We make it up in volume

In the Eagle:

State funding per student within the Texas A&M System will decrease by more than 17 percent if a budget cut is as large as officials have been asked to prepare for.
...
The state provides $7,529 per student within the 11-university A&M System this biennium, the two-year period that began September 2009.
...
The projected funding per student for the biennium that begins September 2011 is $6,230.
That's based on a 10 percent state reduction -- as officials have been asked to plan for -- the loss of federal stimulus money and a 6 percent enrollment increase. Calvert said that's a conservative estimate and the system's enrollment is likely to increase by closer to 10 percent.

This is great news for Texas taxpayers: we've reduced the cost of higher education!

Don't get your hopes up

The Eagle headline:

A&M picks new leaders

is actually about this:

The chief of staff for Texas A&M University's president will be the new senior vice president for administration, and a Washington University philosophy professor will be dean of the College of Liberal Arts, under appointments approved Friday.

Chief of Staff Alex Kemos will fill the high-level post that a search committee began looking for earlier this month. The $300,000-a-year position will oversee non-academic operations such as facilities and be a senior adviser to the president.

The story also reports the selection of a new Dean for Liberal Arts.

Exemplary commitment

The Regents voted to approve the NCTM (again).

“The NCTM exemplifies the Texas A&M System’s commitment to public service through education and research,” said Dr. Michael Pishko, head of Texas A&M’s department of chemical engineering, who will lead the NCTM team.

Just think how great this will be if it comes anywhere close to the System's commitment to shared governance.

Pulling savings out of our RASS

Last year, the BoR and the TAMU System created nine shared services teams to look for ways to

To review current services or activities and determine if there are efficiencies and any associated cost saving by sharing these services without sacrificing quality.

In January, Chancellor McKinney summarized (pdf) the progress on shared services. Notably absent from the list of possible savings was anything from the Research Administration Shared Services (RASS) team. It seems the RASS team didn't find very much to cut.

Yesterday, VP for Research Seeman updated the CPI on what happened after the RASS failed to find much to save from sharing services. It seems the Regents didn't like that answer and sent the team to redo the analysis. The RASS still didn't find things where sharing would cost less. Not willing to accept that answer, the BoR is now looking to pay an outside consultant to look for savings.

Places where shared services can save significant amounts without sacrificing quality were also elusive in 2007, when the Integrated Research Administration Project committee went looking for them. But Vision 1920 is confident that if we just keep looking, there will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Vision 1920 is also proud of our BoR's patriotism. Research administration is part of the indirect costs applied to extramural funding, so we're sure that when those savings are found, the BoR will return an appropriate share of the found money to its rightful owners in funding agencies of the federal government.

Byrning down the house

The Eagle has more from the BoR meeting

The Texas A&M Board of Regents grilled Athletic Director Bill Byrne and the department’s chief financial officer Thursday about a scathing audit released last month.

The audit, which was formally presented to regents at the daylong meeting in College Station, cited inadequate reporting and financial controls, along with expenses not abiding by the university’s established reporting standards.

“Are we going to live within the budget? We’ve been asked to reduce things all over the university,” said Regent Gene Stallings, a former Texas A&M football coach. “How did it get so far off?”

Inadequate reporting and financial controls. Hmm... that sounds familiar. Hey Gene, as long as you're focused on the budget, we have a couple of questions you can pose to your colleagues on the BoR:

• How much did it cost to replace the paper towel dispensers in every restroom on campus?
• What's the going rate for two first class round trip airfares to Qatar?
• How much did that search firm cost?
  

How we see ourselves at Texas A&M

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Decision day gets closer

The Houston Chronicle:

Dr. Richard Box, a member of the A&M board of regents and chairman of the presidential search committee, said his group will present a list of finalists when the full board meets in College Station Thursday.
There currently are two names — a third candidate dropped out

Vision 1920 recalls that the last time a search committee presented two candidates, the Regents said that wasn't a real choice.

