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[fiona]

I am not worth much, it seems.

http://chronicle.com/article/Texas-A-M-System-Will-Rate/124280/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

The Fiona, humanities dork

[merce]

gawd

[shrek]

"Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article."

WTF--
okay so if a professor brings in about 1M/year, and makes say 100K, (ez math) they're worth NEGATIVE 900,000?

[merce]

"Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article."

WTF--
okay so if a professor brings in about 1M/year, and makes say 100K, (ez math) they're worth NEGATIVE 900,000?

That's how I understood it.

[lost_angeleno]

Wait, they forgot to include the value of my organs, my children,  and the students I can seduce into academic "slavery": adjunct teaching.  This database needs broadening.

[fiona]

You'll have to sell your students and children into slavery to pay that 900,000 you owe.

Start the bidding now.

The Fiona

[samspade]

This may be the most idiotic proposal I have ever seen in higher education. And that is saying something.

[tuxthepenguin]

What I would like to know is the specific formula they use to determine value. (Beyond what is stated above.) If you teach intro to basketweaving with 400 students, does that make you 20 times more valuable than the guy teaching advanced basketweaving with 20 students? All of the courses are required for the major, so you can't determine value based on credit hours taught.

This leads me to ask whether the secretaries will also be included in this calculation. Since being a secretary is not a direct revenue-generating activity, will they no longer get a salary?

This is one of those ideas that comes into your mind when you're sleepy, but then you drink a cup of coffee, and magically you realize how dumb it is. It's shocking that a university "president" could be unaware of the relationship between grants and research. Some fields don't have many grants available, and in terms of university revenue, bigger grants go to pay for more costly research. Grants aren't the same as profit.

[keef_richards]

Might as well read about it from the source, luv.

[tuxthepenguin]

From the real article

"As being partly paid by the public purse, I believe we owe the public some degree of accountability -- I don't have a problem with that at all," said Hugill, an A&M geography professor and local president of the American Association of University Professors. "What I have a problem with is silly measures."

A key concern for Strawser was measuring individual faculty members. He noted that he has taught as many as 1,200 students a semester and as few as 50, depending on what his department head assigned him.

"Also focusing on individual faculty members and classes taught does not recognize that much teaching takes place outside of the classroom," he wrote in an e-mail.

[mozman]

I'm someone who brings in millions of dollars in grant overhead every year (who would presumably come out ahead in this calculation), and even I think this is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.  Unfortunately the latest in a long line of bad decisions by TAM.

I have several very good friends at A&M who are good teachers and successful, NIH-funded researchers.  All are looking to jump ship.  College Station, Texas doesn't have much in the way of culture to keep these people around (I've visited there, and saw how bad it was) and the University isn't giving them any reason to stay.

[voxprincipalis]

"If you look at what people are saying out there -- first of all, they want accountability," Ashley said. "It's something that we're really not used to in higher education: For someone questioning whether we're working hard, whether our students are learning. That accountability is going to be with us from now on."

Doesn't he mean "whether our students is learning"? For shame.

One of the other seven reforms, pitched to regents in May 2008, called for offering awards of between $2,500 and $10,000 to faculty members based on anonymous student evaluations. A version was implemented at Texas A&M University the following fall and has been expanded to all A&M System campuses.

Oh, I missed that one. Yikes. I know that there are some forumites who teach in Texas and like it, but seriously, it is looking more like Texas is on the front lines for the seven signs of the academic apocalypse.

VP

[sox_and_sandals]

I'm someone who brings in millions of dollars in grant overhead every year (who would presumably come out ahead in this calculation), and even I think this is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.  Unfortunately the latest in a long line of bad decisions by TAM.

I have several very good friends at A&M who are good teachers and successful, NIH-funded researchers.  All are looking to jump ship.  College Station, Texas doesn't have much in the way of culture to keep these people around (I've visited there, and saw how bad it was) and the University isn't giving them any reason to stay.

There's a lot of resistance to this idea, of course. It's not clear that it will ever be implemented, just like many other "reforms." I'm in your boat funding wise, so I'd might be ok in this evaluation, but it's not good to see this even being discussed. As for College Station, it's not the cultural wasteland you make it out to be - depends on what you want, of course, and I've lived in deeper cultural backwaters in my time.

[lost_angeleno]

I knew College Station was the pits when I drove through the main intersection in town, and one corner had a storage yard for U-Haul trailers and another was vacant. Emblematic of the town and the university.

And then I saw students (plural--many) walking around with t-shirts reading "Beat the Hell out of OBAMA."  Nice kids.

Yes, there are worse--but not many, and not by much.

[merce]

I'm someone who brings in millions of dollars in grant overhead every year (who would presumably come out ahead in this calculation), and even I think this is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.  ...

Ummm. No, you'd be in super big trouble.

The more grants you bring in the worse you look because the brilliant calculation is to subtract your grant income from your salary.

So if you bring in more than your salary you are of negative worth to your university. Ha! While I am totally in the clear (according to this fantastic logic)
Duh.
Totally logical.


 

"Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article."