Tanks a Lot!
The Joint Committee wants to thank Bloggie and those readers
who participated in the two “UT Degree Guarantee” proposal surveys. We have we
have kicked around the significance of the survey results also have carefully
have read over the many “Comments” in response to the proposal. The initial
week-long survey showed that there was strong but far from unanimous support
for the proposal. So the survey deadline was extended a week. In the second
survey the proposal got hammered.
The Joint Committee has concluded from the comments that
opponents of the proposal shared a general animosity toward new proposals. Some
of the Committee members conclude that opponents of the proposal rejected it on
principle and are disappointed that there was no evidence and that they had
bothered to study the merits of the proposal in any great depth.
The Committee acknowledges that there is a “new proposal
fatigue” that presently prevails across campus. It is a rare day when the UT
campus community is asked to vote on a significant new proposal. We observe,
for example, that the decision to serve beer at football games was imposed from
above and never a topic widely discussed or voted on prior to implementation.
That is the just way things are done around here and nobody
seems to care. Oligarchy prevails. This “UT Degree Guarantee” proposal is now
dead in the water.
3 comments:
In my view there were just too many missing details and potential loop holes to make the proposal viable and effective and given how UT tends to mismanage such plans a major potential for problems for students and the University, including departments and faculty in terms of implementation and effectiveness. Although I can applaud the effort and acknowledge the problems the proposal attempts to address, it seemed to be to create a whole new suite of challenges for students.
The previous post is much too reflective - a Hallmark of this administration is lock, load, fire and deal with the consequences later. Too bad, good ideas die either on the vine or on the ground, close to their implementation.
Here's a proposal. Hire and retain faculty who are competent and motivated to work at UT. Create a university where instructors are proud to be at UT and who feel supported by UT and who are not counting down the days until they can retire and get away from the chaos. Reduce the size of classes, since one of the givens since ancient Greece is that the more face time a student has with a teacher the more successful that student is. Stop thinking of technology as the teacher and return to the idea that technology is a tool. Support instructors with technology; don't shove it down their throats. Send all these half-assed administrators who have had jobs created for them because of their half-assed proposals back whence they came.
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