Onward with the NCTM!

As predicted, the Regents approved the NCTM on Friday. The Houston Chronicle reports

Friday's vote wasn't a surprise; regents already had earmarked $42.5 million of the grant to build the center, and the building is expected to open in 2011.

But the transition from a good idea with a fancy building to a profitable research enterprise and business venture will depend upon A&M officials finding additional funding and forming partnerships with other academic and health care enterprises.

Giroir said he expects an announcement on that subject soon.

Stay tuned.

A number of faculty members and alumni initially opposed the idea, citing it as a factor in no-confidence votes over the summer by both the A&M Faculty Senate and the Council of Principal Investigators, which represents faculty involved in research.

But the most vocal criticism appears to have died down.

That must mean they don't oppose the idea any more, right? What other possible explanation could there be?

BoR meeting

The BoR is meeting again this week. The next phase of NCTM approval is on the agenda. Thanks to a vigorous campaign of dealing with the insurgency, open dissent seems to have been successfully crushed.

Vision 1920's sources indicate that the attitude among the faculty is that even if the NCTM turns out to be a wildly overoptimistic money sink, it will get a new building for Engineering so it's not all bad. And it's not their money that will be thrown down the rathole. Assuming the IDCs really won't be swept... which is not a problem for those faculty who don't generate any IDCs anyway.

No doubt

Although the news from the Board today focused on the naming of the search committee, Chairman Foster also addressed (pdf) Shared Governance:

I would now like to shift gears and talk briefly about shared governance. Over the past several weeks, members of this Board have been actively meeting with key stakeholder groups on and off campus. At some point several weeks back, the concept of shared governance was thrust into the spotlight. At no time have we, the Board, ever cast doubt on the importance of shared governance at Texas A&M or any of our other universities. I can also assure you that our Chancellor fully appreciates and supports shared governance, and has practiced it. He would not have my support, or that of the Board, if we were convinced that he did not believe in shared governance.

Indeed

"There's nine people who can tell me what to do," McKinney said, referring to the regents. "I'll make my arguments to them. They argue, they listen and then they make a decision and I carry it out. You want shared governance? That's shared governance."

The Searchers

The Regents announced the search committee for the next President of Texas A&M University.

Committee Chair:

• Chair: Regent Richard Box, A&M System Board of Regents

Committee Members:

• Regent Ida Clement Steen, A&M System Board of Regents
• Regent Lupe Fraga, A&M System Board of Regents
• Dr. John Junkins, Distinguished Professor; Regents Professor; Director, Center for Mechanics and Control, Department of Aerospace Engineering
• Dr. Tim Hall, Distinguished Professor; Director, Institute of Developmental and Molecular Biology, Department of Biology
• Dr. Robert Bednarz, Speaker, Faculty Senate; Professor, Department of Geography
• Dr. Mark Hussey, Vice Chancellor and Dean of College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Former Head of Soil & Crop Sciences Department
• Dr. Antonio Cepeda-Benito, Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost
• Mr. Eric Beckham, Student Body President
• Ms. Meredith Maloney, President, Student Chapter of the American Veterinary Medicine Assn.
• Ms. Shelley Potter, Chair of the Board, The Association of Former Students
• Mr. Thomas Saylak, Chairman of Board of Trustees, Texas A&M Foundation
• Mr. Neal Adams, Attorney; Former Vice Chair and Member, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
• Dr. David Parrott, Executive Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Student Life
• Dr. Frank Ashley, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, A&M System

The Houston Chronicle points out that Regent Box is also Gov Perry's treasurer for his reelection campaign. But this is balanced by at least one member being a contributor to Hutchinson. Vision 1920 does not know if there are any Friedman supporters on the committee, however.

Regent Fraga was also on the 2007 search committee, which failed to offer the Regents a real choice. Vision 1920 speculates that the full Board is giving Fraga a second chance to show he won't fall for the faculty's Jedi mind tricks again.