Sunday, September 22, 1996

Report: $750 Million Needed for Education to Keep Texas Competitive

By Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) - Texas needs more college graduates to remain economically competitive, and it's going to need more than $750 million in the next two years to do it.

That's the word in a draft report by higher education leaders from across the state, The Dallas Morning News reported in a copyright story in Saturday editions.

The recently formed Higher Education Coalition plans to ask the Legislature for the money in January.

The coalition includes members from the University of Texas System, the Texas A&M System, the Texas State University System, the University of Houston System, Texas Tech University, the University of North Texas and the Dallas County Community College District.

The proposal, called The Competitive Edge, is the first time all of the state higher education public institutions have approached the Legislature collectively asking it to fund a wide range of programs aimed at retaining and graduating students, said Bill Hobby, chancellor of the University of Houston System and a former Texas lieutenant governor.

Texas, which graduated about 66,000 students with bachelor's degrees in 1993, the last year for which figures are available, will need to graduate more than 81,000 in 2003 and each year that follows to remain economically competitive, the report says.

The tax base could crumble without an educated workforce, members of the coalition say.

The largest chunk of proposed money - $530.9 million - would go to the development of retention programs and the improvement of graduation rates. About $200 million of that would be targeted at community colleges.

The proposal also calls for spending $50 million for financial aid, mostly grants, scholarships and work study programs, and asks lawmakers to spend $100 million on research and development that would meet the needs of industries in Texas.

A lot of the proposal is based on recent demographic studies that show historically disadvantaged groups have the fastest growing populations. Within 12 years, Texas minorities could collectively make up a majority in the state, a Texas A&M study has shown.

Stanton Calvert, chief of legislative affairs for the Texas A&M University System, says a majority of potential college students will be coming from economically-disadvantaged backgrounds, creating the need for more childhood enrichment courses, more remedial reading courses, more bilingual training and more money to pay for college.

"This whole program is predicated on the fact that the state of Texas cannot afford to continue with business as usual," Calvert said.

Senate Finance Chairman Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, said he hasn't seen the proposal but has talked to some chancellors and supports efforts to build bridges between universities and public schools to make education in Texas a more seamless process.

The coalition's first priority, members say, is to convince the Legislature that not spending money now on education could lead to more money spent in the future on entitlement programs and prisons.