UT’s controversial special assistant ousted UT's controversial special adviser is out of a job

The news follows a San Antonio Express-News analysis that turned up dozens of errors in a policy paper that Rick O'Donnell wrote in 2008, and a letter in which O'Donnell accuses his bosses at the UT System of blocking his efforts to get data that reveal an increasing share of tuition and taxpayer dollars going to professors and administrators who do little teaching.

O'Donnell sent the letter Monday to Wallace Hall, a UT regent from Dallas who chairs a task force on online learning that O'Donnell was hired to facilitate.

On Tuesday, Francisco Cigarroa, chancellor of the UT System, terminated O'Donnell's employment. System officials declined to comment other than to confirm O'Donnell no longer works there.

In a statement, O'Donnell thanked regents for the opportunity to work "on the central question that has driven all my higher education work during my career: trying to discover ever better ways to ensure that as many students as possible have access to the highest quality college education at the most affordable cost."

In his letter to Hall, O'Donnell pits UT staff and administrators against regents, accusing UT employees of stoking drama around O'Donnell to divert attention from reform efforts aimed at shaking up the status quo.

"Rather than release the data, we were met with what some have called a well-orchestrated public relations campaign of breathless alarms, much like shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater," O'Donnell wrote.

He also complained that taxpayer money was being wasted on a review of his flawed paper, prompting him to hire a lawyer to defend himself.

UT denies accusations

In a joint statement, UT-Austin and the UT System denied that staff members were "purposefully suppressing" the data, saying the data is being gathered in raw form and will be corrected and sent to regents.

When O'Donnell was hired six weeks ago, alumni, donors and lawmakers questioned why UT regents would bring on a consultant at $200,000 a year in tough economic times, and why they hired someone who claimed that most academic research was a waste of time in a 2008 paper for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin.

Rumors swirled that O'Donnell had been brought in to bring UT to heel to Gov. Rick Perry's ideas about higher education reform, and some newer regents had tried to fire Cigarroa and Bill Powers, UT Austin's president, for "insubordination."

O'Donnell's accusation of "resistance at the highest levels of the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas System" seems to point directly to Cigarroa and Powers.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, one of the lawmakers who openly criticized O'Donnell's hiring, said that in her opinion, his attack of UT brass confirms the rumors that he was hired to facilitate firing top administrators.

"This (letter) to me confirms those suspicions," Zaffirini said.

Tug of war

The turmoil boils down to a tug of war between reformers who want to wring more efficiency out of higher education by rooting out wasteful spending on research, and those seeking gradual changes that would keep system's mighty research enterprise intact.

Spearheading the reform team is Perry, who has embraced the "Seven Breakthrough Solutions" of a wealthy entrepreneur named Jeff Sandefer, founder of Acton MBA. Perry appoints the regents, who hired O'Donnell, a former employee of Sandefer's at Acton.

Emails have shown Perry cracked the whip on regents at UT and the Texas A&M University System to implement Sandefer's seven solutions, even if it meant walking over staff to do it.

When rumors of a turf war surfaced, alumni, donors and students rushed to defend Powers, Cigarroa and the UT Austin's focus on research, saying the university's global prestige was at stake.

Richard Leshin, president of the University of Texas Alumni Association, urged fellow alumni to challenge the board of regents on their direction, and took issue with O'Donnell's portrayal of his call to action as a diversionary tactic.

"I dispute that," Leshin said. "Our goal is to protect the mission of the university. The goals he was proposing were not consistent with the mission of the university."

Leshin also said he does not believe administrators would withhold data from the regents. "That does not make any sense to me," he said.

In his letter, O'Donnell said the public, not just regents, have a right to see exactly where tuition and taxpayer dollars are going.

Quoting John Silber, president emeritus of Boston University, O'Donnell said only then will the public know that "the cost of education is largely a function of the reduction of productivity in the faculty, and also the huge engorgement in the administration."

The Express-News analysis of O'Donnell's 2008 paper turned up dozens of errors, including attributing quotes to the wrong person and fuzzy data.

O'Donnell blamed a "production snafu" and said in his letter to Hall that he never claimed to be a scholar.

mludwig@express-news.net

patti.hart@chron.com