John Morgan

The new head of the Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees higher education in our state (except for the University of Tennessee, tucked safely in its own sinecure), spoke to our Faculty Senate the other night. (We'd heard from his predecessor in October.)


Mr. Morgan's appointment had been controversial, since he's not himself an academic but was a close deputy of former governor Bredesen (who appointed him).

I'm pleased to report that he doesn't have horns, he's personable and intelligent. Most reassuringly, he says he "gets it" that higher education is not just about training the state's workforce and creating jobs. He says people like Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey (who has spouted off about tweedy academics who only work part-time) and other anti-intellectual types in state government, understand it too-- or at least they understand it better than they let on in public. 

But, Morgan adds, "jobs, vocational training, outcomes-assessment, retention" (etc.) is the language we all have to speak, in public, if we want to get even minimal funding from the legislature. We should anticipate continued funding appropriation cuts of 1 to 3% in the foreseeable future. We can't hope to get back to 2008 funding levels before 2014, by current projections. 

And he says we have to all just understand, it's a "given": Tennessee is a "fiscally conservative" state, will always rank close to #50 in state revenues dedicated to education. The pie won't be getting bigger. Nonetheless, he says the new governor is pro-higher ed, and not just pro-UT. We'll see.

Maybe he does "get it," but it still bugs me that the head of TBR can speak so casually of students as our "customers." I'm grading exams: trust me, the customer's not always right. But he's a business & finance guy, that's the language he knows.

higher education

"We have a system of education modeled on the interests of industrialisation."


In Tennessee it's with a "z" but the idea's the same as Sir Ken's, as we faculty Senators were reminded yesterday when the Chancellor-Emeritus of our governing board spoke to us* of the importance of appeasing state legislators' demands that we meet arbitrary and ill-formed "outcomes-based" targets to justify our very existence. 


We dare not speak to our benefactors, if you want to call them that, of the value of a liberal education. They don't like "L" words. Like learnin'. (Or did I misspell that?- A colleague summarizes the Chancellor's message: "TBR -- WE LURN YOU REAL GOOD")




*Chancellor-emeritus Manning delivered a sobering talk to the Senate yesterday afternoon, emphasizing that getting funding for higher ed in Tennessee will always be like squeezing blood from turnips. (And that UT, where "scholar-athletes" rule, will always have first dibs on whatever's on the table.)  


He said we should acknowledge the strong anti-intellectual sentiment now re-ascendant across the land, especially here in the Bible belt-buckle. (The irony of a colleague's sharp, pointed question about anti-intellectualism on the TBR board itself was evidently lost.) Our best long-term strategy for survival at MTSU? Shrink [we currently teach more students than UT-Knoxville] and try not to piss off the "deeply religious" zealots who control our purse-strings. 


Serve our prime constituency, the C & D students who become community leaders and legislators. Don't waste too much time trying to figure out the political "game" in the state capitol. We may not like the budget allocation formula but we should understand that bizness leaders and politicians (a convergent set) love "outcome-oriented" funding. And the new gov's priority will not be higher ed in any  event.

Oh, and when can we hope to get that new science building we've needed for twenty years? Hard to say, ask him again in 2015. 

There was also, another colleague reminds, an obnoxious reference to an 

"Oriental girl on a mule" outperforming the kids with the big backpacks full of books to show how Tennessee education must compete in a global market (or this is what I tried to draw from it).  I have to say this off-hand comment was particularly galling at a school that just landed a Confucius Institute on its campus.

And, 

And please do not overlook the response to his friend's query on the removal of non-christian professors.  I assume he was from the Christine Todd Whitman School of Constitutional Interpretation. 

Yes, speaking just for me and some other academics from Tennessee: a new higher ed paradigm would be welcome here.