Jul
5
Written by:
William Lutz
7/5/2011 1:30 PM
The Legislature was warned this would happen. In 2003, then-Speaker Tom Craddick rammed through HB 3015 (sometimes called tuition “deregulation”) by tying it to the state budget. It resulted in massive increases in higher education spending.
During the 2003 floor debate on HB 3015, Rep. Burt Solomons (R-Carrollton) prompted a debate on the tomorrow fund by introducing an amendment preventing the Comptroller from closing it to new enrollment. During that debate, House members had a full discussion about what these tuition and spending increases would do to the state’s constitutionally-guaranteed tuition savings program – the Texas Tomorrow Fund.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn knew the tuition increases would make the fund unsustainable, so she sought – and got – legislation closing the Tomorrow Fund to new enrollment. Four years later, after substantial protests from Republican members, Craddick acquiesced and backed a bill to create a new pre-paid tuition program, albeit at a higher cost to parents than the old Tomorrow Fund.
Despite these warnings, Craddick chose to tie passage of tuition deregulation to passage of the state budget. And the result of that decision will likely be a massive taxpayer bailout of the Tomorrow Fund.
Toward the end of the 2011 legislative session,
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published a story noting that the Tomorrow Fund could go broke by 2014. That fund is constitutionally dedicated, meaning if the investments don’t cover the tuition for the fund’s beneficiaries, the state treasury is constitutionally obligated to cover the shortfall.
Unless the stock market improves, legislators could have to pay hundreds of millions to cover the shortfall. And that amount only grows over time.
And all to fund runaway spending at Texas institutions of higher learning, where tenured professors often teach no more than six hours a week.
Any bets on whether Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s new Joint Committee on Higher Education Governance, Excellence, and Transparency will take a serious look at this? Not likely. The committee is stacked in favor of liberal Democrats and UT administrators.
But now it appears someone will have to look at this issue prior to 2013.
8 comment(s) so far...
This article states that in "Texas institutions of higher learning . . . tenured professors often teach no more than six hours a week." That statement is laughable. First, the idea that teaching classes is the only thing tenured professors have to do is ludicrous, and the idea that the six hours spent in class represents the totality of the time required to actually teach that class smacks of sheer ignorance. Tenured professors earned their tenure through their dedication to scholarship, research, and professional practice. Neither the quality of education nor the value of a tenured professor's expertise can be measured in only time spent in the classroom. Furthermore, the vast majority of teachers in higher education (including me) work for community colleges, where the minimum teaching load is five classes per semester (although most of us take an additional class in order to meet our financial obligations, including paying back the student loans that were required to obtain the graduate school educations that got us these jobs in the first place). That works out to 15 hours of classroom time. Factor in the time it takes to prepare for those classes, plus time for grading, record-keeping, documentation of disciplinary actions, professional development requirements, professional research, writing, and publication, and the hours spent teaching those 15 classroom hours per week translate into well above the typical 40-hour work week. Before you start devaluing the time tenured professors spend on their work, try walking a mile in their shoes--if, that is, you are qualified to do so.
By Daniel Drew Butterworth on
7/6/2011 11:30 AM
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It's sad that this has happened to Texas that Universities are pricing not only potential students from attending, but forcing the State into a budget disaster by their rising tuition costs.
And people think that Perry trying to reform how Universities are run is a bad thing? Someone needs to step in and provide oversight.
By Shawn Miller on
7/6/2011 12:31 PM
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Shocking, a professor gets on this site to defend the status quo....
By Shawn Miller on
7/6/2011 12:31 PM
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The Texas Tomorrow fund sounds like a good idea in theory- except for the fact that the cost of tuition is increasing faster than the Texas treasury could ever keep up with . . .
By Lauren Pierce on
7/6/2011 1:20 PM
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"And all to fund runaway spending at Texas institutions of higher learning, where tenured professors often teach no more than six hours a week."
This sums up the problem very well. Accessibility to higher education is being trodden on by runaway spending at Texas Universities. Reform is needed to control costs to ensure continued access to some of the nation's best schools.
By Phil Harris on
7/8/2011 3:47 PM
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Wow. So many distortions in this article and in most of the responses.
The reality is that tuition has gone up because state funding has gone down....
The fact is that few in the Texas Legislature know how to do their job. Read today's editorial in the Dallas Morning News:
www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20110708-editorial-lawmakers-cover-up-financial-woes-with-slick-budget-trick.ece
By Mike on
7/10/2011 5:33 PM
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Holy Distortions, Batman! General revenue funding for the University of Texas at Austin has gone up consistently over time -- the main exception being the 12-13 budget. What has gone down is the percentage of UT's budget funded by tuition. In other words, UT administrators have increased spending much faster than legislators have increased UT's budget, so the percentage goes down. But state funding for UT-Austin has not gone down in the long term. (In 2003 -- when UT did the big tuition increase -- the university got an increase in general revenue appropriations AND it hiked tuition by double-digit amounts.)
As for your complaint about the Legislature using dedicated funds to pull budget slight-of-hand, I agree completely and have been writing about that for years, to no avail.
By William Lutz on
7/10/2011 5:36 PM
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Tuition funds are now higher than state appropriations.
State appropriations have remained relatively flat since the 1980's. They haven't kept up with inflation. UT's budget has risen slightly above the rate of inflation. The disparity has caused tuition to fill in the gaps.
UT continues to grow as a major research university. Attracting the best teachers and scholars costs money. It is unfortunate that state appropriations haven't risen. It's also unfortunate that allocations from the PUF (or whatever it is called) are too evenly split among all the system schools. UT as the flagship deserves a larger share.
In any case, I'm all for reform and lower tuition. There should be at least one or two public universities in Texas that are genuine Tier 1 institutions with great doctoral programs and truly great professors. There are a number of highly talented Texas high school students that want access to that kind of university--and they should have it without having to go out of state to more expensive alternatives. The obsession with creating multiple Tier 1 institutions across the state is a laudable but not feasible right now. It is a distraction. UT and A&M already cover a lot of ground, and of the two UT has the best chance of being ranked alongside Berkeley, Michigan, and UVA as "the best public universities." I know some legislation passed on that some time ago, so perhaps the state will try to create one or two more "Tier 1" institutions in Texas. They will be Tier 1 in name but not as comprehensive in the sciences and humanities the way UT is right now. It will end up creating costly duplicate programs. Why create doctoral/research programs at these other places when UT already has them and is trying to improve in a tough market? Best to invest in what's already set up rather than start from the ground up when tenure track jobs are not abundant. That only leads to higher tuition and more demand for state appropriations that aren't abundant at the moment.
I'm not a fan of tuition deregulation or even of Charles Miller, but he did have some interesting things to say about the concerns about making more Tier 1 institutions and comparing Texas to California in light of the fact that we have some great teaching/research medical schools and hospitals in Texas:
www.texastribune.org/texas-education/higher-education/ex-ut-regent-on-demography-tuition-deregulation/
By Mike on
7/12/2011 9:26 AM
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