Those ivy-covered walls of academia sure don’t keep other people from peering in to check on what’s going
on.
That was evident at Tuesday’s Bowling Green State University Faculty Senate meeting.
The meeting began with President Mary Ellen Mazey talking about her recent discussions with U.S. Sen.
Sherrod Brown and other college presidents about proposals on the federal level to rate, not rank she
said, the nation’s colleges and universities.
The Obama Administration now wants those ratings in place by January, 2015.
The new ratings were driven, Mazey said because officials "don’t think we’ve been transparent
enough."
The ratings would be based on institutions graduation rates, retention rates and percent of students who
default on student loans.
And, she said anticipating the negative reaction to follow, "possibly earnings."
Colleges would be compared to other similar institutions, Mazey said.
"None of this is finalized," she said.
The ratings would be a factor in the distribution of federal financial aid, she said. BGSU students now
receive about $80 million in financial aid.
The meeting ended with a long discussion about a proposal in the State House that calls on the state’s
faculty to work 10 percent more on teaching, advising and research – service, including being a faculty
senator, being notably absent.
Lawrence Coates, the faculty union’s representative in the senate, wondered if a recent study of workload
at BGSU was related to the legislation.
Provost Rodney Rogers said it wasn’t. He explained the university was trying to get a handle on how to
determine workload, which is accounted for a many different ways across the university’s various
academic units.
But Jude Edminston, of English, said sometimes the queries about what she does "feels like
surveillance."
A number of senators questioned whether the administration was doing enough to counter the push for
increased workload.
Rogers said that the legislation does give universities some flexibility and Mazey added that this
proposal was better than previous, similar legislation.
Joel O’Dorisio, vice-chair of the senate, urged patience.