UT System plan for incentive pay stirs debate

Austin American Statesman ^ | August 22, 2012 | Ralph K.M. Haurwitz

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Borrowing a page from the corporate world, the University of Texas System is poised to adopt a pay-for-performance plan that would reward campus presidents and system executives for boosting graduation rates, increasing donations and meeting other goals.

....A sample of how award pay would work was included in the plan for a hypothetical official with a base salary of $350,000 and an "incentive award opportunity" of 10 percent. The official actually qualified for a bit more than 10 percent by virtue of exceeding some of the goals, which included cost savings through shared services, growth in sponsored research, increased philanthropic funding as a percentage of the school's spending and improvement of four-year graduation rates.

.....Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said, "I think what is proposed here is a good plan, well worth implementing." But she added that it's also reasonable to ask why university officials should get extra pay for doing what they are supposed to do anyway.

Raymond D. Cotton, a lawyer in Washington, who works with governing boards and presidents to negotiate employment contracts, said the proposal is reminiscent of the sort of intrusion into a president's responsibilities that recently saw the forced resignation and subsequent reinstatement of Teresa Sullivan as president of the University of Virginia. Sullivan is a former executive vice chancellor for the UT System.

"Any president worth his or her salt is not going to walk into a situation where a board is going to impose goals on the president," Cotton said. The president and the board should work out goals together, he said.

Rewarding a president for meeting philanthropic goals might well be unethical, Cotton said......

[Cincinatus' Wife]

But they like incentives to get students to do what they should...

D.C. Students Being Paid to Attend Summer School

Cincinnati High School Paying Students To Come To School and behave.

[redgolum]

That will only make the proffs pass people who shouldn't pass.

Already seen this on the local high school level (my wife is a teacher). There are some teachers who fill out the tests because they know the students won't or can't.

There is a subset of our culture that not only doesn't value education, but looks at it as a bad thing. If the parents aren't going to push for it, the kids won't.

[lormand]

UT hates white people. FU UT!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It goes deeper than that. Analysis shows a lot of classes are being taught by assistants, while researchers are guzzling money. Academics is getting short changed, while researchers (many churning out liberal studies to support progressive legislation and regulation) are feeding like a pigs.

[bgill]

They especially hate smart in-state white kids. Remember how many of our tax dollars they’ve wasted over the years fighting to keep them out.

Better yet, how about firing those profs who don’t do their job and those who are so far left they’ve fallen off the map. They can start by firing the president for making such ridiculous statements to the legislature like they’d have to shut down the football program if they had to admit the Top 10% kids (never mind that it was UT’s anti-white practice that brought about the Top 10% in the first place).

[The_Reader_David]

Boosting graduation rates? What bonehead thought that was a good idea? American education needs more rigorous standards, not incentives to water-down requirements. If the administration is getting bonuses for boosting graduation rates, you can bet your bottom dollar that will translate into pressure on faculty not to fail students (or give them grades lower than that required for the given course to count in their major), and into more money being diverted from the actual purposes of a university — research and education, yes in that order — to yet more administrative positions running social programs for the ostensible purposes of “academic support” and “boosting retention”. (And as I have noted before, it is administrative bloat, not faculty salaries or expansion of faculty numbers, that is driving the rapid increase in tuition.)

I know lots of FReepers hate the professoriate due to its leftward tilt (examples like Prof. Niall Ferguson and the selection of professor-FReepers like yours truly, mostly in the sciences, notwithstanding), but universities function better when they are run by their faculty, not legislators (or regents) who are clueless about both the nature of a university and its day-to-day operations, and have administrators who answer to their faculty, not the other way around.

[The_Reader_David]

Better yet, how about firing administrators en masse and turning administrative duties over to the faculty? The rise in tuition costs are driven by the expansion of administration, not the professoriate, and even a good deal of the leftward tilt in academe comes from administrators, who love running things like “Racism Awareness Workshops”, “Multicultural Activities Weeks”, “LGBT[more letters here] Pride Weeks” and other rubbish. Dealing with actually running their university will soften the leftism of some, and the others will take their influence out of the classroom by managing to get teaching-load reductions to run the pet leftist projects (like “Racism Awareness Workshop”,. . .) that overpaid administrators now run.

[redgolum]

In many cases, it is the school driving that.

If you are a professor, you are expected to publish not teach. I was fortunate to go to Iowa State at a time when the Engineering dean didn't think so, but that was not common.

Most of the non engineering classes I had were taught by foreign grad students. In fact seeing an American grad student was so rare it was commented on. The reason? They are cheaper.