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March 6, 2008
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Georgia on my mind
Georgia has been a hotspot lately for higher ed reform. Georgia Tech's inattention to intellectual diversity issues led to a lawsuit and, in 2006, the repeal of a campus speech code. The University of Georgia has made national news for violating students' free speech rights and for maintaining an unconstitutional speech code. Valdosta State expelled a student for protesting a new parking garage--and only reversed its decision after intense public and legal pressure. Legislative efforts at melioration have taken the form of an intellectual diversity bill. Meanwhile, students have agitated for a stronger core curriculum.
Now, ACTA has issued a comprehensive report card on the Georgia state system, and the results are interesting indeed. Graded on a pass/fail system, Georgia gets passing marks for general education and governance structure. But it fails when it comes to intellectual diversity, student learning, and board effectiveness. Read the report here, and read commentary here.
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Comments:
I see that this report skewers Georgia on cost because of increases in tuition beyond the rate of inflation (CPI, I assume).
This is what I'm talking about in a thread below. This is a silly way to evaluate cost effectiveness, because inevitably costs are going to rise faster than the rate of inflation in a system with relatively inflexible productivity.
Unless Georgia wants to replace the professors with adjuncts, or replace them with robots or videos, or demand that they teach more courses, or make the classes bigger, inevitably costs are going to rise faster than the inflation rate.
This is true in any service-intensive endeavor.
Of course, professor costs are not the whole story (as the ACTA report makes clear in the section on administrative bloat), but much the same will hold true in other areas of university costs.
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