The Commission of 125 spent two years pondering the question of how to make the University of Texas truly first-class, and wrote a report recommending 18 ways to make UT a smaller, sleeker, more excellent (in its view) institution. Now, UT President Larry Faulkner has announced a dramatic plan of response: The university will think about it some more!
In his annual State of the University address, Faulkner announced his intention to form two work groups to address the major recommendations of the committee – namely, to revamp the core curriculum for undergraduates and to strengthen departmental leadership. The curriculum group will be formed in the fall semester, and the leadership group by spring, although Faulkner warned that changes would be slow in coming. For example, he predicted it would take about two years to develop a core curriculum.
“A university like this one moves over generations, and the report in our hands, A Disciplined Culture of Excellence, is mainly about the next generation, not about next year,” he said.
However, given the dramatic changes recommended by the report, a slow and careful pace is no doubt in order, and many on campus will welcome the opportunity to weigh in on the recommendations. The commission did not take public comment, and student and faculty advisory committee members mainly served to explain current practices, not to offer opinions. The whole idea, said Faulkner, was to provide a wholly independent outside assessment of the university.
“We’ve taken considerable pains to make sure the commission had a chance to say what it had to say,” Faulkner explained when the report was released. Others will no doubt have something to say as well, particularly when jobs are threatened by the recommendation that departments that fail to achieve high national rankings be dropped. UT “cannot be all things to all people,” is the chilly way the report puts it, begging the sure-to-be-debated question of who it is that UT should be for.
This article appears in October 15 • 2004.