(This post is a revision that includes corrections from a previous draft.)

Regarding the situation with Texas A&M and the future of the Big Twelve Conference, I have spoken with persons familiar with the situation at Baylor, who prefer to remain anonymous. This is what I have learned.

1. The university started four weeks ago to determine its legal remedies if A&M decided to leave the Big Twelve for the SEC. Astonishingly, the Big XII had waived all of its rights in a letter to the SEC, although Baylor’s position, which seems correct to me, is that the Big Twelve cannot bind its member institutions.

2. If it is necessary to resort to litigation, one theory would be tortious interference with contract.

3.  The Baylor board has taken the position, “We’re not going to waive our remedies.”

4. Baylor is talking to all member institutions of the Big Twelve. UT and Oklahoma say they want to continue in the conference. At least two other conference schools have said they will not waive their rights.

5. Not surprisingly, politicians have gotten involved, including (reportedly) a number of legislators and a few statewide officials, including David Dewhurst,  who would like to leverage the controversy to get the University of Houston in the Big Twelve. (more…)

Tagged: a&m, Baylor, Big 12, lawsuits, SEC, UT

I spoke with a friend yesterday who is knowledgeable about the situation at Texas A&M, and here is what he had to say.

1. Perry was not involved in the A&M regents’ decision to leave the Big Twelve for the SEC. He was described to me as “not supportive” but neither did he try to stop it.

2. The impetus for A&M to take action was UT’s decision to establish the Longhorn network in partnership with ESPN. “The regents went nuts,” my source told me. They were looking for some way to make a statement. “Look at what they have done for their brand,” my source told me.

3. A&M decided to “look at everything.” They brought in consultants. The move to the SEC was the answer. It would bring national exposure for the next ten to fifteen years. A&M would be on national television almost every week.

4. Kyle Field will be torn down and rebuilt as a modern stadium, with a seating capacity of 90,000-plus. The only part of the current stadium that will be retained is the north end zone.

5. A&M is “very focused on playing Texas.” It is not clear whether Texas feels the same way.

6. UT will go independent. They have little choice in the matter. The Big Twelve does not have attractive options for expansion. No other conference will take UT because its network and its partnership with ESPN gives UT a huge advantage in the size of its athletic budget.

Unless something goes awry, it is just a matter of time until A&M’s move to the SEC becomes official. As an SEC member, A&M will benefit from one of the most lucrative TV contracts in the country. Its days of meagre athletic budgets are over.

Tagged: a&m, Big 12, Longhorn Network, SEC, UT

Michael Quinn Sullivan has a bone to pick with me. I am the subject of a blog post by Sullivan published on the Empower Texans web site yesterday under the headline, “Texas Monthly: Disclosure-Free Zone.” Sullivan objects to the fact that in an April column about higher ed reforms, I did not disclose that I have taught at UT from time to time. Here are some pertinent paragraphs:

Paul Burka, the “senior executive editor” at Texas Monthly has taken to defending the higher education status quo – skyrocketing tuition and a lack of transparency. He follows the administrative bureaucracy party line by deriding reformers, disparaging them and calling motivations into question.

Couldn’t be because he has a financial interest in the status quo, could it? Mr. Burka received $10,159 in compensation ($9,295 in salary) for teaching 13 students. (NOTE: the numbers are from UT’s own data, which the institution says may or may not be valid or accurate.)

He hasn’t disclosed in any recent writings supporting the higher-ed establishment that he is a “visiting lecturer” for the University of Texas, teaching a three credit-hour class – ironically titled “Right And Wrong In Politics.”

