Rick Perry Leads the Way on Higher-Ed Reform

National Review Online ^ | August 8, 2011 | Carrie Lukas, The Corner

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Over the past two years, Gov. Chris Christie, by picking and winning a battle against the teachers’ unions in one of the bluest states in the country, has shown other conservative leaders that it is possible to take on the Left’s most powerful special-interest groups.

..Rick Perry may be in the process of teaching conservatives a similar lesson by taking on another sacred cow: the higher-education establishment.

Friday’s Washington Post article “Rick Perry wages assault on state’s higher education establishment” describes how Perry has picked a high-profile fight with the state’s university system. He is pushing reforms to improve the efficiency of the state’s universities and backing a potentially game-changing plan to create a low-cost $10,000 degree program.

Perry’s initiative is attracting fierce opposition — challenging higher education unsettles some big constituencies, like alumni groups that maybe resistant to change and potential threats to tradition.

But like Christie’s fight with the teachers’ unions, Perry’s effort to reform higher education could become a model for conservative reformers around the country.

First, runaway college costs are an important “kitchen table” issue for American families. After the economic woes of the past decade, many families are wondering how they are going to afford to send their kids to college (the yearly cost of attending an in-state four-year public college now tops $16,000 per year).

Second, like our public schools, America’s colleges are woefully underperforming. The authors of the recently published book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses found that 45 percent of college students show no improvement in critical skills after two years in college. Troubling statistics are forcing many families to question whether investing time and money in college is really worth it, particularly since many college graduates are struggling to find employment and appear to have gained few marketable skills.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

This is the kind of garbage being churned out by "researchers" in institutions of higher learning. We're treated weekly to some "report" or "study" that academics have published.

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"Just in time for kids to go back to school, sack lunch in hand, the American Academy of Pediatrics has released a study from the University of Texas showing those lunches may be unsafe. Key word being maybe.

For the study researchers looked at the home-packed lunches of more than 700 preschoolers at nine child care centers in Texas. They found that only 45.1 percent of the lunches had at least one ice pack.

The temperature of the lunches was then measured with a noncontact temperature gun an hour and half before the kids ate them. They found that over 90 percent of the lunches, even those with multiple ice packs, were at unsafe temperatures, making them susceptible to illness-causing bacteria.

Whether or not those lunches actually made kids sick however, was not studied, a criticism some say limit the study’s usefulness. Dr. Michael Green, a pediatrician with the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and a professor of pediatrics and surgery at the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, told msnbc.com the increased temperature of the food could raise risks, but it’s impossible to know by how much....[snip] Source

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I guess they need another study!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Gov. Rick Perry said "no" to competing in "Race to the Top." Texas Knows Best How to Educate Our Students

But Rep. Shelia Jackson-Lee and her Democratic Party wanted Perry's signature so the "money would flow to our schools within days."

Gov. Perry sued for Texas' money (without Washington telling us how to spend it) -- And won! Promise Kept.