UT report takes aim at college 'solutions' It says cutting education costs would carry price - Jeannie Kever, San Antonio Chronicle

Nearly three years after Gov. Rick Perry held a little-noticed meeting with regents from university systems around the state, it's game on in the fight for higher education. The College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin weighed in Wednesday, releasing a 17-page rebuttal to the market-driven approach favored by the governor and some of his supporters. The College of Liberal Arts is UT's largest, home to disciplines ranging from history and economics to foreign languages and sociology. The liberal arts have borne much of the latest round of scorn from critics, who suggest academia has become a gravy train for faculty members who work only a few hours a week and produce too much unnecessary and even useless research. Diehl said research can't be evaluated solely on its immediate financial impact. “It may take generations before ideas get to the point that they have an economic impact or a social impact,” he said.