Senate approves plan for top-tier university fund
April 30, 2009
The Texas Senate approved legislation today that spells out benchmarks so-called emerging research universities would have to reach to qualify for extra funding.
Written by Ralph K.M. Haurwitz, The Austin American Statesman
The Texas Senate approved legislation today that spells out benchmarks so-called emerging research universities would have to reach to qualify for extra funding.
The vote was 29-2.
The measure, Senate Bill 1560, is intended to help the seven emerging institutions achieve top tier, or tier one, status — in other words, to be recognized as among the nation’s leading research campuses.
The bill lists various criteria — including size of endowment, number of Ph.D. degrees awarded each year and research spending — that schools would have to meet to qualify for distributions from a proposed national research university fund. Schools would have to meet most, but not all, of the criteria to qualify.
A lengthy debate about the standards began Wednesday on the Senate floor and continued today. Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, sought to reduce to 100 the number of Ph.D. degrees a university would have to award to satisfy one of the criteria.
Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, the author of the legislation, insisted that the 200-degree benchmark in his bill be maintained. Senators shot down Shapleigh’s effort to reduce the standard, 20-11.
Shapleigh, who voted against the bill, said the larger flaw is a lack of state leadership on higher education and inadequate funding for public universities.
Senators approved a companion bill Wednesday that, subject to funding, would create a pathway for the emerging universities to ascend to the top tier of research universities in the nation.
Currently, only the University of Texas and Texas A&M University are considered top tier universities. The emerging institutions are UT-El Paso, UT-San Antonio, UT-Dallas, UT-Arlington, the University of Houston, Texas Tech University and the University of North Texas.
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