(09-05-2019 03:03 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(09-05-2019 12:08 PM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  

(09-05-2019 11:19 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(09-05-2019 10:59 AM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  

(09-05-2019 10:18 AM)CougarRed Wrote:  Only campus in the UT-System that can use PUF funds is Austin.

this is incorrect

the only UT System school that gets "excellence" funds from the PUF is UT Austin

in the aggy system College Station and PVAMU get "excellence" funds

the remaining UT and aggy system members that are PUF participants (most of the UT System only a few of the aggy system) get their formula infrastructure funding paid for by the PUF instead of it being paid for by general state revenues, but they do not get any "excellence" funds or any funding over and above formula funding based on the same formulas as all state universities.....it is a simple difference in where the money to cover that particular formula funding comes from

this is one of the main reasons that if the PUF is busted up it will not result in much if any additional revenues to other universities and may even eventually lead to reduced revenues for other universities

because there is a high likelihood once those UT and aggy system schools start getting their formula infrastructure funding paid for by general state revenues that the state will not allocate any additional dollars from general revenues to cover that they will instead allocate the same dollar amount and reduce the dollar funding per formula unit thus everyone will take a hit in the end and the additional PUF dollars they are sharing will not make up for that formula funding decrease

all the more so when idiotic politicians use the busting open of the PUF to start spending into the corpus of the investments like they tried to do with the Permanent School Fund a few years back (and thankfully that was voted down)

What I do think makes sense is reducing the number of "systems" in Texas from 6 to 3 and eliminating the 5 or 6 independents (TSU, Stephen F. Austin, TWU and 2 or 3 others) by moving them into the Texas State University system (currently includes Texas St., Sam Houston St., Sul Ross, Lamar, and 3 Lamar branches in the Golden Triangle).

The Texas St. University system would focus on bachelor's and master's and not Phd.s and research much like the Cal State system. The University of North Texas system would be dissolved with their Dallas campus made simply a learning center and UNT moved into the Texas St. University system as well.

The Texas A&M system probably should be trimmed with some going to the Texas State University system, but if not, simply add Texas Tech, which has a lot of ag programs. Its med school would be merged into TTU and the Texas Tech system dissolved.

UH system would be dissolved with UH-Victoria and UH-Downtown College moved to the Texas St. University system. UH-Clear Lake would be merged into the main campus as a separate location. Houston would become part of the University of Texas system. The UT Health Science Center in Houston could be merged in so UH quits trying to add another unnecessary medical school in Houston.

UT-Dallas has thrived in the UT system and is probably the #3 public school in the state. Houston and Texas Tech would have more access to the PUF than now and that would help them.

I will address the PUF first since that is what started the topic

"access to the PUF" means nothing unless it is getting ADDITIONAL DOLLARS over and above state formula funding and there is little chance of any non-UT system school getting that simply because they were added to the system especially when no UT system school gets that now as a PUF participant

It is much smarter to actually go after additional state funding, but that is not really he goal of the PUFers the goal is to take something from UT and maybe from aggy as well

that has about zero chance of having success if the PUFers cared they would simply go after the state to properly fund the NRUF endowment and to go ahead and create the 3rd endowment that was proposed for schools that will never be emerging research universities and never meet NRUF qualifications

but instead of going after the state during times when there is a budget surplus to add hard dollars to the NRUF endowment (like $200 to $250 million per year for the two year budget cycle) the PUFer idiots waste their time filing bills that are dead on arrival to try and get a share of the PUF

there are 4 independent universities in Texas....TSU, Midwestern, Stephen F. Austin and TWU

in the past TWU tried to be a system, but found it was a waste and went back to being a single university with 3 campuses main campus on Denton and then the health components in dallas and Houston

I think the easiest thing to do would be merge Midwestern and Sul Ross into Texas Tech's System

merge Lamar and SHSU into the UH System and let Texas State be independent

from there merge (the massively FAILED) north Texas state dallas back under the Denton campus or better yet shut it down and sell the building to DCCCD (really shutting that massive failure down is the best option)

put a 100% STOP on all system centers and start shutting many of them down and or forcing them to give up their real estate and merge in with a local community college

rewrite the formula funding for health science centers so that there is not a net loss of funding for a medical school/HSC being under the administration of a 4 year school (the issue with merging Tech and their Lubbock HSC) and then start merging some of those

tell north Texas state they are no longer a system and stop their Frisco campus as well before it buys any property

with that you would have eliminated the Texas State System and left Texas State as a stand alone university.....it will be all but impossible to stop them from trying to offer more PhDs as they are now an emerging research university and going after NRUF funding (and ahead of north Texas state in that quest and probably about tied with UTSA (UTA will be the next to qualify).....also SHSU and Lamar are not going to stop offering the PhDs they offer especially if Texas State is allowed to and all the more so in a "weak system" model with no flagship school

