Guided by the Learning Alliance-Round Table Benchmarking data, President Lloyd Jacobs and Trustee Tom Brady propose a bold new educational paradigm to be installed at UT that will (1) enhance retention, and (2) compete more effectively with other universities in order to achieve Transformative Change and Excellence. Said Jacobs, "Delivery of the core curriculum will be streamlined into convenient modules that will place UT at the forefront of world class universities." Trustee Brady congratulated Jacobs on "Increasing the number of students that we graduate. We have lowered the bottom line to the lowest point ever."
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Caption: Cattle being fed and fattened up before being sent to the slaughterhouse.
Parallel: Students in a degree mill getting an unsubstantial education to back up their degrees before being sent to the real world.
Side point: The cattle are probably getting better food.
it was quite clear at Tuesday's ASC meeting that Tom Brady has this sort of system in mind. We must produce more students, retain them somehow even if they don't do the work, increase production rates--but he never said a word about quality education. Scary.
It is a completely passive educational system: all the professor is supposed to do is inject material into the mold. He has been in the plastics business too long.
I am a conservative politically, and it troubles me when I see someone who is supposed to be a fellow conservative who is so reflexively dense about the meaning of education.
Despite the various apologist for the Learning Alliance Round Table, who tell us this is "our" commitee with no powers to do other than advise, I notice that the email from Rosemary Hagget on March 2 to faculty and others, refers to the LA as the "A&S Strategic Assessment--The Learning Alliance draft report."
So I think this is an assessment still, in the minds of upper administration, and that we will be held to its fuzzy findings, which means they will pick and choose as they will to do to the college as they please. Don't be misled by the "diffusionists" re this report. It has hidden teeth and they will bite us badly if we let them us it in this way.
Well, there is a special board meeting being called for Monday the 13th at 11:15 in SU 2592. One topic on this "special board meeting" is the resignation of a Board of Trustee member! So, interim dean here we come.
The Moving Finger writes, but has not yet writ. The 11:15 "special board meeting" follows the annual UT Presidential Address at 10:00. Who knows what butterfly might flex its tiny wings there, creating a flap, new winds of change, hope, and new directions ... think poetry -- and read up on your chaos theory ...
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