Cultural conflict

As your story notes, the drama that has recently played out between UT president Bill Powers and the University of Texas Board of Regents is but one skirmish in a broader cultural conflict.

On the one side, you have an academic culture that is the product of a historical development that began with the founding of Plato's Academy 2,400 years ago.

This academic culture recognizes the essential role of research and the necessity of protecting, by the institution of tenure, the intellectual independence of researchers.

Academics recognize that, far from being in opposition, research and teaching are complementary. Research brings fresh ideas, new perspectives and deeper insights, and the most effective teachers are those who enliven their instruction with the stimulus of fresh thinking.

On the other side of the cultural conflict are ideologues and politicians who want to impose a "business model." Business models are great for businesses, but educating human beings is not like manufacturing and marketing widgets. For one thing, students are not customers.

The customer is always right, but the student is not always right. The professor, like a medical doctor, has the responsibility of telling people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

Further, unlike success in selling widgets, success in education simply cannot be quantified in terms of moving so many units in a given time.

Also, there is no algorithm for good teaching and no magic formula for measuring learning. The best way to support higher education is to recognize the wisdom of the old saying "If it isn't broken, don't fix it."

Public higher education in our society is not yet broken, but it will be if the ideologues and the politicians have their way.

Keith M. Parsons, Friendswood



Regarding "UT's fray a battle in big war" (Page A1, Sunday), as a trustee at the Lone Star College System, my chief fear about the UT imbroglio is the use of government power to micromanage the university. Right now the House's Transparency committee is telling UT regents and administrators what they can and can't do. Such government micromanagement is always political.

This political control is one principal reason I oppose public vouchers to private schools, which are always accompanied with government strings. Sooner or later, in greater or lesser degree, private schools that take government money will be told by politicians whom to hire, what to teach and what students to enroll. It's a Faustian bargain.

Ron Trowbridge, Conroe