From the Naple News
by Kristin Gill
Florida faculty members are bracing for a debate after Gov. Rick Scott expressed interest in a Texas plan that links students’ grades to faculty bonuses and cuts research budgets at state universities.
Scott and officials with the State University System of Florida say they just want to start a conversation.
“The Texas plan is fine for Texas,” Frank Brogan, chancellor for the university system, said at a September meeting of the system’s Board of Governors. “But I think what the governor has said to us is he just likes the Texas plan as a conversation starter. He wants a plan with ideas for Florida.”
The Texas Public Policy Foundation proposed seven solutions that frequently refer to students as “customers,” and encourage faculty members to teach as many students and classes as possible to earn performance bonuses. Faculty members with major research budgets are referred to as “high-cost.”
Data on each faculty member, including salary and benefits costs, the number of students taught in the past year, average student satisfaction rating and the percentage of As and Bs awarded in classes are all accounted for when measuring teacher efficiency.
All that business rhetoric aggravates some Florida faculty members.
Catherine Wilkins, an Edison State College professor, drafted an official response to the plan for the Faculty Senate, calling it “shortsighted,” and warning it would be a “grave mistake” to create the same system in Florida.
“We’re basically rejecting the idea that instructor salaries should be based solely on the number of students we serve and their satisfaction,” Wilkins said. “That leads to a watering down of curriculum and grade inflation.”
Edison is governed by the Florida College System run by Chancellor Willis Holcombe. The system includes 28 colleges, which wrote to Scott this summer with their response to the plan. The State University System of Florida governs the 11 state universities.
“Any time you talk about changing the system, the concern is whether faculty will lose job security,” Holcombe said.
Fast facts
In Texas, the seven solutions separate research and teaching budgets and also create student scholarships from existing state funding.
But those solutions rousing Florida faculty most are ones that deal with evaluations and tenure.
The seven solutions separate research and teaching budgets and also create student scholarships from existing state funding. But those solutions rousing Florida faculty most are ones that deal with evaluations and tenure.
“This is part of a fervor for accountability we see going into place in the public sector,” Wilkins said. “There’s nothing wrong with the idea that an instructor should be held accountable for what goes on in the classroom. It’s problematic when it links grades to accountability.”
Douglas Harrison, Faculty Senate president at Florida Gulf Coast University in Estero, agreed new evaluation criteria could compound an existing problem.
“The biggest risk of this plan is its emphasis on a performance-based consumer model and appropriating that to higher education,” he said. “If you think grade inflation is bad now, wait until you pay faculty for how happy students are with their grade.”
Scott addressed a crowd of 500 at an education summit in Bonita Springs on Oct. 5 with remarks on the need for education reform, especially when it comes to making sure students can get jobs upon graduation.
“I went to college to get a job,” he said. “People said, ‘No, no, no, you’re supposed to go to school to learn things.’ I said, ‘No, I want a job.’”
While preparing students for jobs is important, faculty at liberal arts institutions feel the seven Texas solutions impose a rigid business model on the nuanced world of learning.
“Education is not something people make decisions about the same we think about buying a computer or a car or a frappuccino,” Harrison said. “The outcomes we’re seeking involve learning experiences and social and intellectual developments for students, which are necessarily complex and not easily measurable.”
Ron Toll, vice president of academic affairs at FGCU, welcomes the opportunity to partake in the conversation Scott is proposing.
“We were an institution that signed on early to a voluntary system of accountability and that accountability and assessment has always been a part of what we do here at multiple levels,” Toll said. “The learning community here recognizes assessment is important.”
Fast facts
FGCU has never offered tenure, so the changes imposed in Texas wouldn’t have much effect if they were mimicked in Florida. But at Edison, faculty members are offered continuing contracts after each three-year evaluation.
FGCU has never offered tenure, so the changes imposed in Texas wouldn’t have much effect if they were mimicked in Florida. But at Edison, faculty members are offered continuing contracts after each three-year evaluation.
“I think that tenure is a positive reward for faculty members, and it is only attained after a great deal of evaluation has already taken place,” Wilkins said of the Edison model. “We feel we already have a system of checks and balances in place.”
At the Sept. 14-15 meeting of the university system Board of Governors, Brogan talked about the need for improving faculty assessment systems, especially in regards to tenure.
“Once (tenure is) achieved and attained, how do we make certain people are still hitting that mark?” he said.
Also at that meeting, Florida State University President Eric Barron talked of his revisions to the Texas plan.
“A lot of us would be proud to stand up and be accountable,” he said of his peers. “But in doing so, we want to make sure we have the right set of things so we don’t have any unintended consequences and so we actually promote the strategic plan of Florida for its university systems.”
Faculty in Southwest Florida also welcomes the opportunity for improvement but remains wary.
“Making it part of a political process is risky,” Harrison said. “Especially when I really think what we need in Florida is tweaking, not using these borrowed ideas from Texas. I would encourage politicians to proceed cautiously.”
The university system created a work group to consider possible changes in Florida and will report to the Board of Governors at its November meeting
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/oct/15/gov-rick-scott-faculty-edison-fgcu-tenure-texas/
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