Ex-UT System chairman was advocate of higher education
Charles Miller, an influential former University of Texas System board chairman, higher education advocate and Houston leader, died Wednesday. He was 83.
Miller was a UT board member from 1999 through 2004, and he served as chair for three of those years. He was later tapped by former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings under President George W. Bush to lead a federal commission on higher education’s future.
“He had the ability to look into the future and see trends,” Spellings said Wednesday, praising Miller’s “incisive thinking and great brain” in shaping Texas and national higher education policy.
Miller had a long career in business in Houston and led local organizations including the Greater Houston Partnership. Apart from his UT System service, he was a Board of Visitors member at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and served on the Governor’s Business Council.
Bolstering system finances was key for Miller when he was on the board, he told the Houston Chronicle earlier this year.
The board had grown cautious in its spending in the 1980s and 1990s, he said, after the oil downturn. As the economy improved, he said he saw it as a responsibility to bring in money to UT and spend it carefully amid economic growth.
“As a conservative regent, I went out of my way to start getting big money (and) revenues back into the system, and spending it,” he said. “(Donors) knew I wasn’t going to do it foolishly . ... The duty is to spend the money you can get wisely.”
On the federal commission on higher education’s
future, he advocated for provisions to measure student learning at universities, a measure many contemporaries disputed.
But he held firm, and he stayed involved in higher education topics long after his time on UT’s board.
“Chairman Miller was a policy wizard at the federal and state levels and an expert in investments and endowments held in the public trust,” UT System board chair Sara Martinez Tucker said. “He was widely considered to be the father of present-day accountability and transparency in Texas higher education.”
Always outspoken
Miller kept up with UT System operations, including an attempt by Chancellor William McRaven to expand the system into Houston by purchasing hundreds of acres for an undisclosed project.
McRaven backed away from the deal after sharp criticism from state lawmakers and regents appointed this year by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The system later disclosed that the property in Houston would have held a data science center. Miller endorsed that prospect as “brilliant” and as a potential economic driver for the city.
He was outspoken in the most recent legislative session in advocating for more higher education funding from state lawmakers, particularly for “special items,” which are centers or projects that universities fund with a pool of state money that is separate from standard funding.
These programs, he wrote in a Houston Chronicle op-ed this year, are “vital” to draw students, faculty and researchers to Texas.
“The current approach of whacking away at such invaluable programs is a disastrous way to fund higher education,” he wrote. “This shameful way of allocating resources has a hint of antagonism to higher education and comes across as punitive. Someone in leadership needs to show up and change this course of destructive behavior.”
His background
Born in Galveston, Miller attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he majored in math.
He later worked for the Teacher Retirement System of Texas in Austin as an analyst and portfolio manager before returning to the Houston area.
He served as president of Criterion Group, an investment management company with more than $10 billion in assets. That firm was later sold to Transamerica Corp.
He was active in Houston education issues and led the Greater Houston Partnership in the early 1990s.
In his spare time, he enjoyed spending time outdoors. He and his wife had a mountain retreat in Santa Fe, where they hiked and rode horses, the Chronicle previously reported.
Spellings said Wednesday that she knew she wanted to form a higher education commission when she began leading the department in 2005. Miller, she said, was “the right person” to lead, given his experience at UT, understanding of business practices and care for student outcomes.
A particular area of passion, she said, was his focus on accountability. He wanted universities to define their missions and measure how well they were achieving it.
Miller, she said, wanted people to understand higher education’s price and value proposition.
Spellings turned to Miller for advice because he knew what battles to fight, she said. He was a mentor and coach to many and helped others succeed in their careers, she said.
Services will be open to the public on Monday at 11 a.m. at Geo H. Lewis & Sons.