Last month I endorsed the questions Jeff Sandefer has raised about the performance of our two major public universities. In answer to those questions, UT Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa presented a “Framework for Advancing Excellence,” which was endorsed unanimously by the Board of Regents and praised widely by editorial writers.
Professor Robert Koons thinks the document does deserve admiration, not as a blueprint for excellence but as a classic in the fine art of academic evasion:
The Plan is packed with words like “action items”, “goals”, “metrics”, and “responsible parties”, all designed to give the casual reader the impression that UT is serious about producing real results.
But the impression is false, because it avoids real accountability for results:
Accountability requires clear and simple goals. Here are two to consider, in place of the Plan’s seventy bullet points: First, each campus shall increase its seniors’ average scores on the Collegiate Learning Assessment by 2% each year for the next ten years (controlling for variations in the aptitudes of entering students). Second, for each year of the same period, each campus shall reduce the total instructional cost per student-hour by 3%.
Koons notes that Oxford and Cambridge, two of the finest universities in the world, require exams to measure students’ proficiency in their chosen fields. Those results are published, and the standards are public. Their plan is simple, it is objective, and it is transparent — versus a seventy-point plan that will be filed away as soon as the heat dies down.
My message to the University of Texas: no guts, no glory. Academic obfuscation accomplishes nothing, as perhaps it is meant to. A Board of Regents that is committed to taking the UT System into the top ten of American public universities would pay very close heed to what Professor Koons is telling them.
