Spring Break
Shared governance will prevail
Texas A&M must make a world-class education affordable.
By: Morris Foster
Issue date: 6/18/09 Section: Opinion
In the summer of 1963, my father, who had nothing more than a first-grade education, ordered me to drive to College Station and enroll in Texas A&M College.
Our family was the definition of dirt poor. The idea of a kid like me going to college seemed unfathomable. Nonetheless, Texas A&M let me in, and my life changed dramatically because of it.
I am worried that a lot of young men and women in Texas won't be afforded the same privilege of attending what is today a world-class institution.
I'm not necessarily talking about the poorest of the poor, for whom financial aid is available, but an entire class of families that make too much to qualify for grants and loans, but not enough to afford the escalating cost of attending Texas A&M University.
As the chairman of The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, I am determined to trim costs in order to keep our flagship university affordable. Since 2000, tuition and fees at Texas A&M have risen from a little more than $1,500 per semester for 15 hours to more than $3,900 for the same course load. Even if you factor in inflation, the cost has more than doubled for our families.
There is a price for excellence, but there must also be a greater sensitivity to the tough economic times families are enduring today. Texas A&M has added more than 300 faculty members since 2004 under the faculty reinvestment program - increasing faculty by about 30 percent compared to single-digit enrollment growth - yet the professor-to-student ratio has hardly changed.
Operational costs have gone up $238 million in just three years. Instructional costs have increased $132 million over the same period of time. We cannot sustain this trend if we want to continue to attract the best and brightest to Texas A&M.
The Board of Regents has therefore empowered the chancellor to come up with a plan for a shared services initiative to eliminate redundancies in services provided by both the A&M System and the flagship campus a mere 10 minutes away.
Our family was the definition of dirt poor. The idea of a kid like me going to college seemed unfathomable. Nonetheless, Texas A&M let me in, and my life changed dramatically because of it.
I am worried that a lot of young men and women in Texas won't be afforded the same privilege of attending what is today a world-class institution.
I'm not necessarily talking about the poorest of the poor, for whom financial aid is available, but an entire class of families that make too much to qualify for grants and loans, but not enough to afford the escalating cost of attending Texas A&M University.
As the chairman of The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, I am determined to trim costs in order to keep our flagship university affordable. Since 2000, tuition and fees at Texas A&M have risen from a little more than $1,500 per semester for 15 hours to more than $3,900 for the same course load. Even if you factor in inflation, the cost has more than doubled for our families.
There is a price for excellence, but there must also be a greater sensitivity to the tough economic times families are enduring today. Texas A&M has added more than 300 faculty members since 2004 under the faculty reinvestment program - increasing faculty by about 30 percent compared to single-digit enrollment growth - yet the professor-to-student ratio has hardly changed.
Operational costs have gone up $238 million in just three years. Instructional costs have increased $132 million over the same period of time. We cannot sustain this trend if we want to continue to attract the best and brightest to Texas A&M.
The Board of Regents has therefore empowered the chancellor to come up with a plan for a shared services initiative to eliminate redundancies in services provided by both the A&M System and the flagship campus a mere 10 minutes away.
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