<p>If you want to do something now’s the time:
Dear Friends of Higher Education:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh, and Abbie Doobie, that’s fine to respond to one ingorant poster with snark, but to then tarnish the entire state with ignorant blather is only showing your ignorance.</p>
<p>And, dispensing tax and finance advice from a state whose budget is bankrupt even though there are vast resources available to them is just really rich.;)</p>
<p>Now, it wasn’t as if I am a ■■■■■ who decided to show up and tarnish Texas, but mirrored his comment for people to see. Sorry, but this is now I am used to deal with people here as well.</p>
<p>Well, I’m not the “Governator” or a politician there, and I’m here merely to throw a few suggestions (I was actually here to see what’s with all the commotion over this law) and ran into that. We are broke because of our faulty tax system and having some of the highest foreclosure in the country. </p>
<p>[Chaos</a> in California | The ungovernable state | The Economist](<a href=“The ungovernable state”>The ungovernable state)</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with the rich paying more, just the fact that it is mostly from capital taxs and such, and we’re in a huge crisis :/</p>
<p>JuanEatsPandas, honestly, anything that California thinks is good our state legislature is going to lean away from. The two state governments are the exact opposite of one another: California spends so much money that it’s broke, whereas Texas spends no money at all.</p>
<p>I do not personally believe that Californians are pretty-boy sissies, and you have to remember that only 55% of Texas voters voted for McCain-Palin. All of Texas’ 5 largest cities (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso) voted Democrat. UT is a really liberal campus. It definitely isn’t a slight on California, but if you understand the culture of Texas you would realize that resembling California is the LAST thing many Texans want.</p>
<p>the top 10% rule in texas is nothing like whatever the people on this board think the 4% rule in california is. the university of california has 10 campuses with a combined enrollment that trumps UT and aTm combined. there is no guaranteed admission to any of these campuses. they are all free to accept and reject who they please, but the UC system attempts to place all decent/good high school students at ANY one of the campuses.</p>
<p>compare UT to berkeley. berkeley is extremely prestigious and turns away most of its applicants, taking only the best. UT is forced to take -all- top 10% students who wish to go to UT, even if they coasted at an easy high school. </p>
<p>at the very bottom of the UC chain are merced and riverside, and they accept students with GPA’s much worse than top 4% of their class. the point is that, in essence, being top 4% doesn’t provide anyone, except possibly in the case of someone with abysmal essays, test scores, and extracurriculars, any benefit AT ALL.</p>
<p>comparing texas to california isn’t valid. there are simply enough campuses in california to support the best of the best, and everyone else understands that if they don’t work hard, they are going to end up in a cal state (not UC) or community college.</p>
<p>I totally agree with lbs 321. We are from California and the colleges here are so impacted that many, many good high school students, but not the top of the class, have no chance of getting into the UC system. And as he said, top 4% only guarantees you’ll get into a UC, not the UC of your choice. Even certain Cal States, such as Cal State Long Beach, are turning away a large percentage of their applicants. It used to be if you just got your High School diploma you were an automatic into any Cal State you wanted. A significant number of California residents attend out-of-state colleges for this reason.</p>
<p>Isn’t the real problem insuffient seats at top schools for top students.</p>
<p>Texas either need to:
a) improve the second tier state schools so that top students want to go there
b) increase the size of UT (not recommended), or
c) hand vouchers to all top students so that state vs private is not an issue.</p>
<p>I’d say that choice A would be the most viable option for the texas legislature right now.</p>
<p>Financially, option A is not really viable, but it’s the best long-term option for Texas. The legislature doesn’t have the money to pump into any other schools to make them the quality of Texas or even of TAMU at this point, at least not without significantly hurting UT and TAMU. It will be a great solution for the future, but the last thing the legislature needs to do is pass an unfunded mandate for the state to establish more top tier universities when it can barely afford the two it has now.</p>
<p>UT does need to increase in size back to around 52,000. It’s riddiculous that they’ve decreased the size of the university while the population of the state has been growing.</p>
<p>They won’t do vouchers for private universities and that’s never even been discussed. Vouchers are largely targeted at private elementary schools, and to a lesser extent private high schools.</p>
<p>Prestige is determined on the exclusivity of the school, ie how many it rejects. If the population of the state goes up, and the size of the school class goes down, you have a smaller acceptance rate and thus prestige goes up. (Sad but true) the only true way that schools would become more prestigious were if they were harder to get into.</p>