Major higher education reforms

Major higher education reforms

By Patrick Brendel Friday, 12 June 2009

Texas lawmakers passed legislation creating incentives for public colleges to strive toward achieving Tier One research university status. They tweaked the state’s Top 10 Percent rule for college admissions for the University of Texas at Austin but balked at completely reforming the system. Legislation to re-regulate college tuition increases failed at the end of the Regular Session.

The state of Texas has two public Tier One research institutions: UT-Austin and Texas A&M in College Station. (The other Texas Tier One school is the private Rice University in Houston.) In contrast, California has nine “flagship” schools, while New York has five.

Colleges throughout the state are vying for the elite Tier One status and the accompanying prestige and funds. Contenders include the University of Houston, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, University of North Texas in Denton, UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas, UT-El Paso and UT-San Antonio.

To avoid inciting regional animosity, lawmakers shied away from designating particular schools as Tier One, instead creating incentives for emerging research universities and a process to achieve Tier One designation.

The legislation establishes three incentive funds that would go to colleges according to research performed, number of degrees awarded and amount of private gifts received. The bill is meant to encourage all types of public four-year colleges to improve, not just to reward one or two schools with Tier One status.

Schools striving for Tier One status would have to submit detailed, long-range strategic plans to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which is in charge of Tier One designations.

The Tier One legislation also included $150 million in bonds to rebuild the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. The campus was severely damaged by Hurricane Ike last fall. Another related bill allows Texas A&M to start working toward the creation of a four-year college in downtown San Antonio.

Since 1997, Texas high school students graduating in the top 10 percent of their class are guaranteed admission to the public college campus of their choice. The law has been credited with removing disparities in admissions between students from rural and urban areas, but has not led to racial equality in freshmen classes.

The University of Texas at Austin has long pushed legislators to change the Top 10 Percent rule, citing shrinking flexibility in admissions decisions as it voluntarily attempted to restrain the total number of students enrolled each year. Last fall, more than 75 percent of enrolled freshmen were admitted under the Top 10 Percent rule. Almost half of Texas A&M’s fall 2008 freshman class were Top 10 Percent students.

Legislators gave serious consideration to a bill that would have significantly reformed the Top 10 Percent Rule. Under that proposal, Top 10 Percent students would not necessarily be guaranteed the campus of their choice. The bill capped the number of Top 10 Percent students a campus has to accept at 50 percent of freshman admissions. (Another version of that bill set the cap at 60 percent.) Students would be admitted to the campus according to their percentile rank. Students not admitted would be assigned to a different campus within the same university system.

On the House floor, an impromptu coalition of rural and minority legislators swamped the proposal because they believed that the Top 10 Percent Rule provided a more level playing field for their constituents.

They approved an amendment to the bill that makes it applicable only to UT-Austin. The legislation allows UT-Austin to cap the amount of Top 10 Percent students at 75 percent of the freshman class.

Due to shortfalls in state funding for higher education, in 2003 the Legislature began allowing Texas colleges to set their own tuition rates. Since then, tuition and fees have risen by more than 85 percent.

In an attempt to rein in skyrocketing college costs, lawmakers tried to pass legislation that prohibits Texas’ major schools — including UT and Texas A&M — from increasing their tuition and fees by more than 5 percent each year.

Schools would be allowed to create programs so that incoming freshmen could “lock in” their first-year tuition rate for four years.

Some colleges would not be allowed to raise tuition and fees at all, unless a legislative study determined that state funding is insufficient. The legislation also encouraged state lawmakers to provide adequate funding to public higher education institutions.

In the end, objections from the university systems won out, and no changes were made to tuition deregulation.