Those of you who were first exposed to Rick Perry during the GOP primary may know him only as a walking seltzer bottle. But did you know he runs the entire state of Texas—like, the whole thing, from Amarillo to Brownsville and El Paso to Beaumont—and is currently dismantling it as fast as he can?
Perry's legislature cut $1 billion from higher education during last session's immolation of the state's resources and social services. The cuts left universities with huge budget gaps, but the UT regents, appointed by Perry, obeyed the governor's request for a tuition freeze, meaning the gaps will have to be eliminated through strict spending cuts, like dropping salaries or laying off staff. (This was all despite a several billion dollar rainy day fund.)
At the time, UT President Bill Powers expressed dismay with the regents' decision. Now comes word that he may be getting fired over his disapproval. Paul Burka of Texas Monthly hears early reports that the Regents ordered Powers' head, which Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa refused to deliver. The Regents will now have a meeting to decide a further course of action. If they fire Powers, Burka writes,
the impact on the university’s reputation could be devastating. UT will have to undertake the search for a new president at a time when top-grade candidates will be unlikely to be attracted to a position that is subject to political pressure.
This is not the first time Perry has meddled in Texas' school system, and it doesn't figure to be the last. A few years ago, Perry partnered with the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation to devise a reworking of Texas' higher education institutions, which are already quite well respected but not the shining examples of late capitalism that they could be (in fact, some aspects of the education system aren't even there to make money at all).
To improve state universities into drive-thru diploma shops, the TPPF came up with a seven point plan to fix what wasn't broken, including ranking professors by the amount of money they brought into the school (thus sidelining research professors), paying professors bonsues for good student reviews, and blatantly treating students as "customers." The plan was highly controversial, natch, causing an uproar among faculty and leading to the sudden resignation of Chancellor Mike McKinney from the A&M system.
The TPPF / Regents decision /etc. are all also indicative of Perry's unprecedented cronyism. The Texas governor is traditionally a weak position, but Perry has served in it for so long that he's appointed almost every position in the state, allowing for coordinated efforts like the one to reconfigure the goals of higher education. McKinney's resignation and Powers' rumored firing show the costs of not working within Perry's system.
America, all this could have been yours.
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