Solutions Man: Who is Jeff Sandefer?

During the Texas A&M University Board of Regents meeting university faculty members expressed their disapproval of the implementation of the so-called “breakthrough solutions” at the university. The reforms have been promoted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a movement conservative free market fundamentalist think tank in Austin. The Board of Directors of the TPPF is made up of political allies and campaign donors of Texas Governor Rick Perry. However, while the TPPF and Perry have received most of the criticism for the substance of the reforms and the manner in which they have tried to implement them, the author of the reforms not received as much attention.

Jeff Sandefer, a self-described Bill Buckley libertarian, studied petroleum engineering and graduate from the University of Texas and the attended Harvard Business School in the 1980’s. The he took a $1 million from an investment firm and subleased from Exxon, Chevron and other major oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico. This was the beginning of Sandefer Capital Partners, an energy investment firm that holds over a billion dollars in assets. However, after making millions in the oil and gas industry, he turned his attention to higher education. He taught entrepreneurship at University of Texas, and was a chair of the university’s academic research committee at Harvard University.

While teaching at the University of Texas Sandefer was highly regarded by his students, but he would have a falling out with the university. It was there that Sandefer developed a curriculum around having professional businessmen with real world experience teach students, and not to use the tradition university teaching model. In 2002 the University of Texas began hiring full-time professors who could earn tenure because of their research, this left Sandefer and his fellow instructors with fewer classes. It was reported that Sandefer blamed the administration for over-valuing research. The Austin American-Statesman reported that he said might contact "his longtime family friend Gov. Rick Perry about his concerns." Sandefer and his collaborators left the university and took their copyrighted curriculum with them.

It was then that Sandefer founded the Acton School of Business, a business school in which courses do not follow a traditional lecture model and are taught not by researchers, but by practicing business people. The curriculum itself is owned and licensed by the Acton Foundation for Entrepreneurial Excellence. Fellowships at the Acton School have been sponsored by friends of the program, ranging from local philanthropists to well-known business leaders, such as T. Boone Pickens and Charles Koch. Sandefer is a former board member and chair of the Acton Institute, which is a part of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation network, which promotes laissez-faire economics and public policy within a Christian framework.

Sandefer has claimed that he is “big fan of productive research. Anyone who says I'm 'anti-research' just isn't telling the truth" in an email published by the Texas Tribune. In that email he went on to say that “in these tough economic times, appeals to research cannot be used to hide waste and inefficiency. Nor can we allow insiders to frighten donors and alumni as a way of avoiding tough questions about faculty productivity and costs.” However, during a speech given in 2009 at a conference in Guatemala City, Guatemala, sponsored by the Washington-based Atlas Economic Research Foundation, he had harsh words for research. Sandefer said that “most of the rewards in the profession go to writing narrowly focused academic research articles that few read, the vast majority of which would never, and I want to stress never, be supported by the market.” He went on to say that “the whole corrupt enterprise survives parasitically only by siphoning vast amounts of tuition and cross subsidization unbeknownst to parents, students and taxpayers."

It is during his time running Acton School of Business that he has development his so-called “breakthrough solutions,” which included splitting research and teaching budgets, Require evidence of teaching skill for tenure, and create results-based accrediting alternatives. These solutions have received an overwhelming rejection by the academic community, and they have received criticism from nearly all of the stakeholders (students, faculty, alumni, and community members) from the two universities that he has sought to implement them at. As critics have noted, the idea that drastic reforms are need at Texas A&M to improve the quality of education there is obtuse. Especially when you consider the fact that Texas A&M has been ranked second by the Wall Street Journal as a place for employers to recruit, and ranked by USA Today in the top ten of best values as a college in the country. So, it has lead to speculation that these solutions are motivated by both personal and political agendas.

Sandefer’s interests extend beyond the classroom. In addition to being on the Board of Directors of the TPPF, he is also a director of National Review magazine, and served on the board of the Constitutional Enterprises Corporation. While he may not be outspoken publically about Texas politics, he has quietly donated significant amounts of money to Texas Republicans. According to Texas Ethics Commission records, he has donated $712,739 to Texas Republican campaigns, including donating $407,889 to Perry’s political campaigns. He has donated significantly less to federal candidates, $64,300 to various federal Republican candidates and conservative PAC’s according to Federal Election Commission records. However, this could be due to the fact that the FEC prevents him from writing the $100,000 check to federal candidates that he has written to Texas candidates. In 1993, the Texas Ethics Commission found Sandefer to have violated the Texas Election Code for failing to disclose campaign expenditure in excess of $7000.