Student leaders at the University of Texas’ flagship campus here delivered a letter to university regents on Monday warning that their degrees would be cheapened and their job prospects diminished if the university heeds the governor’s call to focus less on research.
The students challenged Gov. Rick Perry’s assessment that an overemphasis on research shortchanges students and that they would be better off if faculty members spent more time teaching.
The university’s reputation largely depends on “its cutting-edge research and world-class faculty,” the letter states. That includes research that doesn’t have immediate commercial application, it says.
“Diluting the role of research in undergraduate education at UT would decrease the value of the degrees sought by students and would diminish the competitiveness of Texas’ students when applying to jobs and graduate schools across the country,” the letter says. It is signed by 13 student leaders, including the presidents of three student groups at the university: Carisa Nietsche of the Senate of College Councils, which is described on the university’s Web site as “the official voice for students in academic affairs”; Natalie Butler of the Student Government; and Manuel Gonzalez of the Graduate Student Assembly.
“While some argue that students at the research university do not have world-class researchers as teachers, this is simply not true at UT Austin,” the letter adds. Many of the flagship university’s colleges require tenure-track faculty members to teach at least two undergraduate courses each semester, according to the letter.
No one from the University of Texas System was immediately available to comment.
The students are the latest to weigh in on a controversy that has prompted worried letters from faculty members, alumni, and university donors. It revolves around a push led by the governor to make the state’s public universities more cost-effective by focusing more on teaching and less on research.
Among those who have promoted the plan with the state’s regents—all of whom were appointed by Mr. Perry—are an Austin-based conservative think tank and an oilman and educator who is a major donor to the governor’s campaigns.
The students’ letter is the most recent flare-up in a debate that has been raging for weeks in Texas.
The Texas system last week fired Rick O’Donnell, a recently appointed special adviser to the regents, after he complained that system officials were withholding data that would show that taxpayers are paying an increasing amount of money on university employees who do little teaching.
But some students support the governor’s argument that they are customers who deserve better service. Tony McDonald, a second-year law student at the University of Texas who also serves as senior vice chairman of the statewide Young Conservatives of Texas, questions the value of much of the research going on at major universities.
“A lot of professors would like to characterize it as creating knowledge, but in many cases, they’re just compiling data to publish in a journal that few people really read,” he said in an interview on Monday.
If the university based more tenure and promotion decisions on good teaching, “it could lose out in U.S. News rankings,” Mr. McDonald said, “but if you do it right and increase the value of teaching, the public will realize how much better a product they’re getting.”
Meanwhile, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is scheduled to begin debate on Wednesday on the governor’s call for the creation of a bachelor’s degree that costs no more than $10,000, including tuition, fees, and textbooks, for all four years. An aide to Mr. Perry is among those scheduled to address the board.
