UT responds to need to reform higher ed, become more efficient

San Antonio Express-News:

The University of Texas Board of Regents approved an action plan Thursday to raise quality and productivity at its 15 institutions in an era of declining revenues, fortifying the effort with $243 million in strategic investments.

After months of public squabbling over how best to reform academia, regents unanimously backed the framework created by Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa and said they would give him latitude to work.

“Chancellor, I think the ball is yours,” said Gene Powell, chairman of the board of regents and a San Antonio businessman.

The plan pleased higher education boosters and critics alike, including Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative Austin think tank that's served as a brain trust for those seeking radical changes in the state's higher education.

“The plan unveiled today reflects important steps toward both increasing productivity and improving academic quality in the University of Texas System, and I applaud Chancellor Cigarroa and everyone involved for their hard work in this effort,” Perry said in a statement.
Cigarroa said the plan is meant to set goals, not dictate how they are achieved. A deadline looms for defining and achieving each benchmark.

“One size does not fit all,” Cigarroa said. “The innovation, the creativity of how to address these issues ... is dependent on the creative leadership of our presidents and faculty.”

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To help monitor the plan's success, the system set aside $10 million to build a user-friendly “dashboard” that university presidents and citizens alike can use to access real-time productivity and success metrics at the system, university, departmental and even individual faculty level.

The dashboard will include salaries, number of credit hours taught and student evaluation scores of individual professors, data that kicked up controversy when they were first released to the public.

But unlike the previously released database, which presented a snapshot in time, the dashboard will include historical data to show trends over the years.

“You will be able to see the full contributions of (faculty), our greatest assets,” Cigarroa said.

It also could help provosts decide where to allocate resources and department heads make decisions about staffing, Powell said.

Faculty productivity has been one of the hottest topics of debate, with critics claiming many professors spend too much time on frivolous research and not enough time teaching.

The plan calls for strengthening post-tenure review, conducting outside audits of academic departments, and tweaking the pay structure to better reward performance. The plan also expands teaching excellence awards and allocates more money to recruit top-notch faculty.

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There will also be an attempt to control costs for students which have risen dramatically in recent years. The plan is something that was needed and it is unfortunate that it was not in place in time for the legislature when it was funding current operations.

The plan seems consistent with Gov. Perry's push for higher education reform. It may also address the growing perception of a higher education bubble which was pushing ever higher costs at a time when students had little prospect for repaying the loans needed to finish school.