Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

AUSTIN - A Texas Senate panel on Wednesday was scheduled to vote on two bills that would help Texas Tech and six other leading universities in the state get tier-one status, but in the end the proposed legislation was left pending again.

However, Sen. Judith Zaffirini, chairwoman of the Senate Higher Education Committee and author of one of the bills, was not discouraged. In fact, the Laredo Democrat was upbeat.

That's because her Senate Bill 9 and Senate Bill 1560 authored by Sens. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and Florence Shapiro, R-Plano are being reworked to make them more appealing to all 31 senators, not just to the five members of her panel, Zaffirini said.

"There's a lot of interest in them," the lawmaker said after her committee opted to keep both bills pending. "So we want to make sure that it reflects not only the proposal developed by the author of the bill but also a consensus of the Senate and the people who are involved. For example, regarding the two national research university bills, there are 21 senators impacted by that bills because they either represent one of the seven emerging research universities or they live in that area, for example the Houston area versus the Dallas area, San Antonio, El Paso."

Besides Tech, the other six schools under consideration for national research university status, more commonly known as tier-one or flagship, are the University of Houston, the University of North Texas in Denton and the University of Texas campuses in Arlington, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio.

Besides the Zaffirini and Duncan/Shapiro bills there was a bill by Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, but it was merged with her bill, Zaffirini said. A fourth bill, a constitutional amendment also authored by Duncan and Shapiro, recently passed unanimously in the Senate and it is now in the House waiting for approval.

It is estimated that the Texas Legislature has to spend about half billion dollars to make Tech and the other six schools national research universities. Zaffirini and other senators have made it clear that to avoid unnecessary fights and hurt feelings all or none of the schools would get the prestigious designation.

However, Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance, who was in Austin on Wednesday, disagreed with that approach.

"If you are trying to include all seven to become tier-one it won't work," Hance said in an interview. "The money is so-limited that only one, two, at the very maximum three of us can do that successfully."

As he has said in previous occasions Hance said that for him and other Tech officials Tech is already tier-one in everything but name and the school is working to raise money so that it doesn't have to become too dependent on state money to get the official title.

Hance estimates that Tech needs between $40 million to $60 million in research funds to get the prestigious tier-one designation.

"It may be two years, it may be six years but we're getting there faster and faster," he said.