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A tale of two universities reveals an unfair and inefficient funding system.
Texas needs to make fair and efficient use of higher education resources.
For more than a century, higher education in Texas focused almost exclusively on two things: the University of Texas and Texas A&M. Times have changed. Schools like Texas Tech and the University of Houston now compete at the Tier 1 level. Community colleges play an increasingly important role in training the Texas workforce. Even the UT-A&M football rivalry is a thing of the past.
But after all these years, sometimes Aggies can’t help but find themselves still following Longhorn hoofprints.
Last week, Texas A&M announced plans to spend $150 million on a new 2,000-acre research and education center at its Riverside Campus, west of College Station. This top-dollar proposal comes on the heels of the UT System’s own $200 million plan to develop 300 acres in southeast Houston.
Texans should worry whether this Aggie expansion, like UT’s foray into Houston, is the best use of taxpayer dollars.
There’s much to like in A&M’s proposal to transform an old Air Force base into a research hub that will specialize in transportation technology, such as drones and self-driving cars.
We’re even impressed that the tradition-minded maroon plans to preserve several historic buildings, including the base’s chapel and two hangars.
However, this idea, deemed the RELLIS Campus, also includes plans for a $38 million education center that will teach up to 20,000 students who couldn’t get into Texas A&M but still want to stay nearby. That sounds like the job of a community college and, despite what some Austin tea sippers may say, Texas A&M University is not a community college.
This educational proposal overlaps with the two-year Blinn College, which has a campus in Bryan, not to mention the other 11 universities within the Texas A&M system.
This questionable multi-milliondollar expenditure looks even worse when compared to other important higher-ed institutions that teeter on the verge of insolvency. Texas Southern University
Here in Houston, Texas Southern University is on a path to end its fiscal year with only $2 million in its rainy-day fund.
A historically black college in the Third Ward, TSU educates roughly 10 percent of African-American college graduates and 27 percent of all African-American pharmacists in the nation. Since 2006, more African-American students earned degrees from TSU than from UTAustin and Texas A&M combined. The university is key to ensuring diversity in our state’s higher education.
Yet state funding for Texas Southern has shrunk by 15 percent since 2010. After state leaders bolstered the funding formula last session, the University of Houston, just five blocks from TSU, is set to bring in nearly $25 million more than the two years before. TSU, however, will lose $3.5 million — more than any other college in the state.
It’s time for state leaders to do more than pay lip service to the importance of education as an engine for social mobility. It’s time for the crown jewels of Texas higher education to stop hoarding our state’s wealth for expansions that verge on vanity projects.
Times have changed. Top industries not only want the best and brightest students, they also want diversity. Multicultural teams produce superior results, they’re more creative, more culturally aware and enrich any office environment. And in big cities like ours, it is essential that the workplace reflects the marketplace.
Texas spent the 20th century with an education funding model that prioritized two big schools. It is time for something else, something that fits the 21st century.
Texas spent the 20th century with an education funding model that prioritized two big schools. It is time for something else, something that fits the 21st century.