Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Every lawmaker in the state needs to hear the point that education consultant Aims McGuinness made to the House Higher Education Committee last week. "Focus on the results you want," or mission creep is almost sure to set in, said Mr. McGuinness, who studies university funding across the country.

That may sound obvious, but his warning suggests that states aren't always focused when it comes to their colleges. Indeed, he talked about how hard it is for legislatures to concentrate spending on them. Every part of a state wants some money, so it gets spread thinly. That's certainly been true in Texas, a state with many colleges in many regions.

To avoid mission creep, where everything becomes a priority, we have a couple of suggestions about where the Legislature should focus its attention next session.
Tier One

Lawmakers need to create a way for universities to compete to become Texas' next top-tier research school.

We're not talking about a session-consuming debate over which universities deserve that chance. We could fight that battle for years and never come up with an answer.

We're talking instead about giving any of Texas' emerging research universities the chance to earn that distinction. That list includes such schools as the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas at Arlington and Texas Tech University.

As we noted recently, UTD President David Daniel has an idea how Austin could do this. He suggests that legislators put up a pool of money that schools could draw upon to match the funds they raise on their own to build their research and faculty and achieve Tier One status.

Tier One is a designation commonly given schools with a billion dollars in research funding, as well as other distinctions.

A matching formula is attractive because it puts the impetus on the schools. If they succeed in raising enough cash, the state will reward their initiative.

We think North Texas needs to build a Tier One university. This distinction is not only good for a school like UTD. It also gets back to what Mr. McGuinness discussed. University spending, he said, should be tied to the state's goals.

One of Texas' goals is remaining on the cutting edge of technology, math and science. That's what drives the world's economy, and our universities are a big reason we are players in that economy.

Student funding

At the same hearing, legislators heard why the governor should make student aid an emergency issue in the 2009 Legislature. That status would require legislators to deal with financial aid in the session's first 60 days.

That's a worthy goal for two reasons.

For starters, the 2007 Legislature almost had a fiasco on its hands by putting off funding for higher education until late in the session. Students were left scrambling to figure out whether they would have any money for the next school year. The Legislature doesn't need another meltdown caused by waiting so late in the session to determine how much it wants to spend on financial aid.

Also, legislators could use those 60 days to build upon last session's increase in student aid funding. While the 2007 session did its job and increased aid by about $145 million, the need has not gone away.

Consider the Texas Grant program, which benefits low-income students. It's serving about 60,000 Texas students this year. But a funding shortfall will leave about 40,000 eligible students without a grant.

Texas Grant, B-On Time and the state's other financial aid programs warrant additional increases from Austin. Texas Grant, for example, has succeeded in getting more disadvantaged students to take the state's most demanding high school curriculum.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board aims to enroll 500,000 more Texas students in college by 2015. The only way that many students will get to UT, Texas A&M or any state school is through more financial aid.

Spending in this area is one more way for the state to meet its goals, which, as Mr. McGuinness explained, is what legislators should keep their eyes on.