Breaking news: UT president actually visits campuses

[Vercingetorix]

This looks like a start:

Chattanooga Times Free Press | Tennessee: Governor seeks one flagship university

Thanks for posting this follow-up. It sounds good so far, but I'll believe it when I see it. Bredesen's right; if the state's university system is ever going to get fixed, now's the time. The combination of a power void in the UT system plus budget pressures may make some things possible that haven't been practical for awhile.

Neveretheless, it's going to come down to telling guys like this to shove it:

The governor’s idea doesn’t sit well with everyone.

“At UTC we really have not tried to be another UT Knoxville,” said Roger Brown, chancellor at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “We are not asking for doctorates in every department. That is just not our mission.”

Eliminating graduate programs in education and nursing at regional schools such as UTC is short-sighted because those program fulfill community needs, Dr. Brown said.

Smaller four-year schools will protect graduate programs they deem successful, he said. For example, UTC would not want to lose its graduate engineering program, which supports the SimCenter.

With what's happening to the university system's budget, how does this guy think we can afford to keep duplicate graduate programs 90 minutes apart from each other? I mean, I know his political power is contingent on his budget, but that's too bad. This is just naked parochialism.

And the SimCenter thing is crap. That's a program that had no excuse going to a satellite campus in the first place -- other than the least common denominator policy, of course. And now that it's there, we're supposed to keep another entire duplicate graduate program in order to support that sunk cost. Great.

 

[AshG]

I don't know if I could wrap my head around UTJC and UTMurph if the systems merged and the other campuses were renamed.

I agree on the commercials, the "statewide campus" idea never did fly for me and the commercials just seemed cheesy.

 

[crusse10]

I don't know if I could wrap my head around UTJC and UTMurph if the systems merged and the other campuses were renamed.

I agree on the commercials, the "statewide campus" idea never did fly for me and the commercials just seemed cheesy.

Hey Ash. It was good seein' ya this weekend.
Oh, and maybe UTJC would get them a football team again...

 

[Vercingetorix]

I don't know if I could wrap my head around UTJC and UTMurph if the systems merged and the other campuses were renamed.

I agree on the commercials, the "statewide campus" idea never did fly for me and the commercials just seemed cheesy.

No way they'd rename campuses; ETSU has to stay ETSU, and MTSU has to stay MTSU. Changing the name of the school tends to piss off alumni, and the last thing you want to do these days is annoy people who might be otherwise inclined to give you money. But it's important that everything be brought into a single, unified system so that it can be managed as efficiently as possible. Community colleges everywhere. Four-year colleges in Martin, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, and Johnson City. One flagship campus and primary graduate school in Knoxville.

I hate to keep pointing out the leghumpers as a great example, but it's astonishing how quickly they've been able to take all that lottery money and turn UGA into a first-class public university. And they've been able to do that because their public university system isn't set up in order to essentially compete against itself for money and power. They don't have a bunch of losers down in Valdosta complaining about how they have to have their own graduate programs because it "fulfill community needs." And so now they have the sort of public school that attracts top professors and students, and the whole state benefits.

I can't tell you how much I want that for Tennessee. It's going to make me sick when my kids are in high school and I have to tell them that I'd rather them pick the buttsniffers over my alma mater because we'd rather keep up this "the state is our campus!" nonsense.

 

[Abeachvol]

Peterson = bust

 

[Vercingetorix]

Peterson = bust

This isn't a Petersen problem, although his power struggle with Loren Crabtree made it pretty nakedly obvious which side he was on. This is an institutional, structural problem that has been around for decades. Tennessee desperately needs to reorganize its system of colleges and universities under one umbrella.

 

[AshG]

No way they'd rename campuses; ETSU has to stay ETSU, and MTSU has to stay MTSU. Changing the name of the school tends to piss off alumni, and the last thing you want to do these days is annoy people who might be otherwise inclined to give you money.

When you get the right idiot in charge, all bets are off. The college where my wife got her degree had its name and mission changed by a crazy president and an ego-filled board of trustees. They seemed to delight in harassing the alumni that didn't agree with their vision.
Posted via VolNation Mobile

 

[crusse10]

No way they'd rename campuses; ETSU has to stay ETSU, and MTSU has to stay MTSU. Changing the name of the school tends to piss off alumni, and the last thing you want to do these days is annoy people who might be otherwise inclined to give you money. But it's important that everything be brought into a single, unified system so that it can be managed as efficiently as possible. Community colleges everywhere. Four-year colleges in Martin, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, and Johnson City. One flagship campus and primary graduate school in Knoxville.

I hate to keep pointing out the leghumpers as a great example, but it's astonishing how quickly they've been able to take all that lottery money and turn UGA into a first-class public university. And they've been able to do that because their public university system isn't set up in order to essentially compete against itself for money and power. They don't have a bunch of losers down in Valdosta complaining about how they have to have their own graduate programs because it "fulfill community needs." And so now they have the sort of public school that attracts top professors and students, and the whole state benefits.

I can't tell you how much I want that for Tennessee. It's going to make me sick when my kids are in high school and I have to tell them that I'd rather them pick the buttsniffers over my alma mater because we'd rather keep up this "the state is our campus!" nonsense.

Memphis fans weren't fazed when they went from being Memphis State fans to being University of Memphis fans. They still called it Memphis State, but everyone knows it's actually Tiger High...