plus the reality is the California plan was a good plan in the past, but now it us severely holding back SDSU, Cal Poly, Fresno, Long Beach, and probably Northridge

it is a better plan to give some strength to the THECB to put a stop to the legislature and universities (and failed system plans) to go around offering duplicate programs and opening up garbage system centers all over the place

from there is you really want to make a difference it will be much harder to do

if I could just wave a wand TSU would be gone, some of the land and buildings offered to UH and then the remaining land and buildings not needed sold off and then UH Downtown would be renamed Houston Metropolitan (as it should have been a few years ago before their idiot faculty got involved) and the successful programs and professional programs from TSU would be merged into Houston Metro and the UH downtown campus would be their campus

the UH System would get a chancellor that is not the president of the main campus with the addition of Lamar and SHSU and the TSU/UHD merger

so from there would have eliminated the Texas State System......two independent universities (Midwestern to Tech and TSU closed) and created one new independent university Texas State......with a FIRM ROUND ROCK WILL NOT BE A NEW CAMPUS JUST health components

also no more north Texas state system just north Texas state Denton and their programs littering the dallas metro area in conjunction AND ON community college campuses no more free standing schools and system centers

I would merge UTD and UTSW and I would take TCOM from the north Texas state system and merge it with UTA and make TCOM a PUF participant (which is again pretty meaningless overall in terms of funding)

so from there two systems gone (Texas State and north Texas state), one independent university gone TSU and one merged into a system (Midwestern into Tech) and 3 medical schools merged into 4 year schools.....Tech HSC Lubbock/Tech, UTSW/UTD and TCOM/UTD

merges UT-HSC-SA into UTSA....leave UTHSC Tyler alone for the time being

also merge Texas A&I and aggy Corpus under one campus like UTRGV (proposed, but not-so sharp really screwed that up because he is a massive idiot)

close the aggy McAllen campus, shut down all REVIS plans in College Station......make sure that aggy Central Texas stays upper division only

from there one could go ahead and decide if they wanted Stephen F. Austin, TWU, Texas State, and north Texas state to remain independent of fire back up the Texas State System and merge them all into it along with UH, Houston Metro, Lamar, SHSU, and UHV and move the headquarters into the Texas State System building they just bought from the UT System

if that was done there would be no independent universities and 4 systems and a number fewer of independent medical schools and more medical schools aligned with 4 year universities

oh PS one other thing that would actually be done first before anything else.....shut down the massively failed north Texas state law school and allow all current students to transfer to aggy law in Fort Worth

Regionalism and rivalries between systems are part of the problem. It particularly hampers development in Houston and Dallas.

The California system does exactly what it needs to do. UCSD is one of the top 15 public universities in the country. They don't need SDSU to try to be the same thing. UCLA, UC-Irvine and UC-Santa Barbara are top tier schools. Looking at an ARWU list from 2016, Irvine was #58 in the world, a couple spots above Vanderbilt and Purdue. UCSB was #42. Northridge and Long Beach don't need to be doing the same thing. California has 6 public AAU schools-Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, UC-Davis and UC-Irvine.

A Georgia legislator was saying (I'm paraphrasing-he is describing the official tiers in Georgia), the technical schools want to offer degrees, the 2 year schools want to be 4 year schools, the local 4 year want to be regional, the regional want to be research universities and who knows what UGA wants to be.

The point in a Cal St. or Texas St. University system is to keep the schools doing their role. Phd's are for professors and researchers. We don't need to train them everywhere. You could grandfather in existing Phd programs, but don't start new ones. DFW doesn't need UTD, UTA and UNT to all be high admission requirement research universities. Houston doesn't need UH, UHCL, UHD, TSU and Prairie View all trying to do the same thing. Austin-San Antonio doesn't need UT, UTSA, Texas St. and Texas A&M-SA trying to do the same thing.

I agree with some points, but disagree with others

they do not need SDSU to be UCSD or Long Beach to be Irvine, but the reality is the infrastructure already exist at SDSU and Long Beach to offer PhD programs with little added expense in SELECT areas and doing so would benefit those schools greatly

when schools are 34,000 and 38,000 students the infrastructure is there to offer PhDs with little real additional cost provided that administrative creep is constricted (a major issue to deal with) and not offering those degrees hurts the reputation of the school in terms of research prestige and in terms of the faculty it can attract

the issue is to restrict the PhD offerings at those schools to areas of need and select areas of specialization

examples of this in Texas would be Texas State and Geography and Aquatics.......the aquatics simply comes from taking advantage of their geographic location and the Geography program comes from a past president of the university that felt that Geography was not emphasized enough at public universities in Texas and built that program up by making sure the core of the undergrad included running students through the geography department

doing so over decades built that program to the point where it made no sense and was detrimental to the attractiveness of faculty recruitment to not offer a PhD program.....so that was one of the first they offered

they have continued to up their PhD offerings in select areas of need and strength since then (like aquatics) or a materials science (wafer fab based) engineering PhD

the flip side is the north Texas state model which is to offer a ton of PhDs under any subject under the sun with most of them being of no use or demand in the real world and cranking out a bunch of soft and social science PhDs while doing next to nothing in terms of research funding and producing PhDs that are not in demand

unlike what attack coog said the north Texas research profile in terms of dollars is stagnant and was declining for a several year run

in 2013 they did $49.5 million in research and development and that declined annually to $37.1 in 2016 and is $43.8 in 2017

