This month the Brookings Institution published a report that compared America’s public universities and ranked them after considering access to the universities considering social mobility (enrollment by students from lower income families) and research dollars administered by the university.
We are proud to write that the report placed our own University of Texas at El Paso at the top of their list, number one.
The authors wrote that the combination of mobility and research funding is commonly used to justify public (taxpayer) investment in universities.
It seems that the people at UTEP have quietly made the school the best achiever in terms of using public money to help lower income students. The report went so far as to say that UTEP contributes the most to mobility.
The result for our students is that they have more access to working with an actual research project and thus learning practical things than at any other university in the country.
While attracting lower income students may not be unnatural here, what is impressive are the results produced by the research people at UTEP in bringing projects to the students.
Take the time to congratulate someone from UTEP.
This is better.
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Interesting, because last year Washington Monthly’s report dropped them from No.1 in the social mobility category to No. 73 based on their graduation rate of 39% in six years. I know that UTEP says that graduation rates don’t accurately measure their student population, but I would assume all universities have similar transfer student measurement issues. UTEP is a good school, but its students are best served by a strong focus on helping them complete a degree, not just exposure to research projects. While UTEP’s tuition is low compared to other universities, it is still a huge cost for low income families–those kids aren’t going to college to find themselves–they go to college to better qualify for a good job later in life. With college debt and no degree, they are actually further behind than if they hadn’t gone to college.
LikeLike