Here’s what the Beaumont Enterprise editors had to say this week about Texas university faculty who are grumbling about having to do a little paperwork and post their professional and classroom information on-line:
“Some Lamar University professors are grumbling about a new law that requires all state colleges to post online their course syllabi, instructor education and even department budgets. They say that most of that data is already available anyway, and dealing with it again will take away from classroom time. Maybe so, but nothing will be hurt by making the information more accessible to taxpayers and students. We don’t think Lamar has anything to hide, but the best way to prove that is not to hide anything.” Link
Well put by The Enterprises. Now to remarks made by my friend, the fantastic Richard Meek, the Texas Tech Faculty Senate president in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, where he said the requirement was just one more task to professors’ lengthy pre-semester to-do list and that “It’s just something more to take up our time.”
As a small businessman who has no staff and help yet, has to fill out government forms and write checks to government agencies, I can understand the significant problem of adding more work to the to-do list.
However, when one realizes that university professors are paid a salary and substantial benefits for full-time work but get either half, or all, the summer off, plus very long breaks in the winter and spring, the idea that their time is too precious to document what it is they do with our money, in a manner easy for those paying them to see, is preposterous.
Robert Pratt is host of the top-rated Pratt on Texas radio program which can be heard at www.PrattonTexas.com
