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[kohelet]

Grim, indeed, but a couple of points:

1) These bullet-point recommendations were prefaced by:

"These are ideas that must be thoroughly reviewed, modified, supplemented, or discarded through discussions with the campuses. Some ideas are more relevant to one type of institution than another, and the ideas are not necessarily internally consistent. Our goal here is to provide a beginning point with thought-provoking ideas, not to set forth a definitive, prescriptive list."

Good brainstorming should include bad ideas.  Let's wait to see actual proposals before declaring this guy an idiot.

2) Just for clarification, the University of Tennessee system (which includes four campuses) is not governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents.  They govern six non-UT state universities, a bunch of community colleges, and a bunch of "technology centers."

[renji]

The sky-is-falling articles will always attract more than their fair share of column space in the CHE.

However, the truth always has been that teachers are not properly valued in either K-12 or in higher education.

This is one of the reasons it is so important to graduate from a strong PhD program with solid research skills.

Colleges and universities will always be on the lookout for ways to reduce instructor cost, but there is no online substitute for a professor with a solid research program and the ability to secure external funding.

[arts4ever]

We need a policy of never putting a politician or administrator from Tennessee in charge of anything outside Tennessee.

May I (in Tennessee) suggest never putting anyone from Tennessee in charge of anything ANYWHERE?

[concordancia]

The sky-is-falling articles will always attract more than their fair share of column space in the CHE.

However, the truth always has been that teachers are not properly valued in either K-12 or in higher education.

This is one of the reasons it is so important to graduate from a strong PhD program with solid research skills.

Colleges and universities will always be on the lookout for ways to reduce instructor cost, but there is no online substitute for a professor with a solid research program and the ability to secure external funding.

See, the thing is our provost doesn't believe that this department really does research. Despite the fact that we share our tenure requirements with many other departments, the real point of ours is to push undergrads through our lower level classes. Imagine what he thinks of those that don't even have grad programs.

[systeme_d_]

Wow.

And they've got quite the Provost at OU.  Goodness.

Roderick McDavis?  I hope this is in jest.  He's no help to those at OU.  I have felt for them since he left here.  Totally unprepared for that kind of situation.  He is at best a decent administrator, and is no way a good, let alone a decisive, leader.  When he left VCU, faculty from both campuses popped open the champaign...

No, I was referring obliquely to Provost Krendl's appalling comments.