I never thought I would see the day I would defend presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas. But here I want to tell liberals and progressives to back off a little on the Perry hate. However, I should qualify that statement.
I'm not saying Perry's ideas about health care, secession and climate change are on the money. But some of his ideas about higher education are.
Perry has seven ideas that will help lower the growing costs of higher education for students.
A few of them are really mind-blowing, like taking money that now goes into college funding from the state and giving it directly to the students in the form of a scholarship, making the student a customer with more money and more options.
This would force colleges to improve simply to attract business.
Another truly shocking suggestion to come out of the Perry camp is that students now are a participant in the tenure process, and who now have a say in whether that professor is considered a good teacher.
This, for any student who has been in lecture with a tenured faculty member who no longer has to try and therefore no longer cares is a big deal.
These and the five other breakthrough solutions are actually valid, and seem to me to finally consider students a priority in how to save money in higher education.
One would think that the left would be all over this — a right-wing candidate who actually gives a toss about education — hello bipartisanship and a few great pictures in front of a banner.
Wrong.
The left has been on Perry like a crazy ex. In a letter from the Association of American Universities, President Robert Berdahl wrote a letter to Texas A & M University, one institution that had adopted some of Perry's solutions, saying that the changes were oversimplified, counterproductive and “an assault on research expertise itself.”
He also ended the letter with a nice veiled threat: “We trust that you will resist these ill-conceived calls for 'reform.'”
What is with the progressives and leftists?
As one myself, I am actually kind of excited about these types of changes. Give me more scholarship money? Yes please! Force colleges to inform you of actual class sizes, graduation rates and post-grad salaries? Keep 'em coming!
These ideas will actually force colleges to focus on their students and find ways to save money that help lower tuition and other expenses, instead of placing the financial burden on our already broken backs over and over again.
Lowering the costs of education is an essential part of our lawmakers’ and university presidents’ jobs. In the Arizona constitution, it states “instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible.”
Perry's solutions facilitate the fulfillment of that mandate.
ASU's tuition increased this year by $1,240 for current undergraduate students, according to ASU's Fiscal Year 2012 Tuition Proposal Executive Summary.
It is time to stop walking along arbitrary party lines and actually look at some real ideas.
I don't like Rick Perry; I'll be honest. I think he's Bush 3.0, and his ideas on climate change are shocking, misinformed and dangerous.
But his higher education ideas? Those are pretty revolutionary, and with the economy going down and tuition costs going up, a revolutionary is what we need, no matter what side of the aisle he or she comes from.
Reach the columnist at oonagh.mcquarrie@asu.edu
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