One of the Higher Ed issues on the Texas legislative agenda is whether the state should fund another, and perhaps more than one, Tier One Universities.
UH, along with Texas Tech and the Univesity of North Texas, are considered the front runners, but here's an interesting bit from the Dallas Morning News which puts the issue in perspective:
The term "Tier One" draws from various criteria, including membership in the Association of American Universities, quality of faculty, dollar amount of research, and selective admissions. By those measures, Texas can claim only three such elite schools – UT-Austin, Texas A&M and Houston's Rice University. By contrast, California has nine, and New York has five. (Dallas-Fort Worth has no AAU school, even though it is more populous than eight states that do support a Tier One university.)
In recent days, lawmakers have sought clarity on the cost of catching up. One estimate is about $70 million per year to establish and nourish one of Texas' seven emerging research universities – the list includes UT-Dallas, UT-Arlington and UNT – as a national competitor.
To put that into perspective, consider road construction. The cost of a major freeway interchange could fund the annual effort to boost three emerging universities to elite status.
The last paragraph reminds us the politics is, at root, a question of trade-offs among competing priorities. Which do you want? Cutting edge research or another freeway interchange. Of course its a trick question. If you are talking about a freeway intersection that cuts down my traffic time, it's a no brainer.
