Regents push reform

today's Eagle describes the latest push toward Vision 1920. The Regents are serious about reform. As in re-forming A&M as a tier 3 football school.

One of the most compelling reforms -- rewarding instructors with awards of up to $10,000 based on anonymous student evaluations, called "customer satisfaction" -- has already been rolled out at all A&M campuses, starting at the flagship College Station campus and two others in fall 2008. It has been met with faculty resistance, but McKinney assured regents he will boost participation, which has been sparse, in the voluntary program.

We have ways of making you volunteer.

One of the reforms tackles academic tenure.

It calls for most tenure appointments to be given to teachers who have taught "on average three classes per semester and thirty students per class for the seven or more years that a teacher is on the tenure track," and for student satisfaction ratings to determine teaching effectiveness. Average teacher ratings, the reform states, must be at least a 4.5 on a 5.0 scale.

This is a brilliant cost-cutting move. We won't need the Research Foundation and the faculty payroll will shrink to almost nothing after we drive out all the ones who can get other jobs malingerers.