When it comes to education, UT is not as good as it thinks.
We can trumpet our size and accomplishments to the rest of the country, solicit big money from alums and try to coast on the coattails of the Ransom Center's acquisitions or the Longhorns' nearly three-year-old football championship. But as a powerful, progressive state school system, the UT System is in a lull.
The state is putting enormous pressure on President Bill Powers to keep our University a "tier-one" school and inspire other Texas schools to reach our bloated height. Other than UT-Austin, Texas has two tier-one universities: Texas A&M and Rice. California has nine and consequently pulls in millions of dollars in federal research grants yearly.
But if UT really wanted to produce competent, intelligent graduates and inspire other Texas schools to do the same, it would turn a deaf ear to cries about the collegiate prestige race and focus on improving what makes a college a college - the education.
A core element of that education lies in the College of Liberal Arts. However, UT's liberal arts curriculum is unreasonable. The broad, demanding requirements spread the college's students too thin. It's difficult for an English major to find true depth in his or her field in four years when he or she is required to take 18 hours of science, and vice versa. We're all for broadening our horizons, but the excessive course requirements seem to do little more than keep us on campus longer and thus make us pay more (read: accrue more debt) for a degree that is not usually pursued with the promise of a lucrative job in mind.
Further, the liberal arts faculty is not valued nearly enough by the school. UT is cheap with its professors and has trouble retaining many valuable thinkers who, logically, leave Texas to take up posts at higher-paying, more prestigious institutions, putting liberal arts students at a further disadvantage.
We believe Powers knows this and is caught in a precarious position between the forces of the state and the values he says he believes in. On Wednesday, Powers met with government and education officials at a joint hearing of two Senate subcommittees on higher education. He spoke up for the liberal arts after Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance remarked that humanities research pales in comparison to technological research.
"Those are parts of the American culture that drive our economy in the long run," Powers said in defense of the liberal arts. But no matter how much Powers waxes romantic on the discipline, the liberal arts do not fit into the vague vision for tier-one schools, which are defined by the number of federal research grants and capital investments they have. A bigger budget for UT might benefit the College of Liberal Arts in the long run, but generally, money doesn't flow freely to the six-pack.
We don't envy the position Powers is in for a second. There's no way for him to please everyone. But when he's not doing his obligatory job of jockeying for state and federal money to bolster UT's reputation, he could support the liberal arts by reconsidering the college's curriculum to provide students with a more progressive, meaningful education - an education for education's sake. It would be a costless exercise that might benefit the many who aim to think beyond the state and national government's empty, high-stakes game of money, power and prestige that needlessly pits colleges against one another.
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