Reader Responses

With Proposition 4 on the November ballot, Texans will be asked to transfer money from a state education fund to a new National Research University Fund, which will disperse this money to just seven schools: Texas Tech, University of Houston, University of North Texas, UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas, UT-El Paso, and UT-San Antonio.

This new fund is estimated to grow to $2 billion. Why should just seven schools have an exclusive kitty of $2 billion? This exclusivity is an unfair, indeed gross discrimination against the balance of colleges and universities in Texas.

At many research universities in Texas, many professors teach only two classes a week, making an annual salary of $90,000. These professors will argue they're freed to do research and publication. Yet former Harvard president Derek Bok reveals in his appropriately entitled book "Our Underachieving Colleges" that "fewer than half of all professors publish as many as one article per year."

Bok also reveals universities act like "compulsive gamblers and exiled royalty; there is never enough money to satisfy their desires."

Proponents of Prop. 4 argue expansion of research universities is necessary to reduce brain drain to schools in other states. But research universities cannot lay claim to cornering the brain market in Texas. Besides, nothing keeps a Texan who is educated in another state from returning home.

The average SAT score at the seven universities in question is a combined 1080 -- mediocre scores at best. Why do they deserve discriminatory funding?

Prop. 4 will encourage further reliance on taxpayers rather than on private sector funding. And as professors vacate the classroom to seek government research grants, their vacuum will be filled by very young and inexperienced teaching assistants.

Ronald Trowbridge
Texans for Fiscal Responsibility