Home > The lowdown on higher education > Archives > Legislative matters category
Legislative matters
June 2, 2009
Failure of tuition measure 'a shame,' senator says
More than a dozen measures to limit tuition increases at public universities in Texas were filed during the legislative session that ended Monday. Not one made its way to the governor’s desk. I wrote a story about this for today’s paper.
Too late to include in the story was this comment from Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, at a late-night news conference: “What an embarrassment. What a shame.”
Not all would agree. The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents adopted a resolution last month urging lawmakers to preserve current law, which gives regents full authority to set tuition.
The House passed a nonbinding resolution on Monday calling on boards of regents to limit tuition increases to 3.95 percent or $280 a year, but it fizzled when the Senate didn’t bother to take up the measure before gavelling the legislative session to a close. The senators felt they had already spoken pretty clearly, Zaffirini said.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
May 12, 2009
Handguns on campus a contentious issue
The question of whether concealed handguns should be allowed on college campuses in Texas is a contentious one. I wrote a story for today’s paper about concerns raised by two university system chancellors, Francisco Cigarroa and Charles Matthews, regarding a legislative proposal that would allow holders of concealed-handgun licenses to carry their weapons onto school grounds.
Private colleges and their advocates, such as the Independent Colleges and Universities of Texas, made their opposition clear weeks ago. In fact, the proposal by Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, has been tweaked to allow the private schools to prohibit concealed handguns.
Officials of public colleges and universities, at least up to now, have been reluctant to speak out one way or the other on this issue. For one thing, they’re not supposed to lobby, although they routinely do so in the shadows and sometimes in broad daylight. For another, this is a gun-friendly state with a gun-friendly legislature.
As I reported in my story, the Texas A&M University System does not have a position on the proposal, and Elsa Murano, president of the College Station campus, said strong arguments can be made for and against the legislation. Here’s the full text of her statement:
“We are aware that proposed legislation has been filed allowing concealed handguns on university campuses and are carefully studying the legislation and possible ramifications for Texas A&M University if such a bill were to become law. This is a complex issue in which strong arguments can be made for and against the proposed legislation. We are mindful that Texas A&M is — and has long been — an exceptionally safe place for students, faculty, staff and visitors, thanks in no small part to a well-trained and professional campus police department and to the caliber of the people who populate our campus.”
Although the administration at A&M has not taken a position on concealed handguns, the faculty apparently is opposed. Dale Rice, a former American-Statesman writer and editor who teaches media writing and political blogging at A&M, sent me an e-mail to that effect:
“The results of a recent faculty poll were reported yesterday in the Faculty Senate meeting (I was there because I’m a senator-elect). There were 145 faculty in support of concealed weapons on campus, 877 against (83.4 percent) and 29 indifferent.”
Cigarroa, who leads the University of Texas System, contends that campus police worry that allowing concealed handguns could lead to confusion about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
Ronald Thomas, a retired UT-Austin police lieutenant, called to say that not all officers agree. Thomas favors allowing concealed handguns on campus because, he said, an armed person could prevent or cut short a tragedy well before campus police arrive at the scene.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
April 15, 2009
A touch of humor at a Senate hearing
Click here to read about a light-hearted exchange between state Sens. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, and Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, as a Senate Higher Education Committee hearing got under way this morning.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
April 1, 2009
Many senators favor limits on tuition
Legislative efforts to restrict future tuition increases at public universities in Texas seem to be gaining momentum. I’ve posted about today’s hearing of the Senate Higher Education Committee here.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
March 12, 2009
Rising to tier one will take time, money, political will
The Texas Legislature might or might not enact a law this session to sketch out a plan for lifting one or more public universities to tier-one status.
But this much is certain: None of the contenders will get there anytime soon.
“They all have a way to go,” Raymund Paredes, the state’s higher education commissioner, said at a hearing on Wednesday.
All seven candidates — the University of Houston, Texas Tech University, the University of North Texas and the University of Texas System campuses at Arlington, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio — all need to pump up research expenditures, academic competitiveness of faculty members and students, endowments and other benchmarks before they could be considered the likes of UT-Austin and Texas A&M University.
Indeed, most experts say it would require tremendous political will, funding to match and two or three decades for even one campus to join the big leagues, variously termed tier one, top tier, flagship and national research universities.
Still, there is a growing consensus among lawmakers that it’s a goal worth pursuing.
“Developing more tier ones isn’t just critical for our students; it’s critical for our economy,” said Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, noting the impact of research at such schools. He has filed a measure that would set up a competition of sorts, with schools raising the most money from community groups, private donors and other sources getting the largest share of disbursements from a state kitty.