Mr. Sullivan has a point, though he overplays it to a ridiculous extreme, as is his custom. I should have included a parenthetical statement in that April column saying that I had taught at UT on various occasions in the past (though I was not teaching there or receiving compensation at the time that I wrote the column). But it is far-fetched to suggest that I have any permanent attachment to UT, or a financial motivation to defend the university. I am not an academic, I am a journalist. Over the past twenty years or so, I have been fortunate enough to teach courses at UT (and also at St. Edwards). During that time, I have written several editorial columns about the university. One was supportive of tuition deregulation; one was critical of a watered-down degree program I referred to as “B.A. Lite” (this one, alas, is not yet available online). I have not tried to hide the fact that I teach at UT; in 2001, for example, I wrote about volunteering to evaluate applications for admission to the Plan II honors program, as I was eligible to do as an instructor. I have also written a skeptical column about the athletic department’s efforts to find a home for the Longhorns after the breakup of the Big XII conference. In short, I choose subjects that Texas Monthly believes are important, and I try to call ‘em as I see ‘em. I leave it to readers to judge for themselves whether they believe that my reporting on UT is influenced by what Mr. Sullivan refers to as my “financial interest in the status quo,” or whether it reflects my strongly held personal belief in the importance of allowing state universities to pursue excellence free of political interference. (more…)

Tagged: disclosure, Empower Texans, higher ed, michael quinn sullivan, paul burka, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, texas monthly, transparency, UT

The hot topic on sports talk shows today was that the PAC-10 was set to issue invitations to six Big 12 schools: UT, A&M, OU, Okie State, Texas Tech, and Colorado. The PAC 10 commissioner issued an explicit denial late this afternoon.

An A&M source told me after I posted an earlier article on this subject that A&M and UT might not be joined at the hip after all. Some published comments by A&M athletic director Bill Byrne appeared to indicate that A&M might look favorably on joining the Southeast Conference. Byrne indicated concern about long road trips earlier this year after the A&M men’s and women’s basketball teams traveled to Washington and returned shortly before Monday morning classes began.

The catalyst for the breakup of the Big Twelve was the rumor earlier this year that Missouri might leave the Big Twelve for the Big Ten, which has publicly indicated its interest in expanding. (Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Rutgers are said to be the Big Ten’s other targets.) Missouri’s academic leadership indicated earlier that Big Ten institutions were a better fit for their university than the Big Twelve, which lacks high-powered academic universities other than UT and A&M. The loss of the St. Louis and Kansas City TV markets would be a major blow to the revenue potential of the Big Twelve. The loss of any large market would destroy the conference.

I’m somewhat surprised that Texas Tech was included in the reputed “invitation” to join the PAC Ten. Maybe Kent Hance had the clout to force Tech’s inclusion after all. It doesn’t matter: Tech will be a doormat in the PAC Ten. It had some cachet as long as Mike Leach was there, but that’s over. It couldn’t fill its stadium for a game against Oklahoma this year when Tech was still playing well. I don’t think Okie State is a big catch for the Pac Ten either. It’s just another Oregon State. Kansas would be a more logical choice than Texas Tech. It brings the Kansas City TV market, and the basketball program has national stature.

What happened today was just a lot of rumors, but there are some things that can be said with a fair degree of confidence. (1) Missouri is not going to stay in the Big Twelve. That alone is a death knell for the conference as it exists today. (2) Nebraska is not going to stay either. It is a target for the Big Ten, and it is a good fit. (3) The PAC 10 covets Colorado, and that puts the Denver market at risk for the Big Twelve. The Big Twelve does not have a secure future. UT is driving the train, and it wants to be in a conference with great national universities (Cal Berkeley, Stanford, Southern Cal, UCLA). Sooner or later–probably sooner–realignment is going to happen.
The Big Ten has said that its window for expansion was 12 to 18 months. The fact that the Big Twelve had meetings this week indicates that things are going to move a lot quicker than that. Texas, A&M, the two Oklahoma schools, Colorado, and Texas Tech would join Arizona and Arizona State in the eastern division of the PAC Ten and USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, and Washington State would form the western division.

