The legislature is right, says The Daily Texan, to propose more national research universities for Texas, but should start by adequately funding the ones it has (Texas’ fragile top tier, June 18). The analysis suffers, however, in assuming that a “Texas national research university” is an unchanging static target.
To the contrary, because ever-increasing costs of higher education in their present forms are not sustainable, UT will have to change to become affordable. Research institutions of the future will likely bear little resemblance to our present universities.
Instead of asking for extra money to preserve the status quo — money that neither the Legislature nor families can provide — we should plan the needed changes.
The pressure of ever-escalating costs is understandable. Our present universities are labor-intensive, and the University must pay what can be earned elsewhere. That is why, as President Powers reports, the cost of providing instruction at UT since 1990 has increased on average 2.6 percent the next year. Without changes in how we do things, real costs would double in 27 years, quadruple in 54.
Among the changes that will mark the future, Texas national research universities will probably shift more learning to secondary schools, a development we see in growing Advanced Placement programs, and to provide greater integration with community colleges. President David E. Daniel of UT-Dallas recently testified before the Texas Senate Higher Education Committee that he encouraged students not to enroll as freshmen in his university, but to start college at a community college where costs were less and transfer to UT-Dallas later.
This runs against the generous, if unrealistic, impulse of UT-Austin alumni, who wish for their children the same kind of “college” they experienced. The Commission of 125, a largely alumni group, denigrated satisfying course requirements through high school Advanced Placement examinations, instead advocating “university-level curricula” at UT-Austin. This view was cited favorably in the Report of the Task Force on Curricular Reform, of which Powers was chairman, where it was bemoaned that “high school preparation has usurped college-level education.”
These strikingly differing views make clear that planning the reforms necessary to make college affordable will not be easy. But it is planning these changes that should occupy us — so we can start the process of change here at UT, and so we can help design what a Texas national research university might look like in 20 or 30 years.
— Francis Dummer Fisher
Senior research fellow
LBJ School of Public Affairs
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