Branch has proposed setting aside $210 million in the next two years for such funding.
His plan received generally positive reviews from the leaders of the universities in question at Wednesday’s hearing of the House Higher Education Committee, which Branch leads.
“It is what we need to make that jump,” said Gretchen Bataille, president of the University of North Texas.
A similar measure has been filed by Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo.
Republican Sens. Robert Duncan of Lubbock and Florence Shapiro of Plano are taking a somewhat different approach in a measure they have jointly authored.
The Duncan-Shapiro plan calls for designating earnings from the Higher Education Fund for the emerging research universities. That fund was established in 1995 with a $50 million appropriation and was intended to reach $2 billion.
A news release from Duncan and Shapiro notes that appropriations stalled and the fund’s value is now less than $500 million.
That might provide a lesson concerning the importance of political and financial will in achieving top-tier status.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
March 6, 2009
Legal nuance in the top 10 percent debate
As I’ve written previously, the state Senate’s Higher Education Committee voted 4-1 this week to modify the law that guarantees students in the top 10 percent of a Texas high school graduating class admission to any of the state’s 35 public universities.
The lone “no” vote was by Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, who brought up an interesting point about a pending legal challenge to the use of affirmative action in admissions at the University of Texas. More about that in a moment. First, a bit of background.
The measure adopted by the Higher Education Committee now goes to the full Senate. It would allow universities to limit top 10 percent students to half of their admissions from Texas. The goal is to give the schools sufficient capacity for students with musical, artistic, leadership and other qualities who don’t happen to rank that high.
UT is the only school, at least for now, experiencing a crush of top 10 percent students. Eighty-one percent of its current freshmen from Texas got in under the law. That works out to 76 percent of the entire freshman class.
The top 10 percent law was enacted in 1997 in response to a successful challenge to UT’s use of affirmative action in admissions. The law is considered race-neutral because of its school-by-school approach.
The legal landscape changed considerably in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case involving the University of Michigan that race and ethnicity could be factors in admission. That prompted UT to resume such considerations.
But as West pointed out in Monday’s hearing, UT’s current practice is under legal challenge. A lawsuit by two white students whose applications for admission were rejected contends that UT is discriminating on the basis of race. They lost the initial round last year when U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin ruled against their request for a preliminary injunction that would have required the university to reconsider their applications.
But the case hasn’t been decided on the merits, and lawyers for UT and the students recently filed court papers setting out their arguments. A decision isn’t expected anytime soon.
West, a lawyer, and UT President William Powers Jr., a lawyer and former UT law dean, had an interesting exchange about these developments.
“Given that there’s a challenge” to UT’s use of affirmative action, is it wise for the university to abandon a race-neutral approach “until we know for a fact that race can be considered under this current Supreme Court?” West asked.
Powers said a Supreme Court decision provides a powerful precedent, but he conceded that it isn’t necessarily invulnerable to modification. If the courts ruled that UT couldn’t take ethnicity into account, “We would need to find race-neutral ways of achieving diversity,” he said. “Our Longhorn Opportunity Scholarship Program is such a mechanism.”
That program targets students in high schools that historically didn’t send many graduates to Austin.
Asked by West how he would advise a hypothetical client drawing up a modification to the top 10 percent law, Powers replied that he would address the concern about any future change in the legal landscape “as narrowly as possible in the bill with a trigger that would say all bets are off if a university chooses to or the courts prohibit a university from taking ethnicity into account. That trigger could be crafted to respond to something the courts might do in a very specific way.”
Bottom line: The measure, authored by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, is likely to get some tweaking as it winds its way through the Legislature. Its ultimate fate is uncertain. A similar measure passed the Senate two years ago but was rejected by the House.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
An update on tax-free textbook legislation
A question about the status of tax-free textbook legislation was posed recently by Lauri. I checked the Legislature’s handy Web site and can report the following:
A hearing was held Monday in the Senate Finance Committee on Senate Bill 22, authored by Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo. The measure, which was left pending in the committee, would exempt books purchased by university and college students from sales tax for a limited period.
House Bill 325, filed by Rep. Richard Pena Raymond, D-Laredo, is an identical measure that has been referred to the Ways and Means Committee, where it is awaiting a hearing. Two similar measures also have been referred to Ways and Means, HB 20 by Rep. David Leibowitz, D-San Antonio, and HB 1803 by Rep. Dwayne Bohac, R-Houston.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
February 23, 2009
Faulkner: Houston, Dallas areas merit top-tier schools
Efforts to raise more public universities in Texas to a nationally competitive status should focus on Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a former president of the University of Texas testified today.
