Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Higher education is a cause of hand wringing at every legislative session because Texas wants top-ranked colleges but doesn't want to pay the cost for reaching the highest rung of state-supported universities.

In 2003, University of Texas officials convinced the Legislature it had to give up its power to set tuition and hand it to the Board of Regents. By then, state support for higher education had dwindled to around 20 percent, and universities were tacking on ever-higher fees.

Since deregulation, tuition has increased an average of 112 percent on Texas campuses, 164 percent at UT. Some important lawmakers are screaming about it. UT said it would add more grants, loans and scholarships to offset the increases, but that hasn't helped a seriously squeezed middle class. So there is a clamor for the Legislature to reclaim tuition-setting power.

That would be a mistake unless the Legislature increases its financial support enough to offset lower tuition. Texas can't have it both ways. It can't have great institutions of higher learning with low tuition and declining state appropriations.

As long as the Legislature is going to skimp on higher-ed appropriations, it must continue to let the regents set tuition rates — and raise them when necessary.

Another continuing controversy is the law passed in 1997 that guarantees admission to Texas and Texas A&M to all students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class. Texas is rushing toward a freshman class made up entirely of top 10 percent students, shutting out those with other talents, such as high SAT scores or musical ability. Some legislators like the law because it guarantees admission to students from rural and minority areas who can't compete on SAT scores. But UT is fighting the law because it restricts admissions to one criteria — class standing.

A bill was introduced last session to cap top 10 percent admissions at 40 percent of the freshman class, but it died aborning. Still, UT needs more flexibility in admissions, and restricting each freshman class to a percentage based on class rank is not a bad idea.

There is a push to create more top-tier, or flagship, universities in Texas to raise the level of higher education in the state. Texas Tech, UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas, the University of Houston and others like the idea. But is there money to hire better faculty, raise admission criteria and increase research? Probably not this year, but Texas should find a way to do better by its colleges and universities.

More than 70 percent of all Texas freshmen begin at community colleges, and Texas needs to give more attention to the two-year schools. They have been growing, but state funding has not grown with them. Community college enrollment is up 25 percent, to nearly 600,000 students, since 2001, but appropriation per student has dropped 12 percent in that time.

Texas has much to do in the way of making higher education a priority in the state. Lawmakers can start with feeding the community colleges they've been starving.