Academia’s Least Favored Republican?

Accuracy in Academia ^ | September 16, 2011 | Malcolm A. Kline

[SumProVita]

"Although this title would seem to engender a lively competition, the current front runner for the Republican presidential nomination may be where the smart money should gravitate to. Texas governor Rick Perry, in his decade as C E O of the state, actually managed to push through a number of reforms of the state’s higher education system that the state’s academics find anathema."

[SumProVita]

"At least three campus presidents have been pressured to resign in recent years, to make way for Perry appointees​—​all Republican businessmen. A particularly popular (and vocal) vice president of student affairs at the University of Texas was removed and replaced by .  .  . a retired Marine Corps general.”"

What do you think?

[yldstrk]

Anyone who believes in God

Academia considers those with a relationship with God to be stupid, not realizing they are the stupid ones, because God won’t stand for it.

[Genoa]

managed to push through a number of reforms of the state’s higher education system that the state’s academics find anathema

They say that like it's a bad thing.

[SumProVita]

“They say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Not if you understand the tone of the article and the purpose of Accuracy in Academia.

[Maverick68]

Who cares for the opinion of fools?

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Inaccuracy in Accuracy in Academia:

A particularly popular (and vocal) vice president of student affairs at the University of Texas was removed and replaced by .  .  . a retired Marine Corps general.

That would be Texas A&M, not UT.

LtGen Joe Weber is a good guy for a department badly in need of conservative leadership. Dept of Student Affairs: "You will never find a more wretched hive of [left-wing] scum and villainy." (at TAMU, anyway)

[SumProVita]

Good for you for catching this. By the way, there are several such ‘hives’ in the administrative chambers at many of the institutions of higher learning in this country.

But, I’m sure that you are already aware of that.

[DRey]

I love it. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks. These liberal lunatics have misdirected our universities long enough. Conservatives MUST infiltrate academia.

[ridesthemiles]

Another reason why I WILL vote for Perry.

[SumProVita]

“Conservatives MUST infiltrate academia.”

I very much agree. They must also put aside their fears of speaking up within the ranks of colleagues and students. In some cases, the conservative, more philosophically sound and logical perspective can be woven into course work (depending on the subject matter).

;-)

It’s unfortunate that many academics no longer understand that a MASTER was, in the early history of universities, one who could effectively persuade using either the PRO or CON perspective of a given issue.

[MrB]

Academia’s Opinions = Contrary Indicators of what’s good for liberty and America

[The_Reader_David]

American academe is drastically in need of reform. Unfortunately, Perry's reforms, while they may gratify many at FR by galling leftist academicians, accentuate an already existing bad trend in American universities: the corporatization of the university.

The reforms that are really needed include some that are the exact opposite of what Perry's, if not directly then indirectly, encourage:

• Shrinking the size of university administrations, in particular abolishing every Office of Affirmative Action (if there are statutory mandates for such activities, meet them with a small subsection of the HR department), drastically shrinking Offices of Student Life (which now have the resources and leisure to do things that have no benefit to the quality of student life like sponsor "racism awareness workshops" and "LGBTQ pride days"), and across the board cuts to the number of associate, assistant and vice- deans, provosts, presidents, chancellors, etc. with corresponding cuts to administrative support staff. (Didn't see anything about this in Perry's "reforms" which were all directed at the faculty.)
• Dropping any incentives or concern for "retention". Some students should be flunked out and advised to go to trade school or to come back when they're grown up and want to study, rather than party, not coddled to keep collecting their tuition. This will mean no longer giving a d*mn about student evaluation of instruction unless it provides evidence of actual malfeasance or gross incompetence on the part of a faculty member, in which case an investigation should be undertaken with a presumption of innocence. (This is one that Perry's "reforms" will exacerbate.)
• Abolishing all "grievance" departments like "Ethnic Studies", "Women's Studies", . . If it's legitimate scholarly activity, it has a home in some traditional academic discipline like history or sociology. In fact, the same goes for most departments that have "Studies" in the name, even "Russian Area Studies" or "Leadership Studies": split them all up and send them to work in a real academic discipline.
• The sciences need exactly the opposite of one of Perry's reform: less emphasis on grant funding. The current grant funding mechanism encourages a 'herd mentality' in which only the science everyone else is doing gets done and alternative theories and techniques get ignored (or even vilified) (cf. string theory, climatology, and the history of how genome sequencing was actually accomplished). Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the history of science knows this is very bad for science because really significant scientific breakthroughs are usually due to people bucking the trend (cf. Kuhn's notion of "paradigm shifts"). While we're at it on this topic, the "management" trend of evaluating faculty publications based on "impact factor" should be quashed before it can take hold on this side of the Atlantic: it exacerbates the "herd mentality" problem since only publications that get cited a lot soon after publication have a large "impact factor". (Oh, let me correct that, only publications in outrageously priced commercially published journals that get cited a lot in outrageously priced commercially published journals have a large "impact factor" since "impact factors" are computed by a large commercial publisher of outrageously priced journals.*)

*Turn of the 21st century academic publishing is the one business for which Marx's critique of capitalism really has some semblance of truth: they do not pay those who produce their content; they do not pay those who do the refereeing or editorial work; they now expect the content providers to do the typesetting by using "style files", also for free; some have the gall to actually charge authors "page costs"; unless the author edits the copyright agreement, they take all rights to the papers (away from the author); and then they sell the content, printed on paper at a cost of hundreds of dollars a year or stored in a server online at negligible cost, back to the universities who employ their content providers for thousands of dollars a year. (Talk about alienation from the product of one's labor!) In Europe government mandates to consider "impact factors" are a nice little example of "crony capitalism". Even as recently as the 1980's academic publishers actually did something useful: they took typed manuscripts with hand-drawn symbols and figures, beautifully typeset them and sent copies to subscribers world-wide. Back when they were providing a useful service the subscription prices were in line with production costs.

[SumProVita]

Were we to launch into an in-depth discussion of this topic, I would agree with a great deal of what you have stated. My kudos for what Gov Perry did in Texas were aimed at the fact that, at the very least, he recognizes the existing problem. Granted, it was a short-sighted solution albeit one that has the immediate effect of restoring a tiny bit of balance.

I particularly agree with THIS:

Abolishing all “grievance” departments like “Ethnic Studies”, “Women’s Studies”, . . If it’s legitimate scholarly activity, it has a home in some traditional academic discipline like history or sociology. In fact, the same goes for most departments that have “Studies” in the name, even “Russian Area Studies” or “Leadership Studies”: split them all up and send them to work in a REAL ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE.

Amen!