants do their work — I guess that so they’re freed up to churn out all those anti-American, pro-globalization text books the students have to buy; and gives them time to attend seminars around the world and show up to support “re-elect Obama” fundraisers.

The students they’re turning out are not getting a quality education (look at how other countries are moving ahead of us) and when they do graduate (many, many don’t), they can’t find a job, a. because there aren’t any, b. because they aren’t qualified. Most of these institutions are money making, anti-American indoctrination camps, inside liberal employment factories. And now student loans will be completely controlled by the federal government. Scary.

Obama has tossed away the one agency that America called theirs, NASA. It is now “green” and monitoring Earth, searching for “life” rather than moving man into space, and will for a time (until they say we can’t) hitch rides on Russian ships to ISS. Obama is engaged in crony capitalism (Elon Musk - Space X - gave a big D.C. party 1st inauguration blow out for Obama and now holds fundraiser events at about $4K a seat for his re-electon). So for now the taxpayer’s space dollars will flow to Elon Musk.

Obama (who hates capitalism down to his toes) tells us commercial rockets are the way — will be on the way — that when (if) they fly, someone will think of a way to use them — create a market out of thin air. But he’ll squeeze them too and manned flight will die on schedule. He’s snuffing out all our pride. He’s hobbled our nation. The country is being destroyed.

The idiots thinking they’ve got their hands in our pockets are in for a big surprise once we’re tapped out and Democrats begin to call them mere party members and tell them to get in the bread lines. They will no longer be considered “victims” of the rich, because we will all be equal.

And education has played a major role in bringing us to this place.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I love Aggies Clara Lou.

I have an Aggie graduate daughter.

I said “laud” because he has served our country.

But that does not make him understand education and the raising up of good citizens.

TX A&M has changed.