The latest higher education news from The Texas Tribune.
Democrat Bill White said he won't rely on "Soviet-style budgeting" and "hot air politics" if he's elected governor, and said the state should make education its first priority and would be better off with a governor who's got business experience when it comes to economic development. Full Story
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UT-San Antonio isn't the only Texas university looking to make a jump to FBS football competition. Full Story
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The University of Texas at San Antonio hopes the fastest route to tier-one status is straight down the middle of the football field. Full Story
The cost of higher education at UT schools will rise between 9 and 12 percent over the biennium, one in which officials fear steep cuts in the state portion of higher education financing. Full Story
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About three-fourths of the Higher Education Coordinating Board's budget is student financial aid, a large portion of which the board proposes to cut in a mandated 5-percent reduction plan for all state agencies. Full Story
Texas, that famous bastion of conservatism, has become a leading exporter of agricultural products to communist Cuba — second only to Louisiana among the 50 states. Full Story
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Since 1999, the number of "dual-credit" students — those who take college courses while still in high school — across Texas has ballooned from fewer than 12,000 to more than 91,000. It's a trend that's likely to continue as state and local policymakers search for ways to better align curricula and to push more kids to continue their education. “Schools have started to look at it as great for kids who might not have thought they were college material,” says an official at the Higher Education Coordinating Board. “It’s both a gifted-and-talented program and a college-accessibility program.” Full Story
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Kenneth Starr will be introduced tomorrow as the 14th president of Baylor University in Waco, confirming the rumors that began circulating widely over the weekend. Full Story
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Find the salaries of more than 340,000 public employees with our enhanced data application, including those working at the largest state agencies as well as individual public schools, cities and mass-transit operators. And universities: Did you know, for instance, that of the 10 highest-paid professors at the state's two largest universities, nine are Aggies? Full Story
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Waco's vibrating with a rumor that the Texas-born lawyer nationally known as the independent counsel who ran Bill Clinton to ground will be named president of Baylor University this week. Full Story
The recession has caused a spike in enrollment at two-year schools like Austin Community College, which now educates more than 40,000 students — within striking distance of the great behemoth, the University of Texas at Austin. Full Story
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Thevenot on the abysmally low community college graduation rate and higher ed's coming budgetary winter. Ramshaw on Terri Hodge's guilty plea and hasty exit. Grissom on the Department of Public Safety's use of dreaded federal stimulus funds to plug a hole in the state's border security budget. Hu on the first of the intraparty face-offs in our Primary Color series. Ramsey and Stiles on the congressional candidates with the most money on hand. Ramsey on whether Farouk Shami's accent and name are an obstacle to his election. Aguilar on the fever-tick epidemic overwhelming South Texas. Rapoport on TxDOT's hard road and the State Board of Education's lack of finance expertise. Philpott on how Barack Obama's budget will impact Texas. M. Smith on whether lawyers giving to judges is a good thing. Hamilton on the latest transportation innovations on the drawing board. The best of our best from February 1 to 5, 2010. Full Story
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A clash over a beloved campus music club at UT-Austin portends the gnashing of teeth at schools statewide as a budgetary winter threatens to envelop higher education. Full Story
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Community colleges pitch themselves as the gateway to prosperity for lower-income students who've been historically shut out of higher education. Trouble is, despite increasing enrollment numbers, few of them graduate. Full Story
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The worst outbreak of fever-tick infestations in South Texas in four decades has ranchers and animal-health officials scrambling to prevent not just a loss of billions to the state cattle's industry but an outright ban on our cattle. Full Story
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Few members of the State Board of Education have finance expertise. Should we be concerned that they manage the investments of the $23 billion Permanent School Fund? Full Story
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If doctors in Texas are going to start using electronic medical records, somebody has to teach them how to do it. The state's universities are gearing up to teach the teachers. Full Story
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Three challenges stand between Texas and the era of electronic medical records: convincing doctors to use them, figuing out how to safely share and protect them and finding a way to pay for them. Full Story
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Hu explores on the schism between Bushworld and Perrywold and the increasingly curious question of what Debra Medina wants; Stiles goes all Shark Week on gubernatorial campaign finance, with searchable databases, bubble maps and word clouds; M. Smith on what happens if there's a GOP runoff; Rapoport on the sniping between Perry and KBH on transparency; Hamilton on KBH's abortion issue odyssey; Ramshaw exposes the disgracefully low percentage of state school employees who abuse or kill profoundly disabled Texans and are then prosecuted for their acts; Thevenot on higher ed's tuition time bomb; Aguilar on the Latino pay gap; Ramsey on Farouk Shami's "gift" to Hank Gilbert; Ramsey and Philpott on the the Supreme's Court's corporate campaign cash fallout; and E. Smith's interviews with House Speaker Joe Straus with retiring Republican state representative — and future Texas State chancellor? — Brian McCall. The best of our best from January 18 to 22, 2010. Full Story
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Your afternoon reading: Full Story