Tagged: Texas A&M, UT

As the Texas Senate began its debate this afternoon on Florence Shapiro’s bill to limit the Top Ten percent rule for university admissions, Royce West threw out some interesting numbers that call into question UT’s argument that it faces a “crisis” regarding its freshman class. UT has argued that its hands are increasingly tied by the rule, which now automatically fills more than 80 percent of each incoming class. According to West, UT accepted 1,000 less students in its 2008 freshman class than in 2007 and 1,200 fewer than it did in 2002.  If the admission rate had remained the same, the freshman class would be composed of less than 69 percent of Top-Ten-percenters.

Steve Ogden has picked up the theme:  Who decided to limit UT’s freshman class?  Not the Legislature. Ogden is arguing that the Legislature has deregulated UT so much  – in tuition rates, in “how they manage or mismanage” endowment funds — that it basically is operating much like a private institution. If there are so many qualified students, perhaps UT should consider admitting them, Ogden says.

Shapiro says the decision to limit the size of UT was made by an advisory committee, and notes there are few renowned universities over UT’s size. But she’s also announced she will take amendments to sunset her bill so that UT will be answerable to the Legislature in its admissions.

Ogden points out another benefit of the Top Ten percent law: Legislators used to spend large amounts of time using their influence to gain admission for key constituents. “It was a fairly significant investment of time and effort. It’s a lot less now,” he said.

Tagged: Florence Shapiro, royce west, Steve Ogden, top ten percent, UT

Here’s the problem for Tom Craddick. The House passed tuition deregulation in 2003 for one reason and one reason only: The speaker twisted Republicans’ arms to get the votes. Almost six years later, tuition and fees at Texas’s public university have risen by an average of 50%, according to Robert Garrett’s story in the Morning News today. The story focuses on a male student from Arlington and his fiance, a graduate student, who anticipate that they will enter the work force with a combined debt of $80,000.

Republican consultant Todd Smith told Garrett that among rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, “[T]here’s growing consternation over ‘runaway tuition.’” Smith had eight clients in this election cycle and all had to deal with the issue. “It’s now being felt by the Republican base and is touching middle-class families the hardest,” Smith told the Morning News. “It’s going to be hard to ignore their unhappiness.”

Not for Craddick. Garrett writes:

House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, backed the move to get the Legislature out of the tuition-setting business, and he sees no need to reverse that, said spokeswoman Alexis DeLee. Although Mr. Craddick “recognizes that tuition rates have increased substantially,” she said, he believes university officials “should take the lead in making schools’ financial decisions because they know what their individual institutions’ needs are.”

This is a familiar bind for Republican House members during the Craddick regime. Craddick asks them to vote against the interests of their constituents to support a policy he wants—in this case, Republican families in Harris and Dallas counties, a core constituency for affordable college education—and the issue comes back to haunt them at election time. The Democrats are not going to let the Republicans get out of this session without forcing a vote on this issue. Will Craddick allow members to rein in future tuition increases? Or will he continue to let tuition rise and get more Republican members defeated at the polls?

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Full disclosure: I have written in favor of tuition deregulation in the pages of Texas Monthly. I think higher education is critical to the future of the state, and it has been apparent for some time that the public education and health care are higher priorities for the Legislature. If lawmakers are not going to fund higher ed, and if you believe that Texas needs universities of the top rank, then tuition dereg is the only alternative.

I have had second thoughts about this for a long time. Tuition increases are squeezing the middle class out of UT and Texas A&M, as Patricia Kilday Hart made clear in a column she wrote for Texas Monthly. UT hiked tuition by a third the first chance that they got, knowing that once tuition rates began to soar, the Legislature could never afford, and would never attempt, to provide the revenue the universities need. What tuition dereg has done is exactly what the Legislature tried to do with highways: fund the service with debt. Only, in tuition, the debt is incurred by the student and his family. Tuition, like tolls, has become a user fee. I’m all for having first class universities, but not at the cost of a generation of debtors. More of the money from rising tuition should go for funding scholarships, and less to pay for administrators’ salaries.

Tagged: higher education, paul burka, Texas A&M, todd smith, tom craddick, tuition deregulation, UT