Powers "Heartened" by Conversation on Tuition Guarantee
In his State of the University address Wednesday afternoon, University of Texas at Austin President Bill Powers said he was "heartened" by statewide discussion of locking in students' tuition rates for four years, which Gov. Rick Perry called for at The Texas Tribune Festival last week.
"We should explore other ways to help families cope with the cost of higher education, even by giving them more predictability so they can plan," he said. "This is the thrust of Gov. Perry's ideas of locking tuition rates on a rolling four-year basis."
Perry has renewed a call to have schools keep ...
Comments (2)
Leon Drozd
There's another aspect of this. Someone in a leadership position in either Texas higher education or politics should formulate a strategic plan to engage every service provider or vendor of Texas universities to participate in actively identifying cost reductions (without compromising quality). Vendor and service contracts could inlcude incentive payments for lowering costs or early completion and a requirement that they cooperate and participate in providing data that would enable univeristy administrators to evaluate strategic opportunities.
Consideration might be given to a foundation-funded study of select Texas universities to that would bring together students, faculty, university administrators and vendors to find innovative solutions that could lead to better efficiency and a path of lower tuition. This could be a special study for credit for students and, who knows, it may lead to a graduate program or degree in university admnistration. Who better to address and solve these programs and provide insightful lessons learned than the people closest to the services and who have a vested interest.
Another consideration is the establishment of an Education Hotline where members of the public (including administrator, faculty and students) could confidentially report fraud and opportunities for savings. This requires some consideration of legal issues, but it might be a mechanism for adding sunlight and transparency that could benefit Texas and Texans.
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Marshall Collins
I don't understand why UTEP's president would be speaking about the Morrill Act of 1862. In Texas only Texas A&M in College Station and Prairie View A&M are land grant institutions. If she wanted to tout urban based education, she should have spoke on the Great Cities Universities movement of the last decade.