Texas State on the other hand steadily went from $37 in 2013 to $60.7 in 2017

in 2008 north Texas State did $18 million to growing to the $43.8 in 2017

by comparison Texas State went from $19.3 to $60.7 and Texas Tech from $60.1 to $191.5

last I checked Texas State offers 12 Doctoral programs (including EdDs) with total research and development of ($60.7), Tech 50 ($191), north Texas state 37 ($43.8), UTA 30 ($97), uH 54 ($169.4), UTD 30 ($113), UTSA 24 ($70)

so one school in particular is doing a terrible job of managing their PhDs and masters and the research productivity (and demand for) those degrees at a great expense to their students overall

there is a cost to offering a ton of masters and PhDs that are of no demand and that produce no sponsored research dollars and THAT is what needs to be contained by the state not the overall ability of offering of ANY of those programs at particular schools

it makes sense that Lamar has engineering related post graduate degrees being in the largest petro chemical complex in the world and that SHSU has advanced degrees in criminal justice.....it would not make sense for them to be offering advanced degrees in art history, psychology, or sociology

UHCL should have taken advantage of their NASA connection from the start like UTD did with Texas Instruments, but the UH main campus could not stand to see that happen and squandered that relationship to the point it is meaningless now.....The State of Texas should have corrected that long ago

that does not mean that UHCL needs to offer a ton of useless undergrad degrees of masters or PhDs

that is the advantage of UTD it was always restricted to try and toss UTA and north Texas and TWU a bone......restricted in the degrees offered and restricted in the enrollment requirements even for undergrads

well UTD took advantage of that and built those programs that were in demand and that met the needs and the expertise of the DFW metromess and enrolled top students.....well now Texas and the DFW metromess are large enough that there are enough top students available that do not want to go to a (bad) football factory that UTD can grow enrollment based on their top reputation and their research while north Texas state amps up their football spending at a cost to their students in terms of actual dollars and in terms of educational quality (their faculty to student ratio is through the roof and they are swapping out tenure track faculty for adjuncts and part time and non-tenure track faculty left and right).....and at a cost to research productivity all while still offering why too many PhDs overall in subjects that are simply a waste of time and money and while their "system" opens garbage universities, law schools, and system centers that no one wants or needs and that barely gain accreditation (or fail to so far with the law school)

Texas does not need a "California plan" to stop that they simply need to make schools do a lot more what Texas State and UTD have done and a lot less of what idiots like not so sharp at aggy are doing

the California plan worked in the early years, but it can use some adjustment now......the way Texas has done things has not worked well for the most part, but there are ways to correct that without going back in time to a California Plan type action

and really both Texas and California have a problem with waste....California simply funds their higher ed at a higher level overall than Texas and Texas could improve greatly simply by providing some better funding.....but the answer is not to just fund everyone at a higher level and have no controls over what those schools do with the money and where they try and meet their expansionist goals with north Texas state Little Elm and north Texas state Blue Ridge and north Texas state Prosper and north Texas state Pantego or aggy Bryan and aggy Blinn and aggy Dime Box and aggy Old Dime Box and aggy Lufkin

while California simply hands off massive funding to the UC schools that gets eaten up with abandon while they pat themselves on the back for making "good use" of money by holding back the overall potential of Cal State schools

just because a university does not have the hardest admissions standards as a university overall (many Cal state schools are actually hard to get into) that does not mean that they cannot have select programs with higher admissions standards to those programs or those programs having the reputation, strength, and faculty count to offer a high quality PhD program even while the university itself has a broader mission

using UTSA as an example when they were the only public school in San Antonio they were basically open enrollment for the most part....once aggy SA was built that made it possible for UTSA to raise admissions and they did so in one huge chunk that cost them in enrollment, but they pushed through that and now they are getting some enrollment gains based on a better overall reputation

UTA and Texas State can learn from that and they need to start bumping up their admissions standards slightly (not in one chunk like UTSA) and over time they will benefit

north Texas state can stay the catch all university in the metromess and gradually have their PhD programs cut to ones they can do well with and funding moved to undergrad areas or masters