UT Faculty Productivity Gets High Marks in New Report

Check out Musick's full report, "An analysis of faculty instructional and grant-based productivity at the University of Texas at Austin"

-Patricia

by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
November 13, 2011

Despite the arguments of critics in recent months, Marc Musick, the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts associate dean of student affairs, makes the case in a new faculty productivity report that his institution provides “an incredible return on investment for the state.”

Using data from the 2009-10 academic year made public by the University of Texas System this summer, Musick found that UT professors generated revenue of more than twice their compensation of $257 million in state funds for salary and benefits. By combining the amount of money paid by the state via a student enrollment-based formula and external funding for academic research, Musick concluded that the UT faculty generated about $558 million in total revenue for the university.

Musick’s report is the latest in a series of similar productivity studies that have been released over the course of a year marked by questions about the effectiveness of the state’s higher education system. The studies have come from a variety of sources using differing methodologies and reaching a wide range of conclusions, some of them strikingly negative. The latest release comes at a time when many of the key players in the state’s ongoing debate over higher education are poised to take the discussion on how to measure faculty productivity to a national level.

The topic became a hot-button issue in the spring, due in large part to a set of seven controversial proposals for higher education written by Austin businessman Jeff Sandefer in 2008 and promoted by Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank of which Sandefer is a board member.

On Friday, Sandefer and others tied to the TPPF are participating in a higher education conference in Washington, D.C., put on by the Cato Institute, a prominent national conservative organization. According to information the institute posted online about the event, “One key question the conference will take on is how to assess the productivity of faculty members, including examining the groundbreaking — and highly controversial — efforts recently undertaken in the state of Texas."

An early December closed-door gathering in Indianapolis organized by UT President Bill Powers for the presidents and provosts of public universities in the Association of American Universities, an elite organization of research institutions, will also tackle the subject. “In particular, I would like to explore how we might foster richer deliberations about higher education productivity than we have seen recently in Texas and other states,” Powers wrote in his invitation.

While Musick’s new study demonstrates a high level of faculty productivity at the university, he acknowledged that it omits key elements of professors’ workload. “All it’s doing is measuring two things that the faculty do,” he said. “It’s measuring grants and its measuring teaching. But faculty do lots of different things. The data we have are extremely limited in what they can tell us.”

Still, Musick saw in the data opportunities to encourage more productivity. He recommends enhancing offerings for faculty mentorship, since the strongest-performing faculty tend to be more experienced. He said the number of students in some mid-size classes could be increased without sacrificing quality, freeing up resources for more of the smaller classes that students prefer. He also recommended that the university provide greater incentives for professors to pursue grants and more assistance with their submissions so that less of their time is spent on paperwork.

Most importantly, Musick said, faculty need to be evaluated based on accurate, comprehensive data that conveys their productivity over time as opposed to a single year.

“I completely agree with the idea of going out and getting data and analyzing it,” said Musick, who also released a report on university efficiency in September, “but it’s got to be helpful, it’s got to be thoughtful, its got to be done in the right way to make sure we are finding the truth and not just doing what’s easy to find quick answers.”

Enrollment in Texas Higher Education Continues to Climb

by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
October 27, 2011

More than 62,000 students enrolled in colleges and universities in Texas this fall than in 2010, according to preliminary enrollment data released by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board today.

While it's a big jump, it's not as large as the two previous years, which both saw increases of more than 100,000 students. In the last three years alone, Texas colleges and universities have added more than 268,000 students. The current total, which includes public and private institutions, is slightly more than 1.5 million students.

Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes said this puts the state firmly on track to meet its 2015 goals for boosting access to college in the state. However, some of the numbers could still use some improvement, particularly the enrollment of African American males.

Overall, African American participation has jumped nearly 10 percent in the last year. Hispanic enrollment numbers are up 4.5 percent, and Anglo students have also increased nearly 2 percent.

The ethnic category that saw the most dramatic shift was "other," with a nearly 18 percent increase. New self-reporting policies put in place last year allow students to choose multiple races. Doing so places them in the "other" category. Paredes speculated that the growing popularity of that option was a testament to the decining racial divisions in the country.

Most of the growth occurred in the state's public colleges and universities, though a handful of them did see a decrease. The preliminary numbers show University of Texas at Austin enrolling 50 fewer students than last year. Four-year institutions experiencing more significant drops include the University of North Texas, Prairie View A&M University, and UT-Permian Basin. Meanwhile, the University of Houston, Texas State University-San Marcos, UT-Brownsville, and UT-Dallas, each saw increases of more than 1,000 students.

Coordinating board officials also say their data also show an increase of nearly 30,000 students in private, for-profit colleges, continuing a trend of steady growth. However, some of that increase can be attributed to the fact that more of those institutions have begun submitting their information.