Colleges breathing easier in wake of tense session
Funding, tuition, sexual assault reporting are among items tackled.
Relief. That, says Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, is what college and university officials are feeling, especially on budget matters, now that the 85th regular legislative session has concluded.
“The budget looked a lot worse in January than it did on May 29,” Paredes said. “It doesn’t look as good as it could have.”
The session included a mix of action and inaction on higher education matters. Austin Community College will now be able to apply for authority to offer a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Sexual assault victims and witnesses will have an easier path to report such incidents to law enforcement and campus authorities. A twoyear freeze on tuition increases failed to pass, as did an effort to dial back the state’s top 10 percent admission law.
A roundup of higher education developments from the Legislature:
■Keeping the ships afloat: Lawmakers increased general revenue appropriations for higher education by 1.6 percent to $14.9 billion for the two-year budget
starting Sept. 1. They kept enrollment-oriented base, or formula, funding relatively flat for the state’s public universities and health-related institutions. Community colleges saw a $28.8 million increase for core operations and for achieving performance metrics, such as higher course-completion rates. ■How the flagships
fared: General revenue, excluding debt service, went up $2.1 million or 0.4 percent for the University of Texas at Austin and $13.6 million or 2.4 percent for Texas A&M University, according to the UT and A&M systems. UT’s budget includes for the first time base funding for the Dell Medical School, whose second class will soon matriculate. UT President Gregory L. Fenves warned that some funding is in a one-time-only category, presaging future reductions.
■ Juniors grow up: Certain public junior colleges, including Austin Community College, will now be able to seek Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board authority to offer bachelor’s degrees in some workforce-oriented fields, assuming Gov. Greg Abbott goes along with Senate Bill 2118. ACC hopes to offer such a degree in nursing. ■ Special items not so special: A broad category that includes startup funds for new academic programs and longstanding initiatives, such as UT’s McDonald Observatory, saw an overall reduction of 27 percent. Formerly known as special items, this group is now called nonformula funding in a nod to the Senate’s proposal to eliminate money for the category altogether. A special House-Senate committee will review this and other higher education funding in advance of the 2019 regular session. ■ Tripped up on TRIP: Lawmakers established the Texas Research Incentive Program, or TRIP, in 2009 to match funds that emerging research universities raise in private donations for professorships and other research enhancements. This time around, lawmakers allocated just $35 million toward a backlog of $127.5 million in eligible funding requests. ■ Gubernatorial frustration: Abbott had to resort to an 11th-hour demand to pry money out of the Legislature for underwriting laboratories and equipment to recruit topflight researchers, for which he had requested $40 million. The Governor’s University Research Initiative was established with much fanfare as one of his top priorities two years ago, but lawmakers had been inclined to provide little if any money this time around. ■ Chip shot dodged: UT officials didn’t think SB 822, which would transfer the university’s ownership of the city-operated Lions Municipal Golf Course in West Austin to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, would get any traction. Then it passed the Senate with bipartisan support, in part out of a desire to preserve what was perhaps the first municipal course in the former Confederate states to desegregate. The measure never came up for a vote in a House committee. But the kerfuffle has put pressure on UT to work out a deal with the city that would preserve the Muny course while perhaps giving the university additional development rights on other parts of the Brackenridge Tract and UT-owned parcels in the Montopolis neighborhood and North Austin.
■ Boosting student aid: The Texas Grant program, the state’s main instrument of financial aid, is getting $71 million more for a total of $786 million — enough to fund 92 percent of eligible students. But a proposal to expand work-study programs by enlisting the private sector to participate failed, which Paredes called “a very major disappointment.” ■ Hot, then cold, on
freezing tuition: The Senate voted 29-2 on SB 19, which would have frozen tuition and fees for two years at public universities and sharply restricted future increases. The measure never got out of a House committee. ■ Set aside set-asides? Under a 2003 law, 15 percent of tuition increases at public universities must be set aside for need-based financial aid. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick decried that as “nothing more than a hidden tax” and called for repeal. The Senate, over which he presides, voted to do just that in SB 18. But what Patrick saw as a tax, House members saw as valid student aid. The proposal died in a House committee. ■ Automatic admission
survives: Currently, students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class in Texas qualify for guaranteed admission to any of the state’s public universities — except for UT-Austin, where state law allows UT to limit those automatically admitted to 75 percent of freshmen from Texas. SB 2119, which would have scaled back automatic admission for all public universities to 30 percent of each school’s incoming freshmen, didn’t muster enough support to get to the Senate floor. ■ Sexual-assault reporting: Lawmakers granted amnesty against prosecution and student conduct
code sanctions for underage drinking by victims or witnesses of sexual assault who report such incidents. They also required public and private schools to offer online reporting, including anonymous reporting, of sexual assault, sexual harassment, dating violence and stalking. Of the three-bill package, Abbott has signed SB 966 and is expected to sign SB 968 and SB 969. ■ Bailing out of Houston: Amid withering criticism from lawmakers and telling silence from Abbott, UT System Chancellor Bill McRaven abruptly announced that the system was scuttling its plan to establish a campus of sorts in Houston. Initial plans called for an institute for data science focusing on health care, education and energy. McRaven said the system instead would sell off more than 300 acres it acquired for $215 million.