August 26, 2011. Frank Brogan embraces Bush/Scott reform agenda
By LILLY ROCKWELL
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, August 25, 2011…….Gov. Rick Scott may have one crucial ally in his nascent effort to overhaul higher education in Florida: State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan.
Brogan met with Scott earlier this year to discuss the controversial changes to higher education, which were first championed by Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry. The idea is to treat universities and colleges more like private businesses, with more scrutiny over professor and university performance.
“We had a great conversation,” Brogan said in an interview with the News Service of Florida. “He’d be the first to tell you he’s not wed to the Texas plan. What he is wed to is the notion that we need to look at those and other possibilities that might create a better system of higher education in the state of Florida.”
The Texas proposal supports the concept of tying state funding to performance, financially rewarding professors based on effectiveness, and using higher education tuition vouchers that can be used toward private schools. It takes many of the concepts being used in K-12 education policy, such as merit pay, and applies them to universities.
Increasingly, some Republican lawmakers and governors are seeing higher education as a system in need of reform, with escalating tuition and costs, much like health care. In Ohio, the Republican governor also pushed for tying state funding to degree production and the number of classes professors teach.
Brogan said he supports “accountability-based funding” for Florida’s state universities. “A greater emphasis on outcomes and incentives to those outcomes is important,” he said. “We should be looking at quality of programs.”
Read more at palmbeachpost.com
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