Presidential candidate Rick Perry wants to transform higher education. Professors should be ranked according to profitability. Students are customers. Bonus should depend on favorable ratings from "clients". A thoughtful critique? Or the vengeance of a D student with a taste for power? The Huffpost publishes Perry's disastrous university transcripts. D in Shakespeare. D in economics. Just how ignorant do we want our next president to be?
WASHINGTON -- As governor of Texas, Rick Perry has pursued a controversial agenda that would gut Texas' vaunted public university system in favor of something that more closely resembles a business.
As the Washington Post reported on Thursday, professors have been ranked according to how profitable they were to the university. Previous reports suggested Perry wanted to treat students as "customers" and tie teacher bonuses to anonymous student evaluations.
One reason that might explain his hostility toward the system: He didn't do very well in it. A source in Texas passed The Huffington Post Perry's transcripts from his years at Texas A&M University. The future politician did not distinguish himself much in the classroom. While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so. He rarely earned anything above a C in his courses -- earning a C in U.S. History, a D in Shakespeare, and a D in the principles of economics. Perry got a C in gym.
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