Larry Faulkner, who stepped down in 2006 to become president of the Houston Endowment, warned members of the House Appropriations subcommittee on education that it could take 25 years or so for a university to rise to what some people call tier one, top tier or flagship status.
“You don’t get to just declare one,” Faulkner said.
UT and Texas A&M University are the only public top tier schools in the state. Rice University, which is private, is also in that league.
Faulkner said the University of Houston would be a likely candidate for the top rungs, along with a school in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He didn’t say whether he favored UT-Dallas or UT-Arlington.
He didn’t rule out Texas Tech University as a candidate but suggested that its location, in Lubbock, could be a hindrance. It helps a lot to be in or near a major city with good airport connections, he said.
Several measures have been proposed this session to put one or more universities on a track with more funding to rise in the rankings. Some of the proposals call for rewarding schools that make the most progress in elevating their research and educational programs.
Faulkner said it could be difficult to ensure that the targeted schools receive sufficient funding for the many years it would take because of conflicting regional interests among lawmakers.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
February 19, 2009
Hochberg keeps it light at hearing on college funding
I’ll say this much for state Rep. Scott Hochberg: He knows how to keep a legislative hearing lively.
Hochberg, D-Houston, is the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on education, and he managed to work in references to “dream team” and “swimsuit competition” during a session this morning about the minute details of higher education funding.
“We’ve got the dream team here,” he said of the panel. “We’ve got the top members right here in this subcommittee.”
He likened the traditional parade of university presidents pleading for money to a swimsuit competition and said he would not run the panel’s hearings that way. Instead, he said, presidents will probably be called up in small groups to discuss matters.
At one point, when a Legislative Budget Board staff member apologized if her explanation of a funding matter was confusing, Hochberg replied, “We are confused on our own. You’re not responsible for that.”
Still, he managed to zero in on some fundamentals. Case in point: Although the state budget spells out how much money each campus gets for various purposes, including so-called special items, it all goes into one pot per campus and the campus gets to decide how to spend the money. The exceptions are money for health care and retirement programs.
I asked Hochberg during a break in the hearing whether he thinks higher education funding needs to be revised, and he replied, “I’m listening at this point.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
July 23, 2008
UT's Powers stands up for liberal arts
State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, doesn’t like the fact that legislative appropriations are used to pay university professors to conduct research that won’t pay off in medical advances, new technologies or other tangible benefits. He made that pretty clear at a joint hearing of two Senate higher education subcommittees on Wednesday.
Kent Hance, chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, took a mild shot at humanities research at the same hearing when he declared that research on “the best part of Shakespeare’s play” isn’t on the same level as the research his university is conducting for the Defense Department.
William Powers Jr. had a different take. In a spirited defense of the liberal arts, the president of the University of Texas testified that the study of history, literature, language and business is essential.
“Those are parts of the American culture that drive our economy in the long run,” Powers said.
A footnote to my posting last Tuesday about this hearing:
Andrew von Eschenbach, commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration, had been scheduled to testify about investing in biomedical research, but he instead was called to the White House by his boss, President Bush. So said Warren von Eschenbach, son of the FDA commissioner and director of the two Senate subcommittees.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment
July 15, 2008
A von Eschenbach recruits a von Eschenbach
An e-mail I received about an upcoming state Senate hearing on higher education issues seemed fairly routine at first blush. Then I noticed that Andrew von Eschenbach would be testifying.
Hmm. Von Eschenbach is the commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration and the former director of the National Cancer Institute. What would he be speaking about at a joint hearing of the Senate Finance Higher Education Subcommittee and the Senate Higher Education Subcommittee? And how did Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, who chairs both panels, line up such a heavy hitter?
I called over to the state Capitol, and the answer became clear: Von Eschenbach’s son, Warren, just happens to be the director of both subcommittees.
“It’s our version of bring-your-daughter-to-work day,” the younger von Eschenbach said. “He’s going to talk about investing in biomedical research,” and, given his interactions with other states and universities throughout the country, how Texas might better position itself.
The FDA commissioner knows a thing or two about biomedical research in Texas. Von Eschenbach, a physician, spent more than 30 years at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston before President Bush tapped him to become director of the National Cancer Institute. He became acting commissioner of the FDA in 2005 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2006.
The state Senate hearing will also include testimony by officials of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and various public universities concerning commercialization of research, medical education and the need for additional flagship campuses.
The hearing will be at 9 a.m. July 23 in Room E1.036 of the Capitol Extension.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Legislative matters
