UTEP deserves better

August 1, 2017

The Brookings Institution report that we wrote about the other day in UTEP earns public support made some blunt statements:

State governments should take a hard look at the universities in their jurisdictions that neither seriously promote opportunity, nor produce much serious research.

Misallocated investment doesn’t just come at a large opportunity cost, however. Public subsidies for the relatively affluent directly reify existing inequalities by reinforcing the opportunity “choke-point” of higher education, driving up demand (and costs).

They go further and write:

A university education is a wonderful thing. But there are many wonderful things in life, and the government doesn’t need to pay for all of them. That’s especially true for students from the upper middle class, who dominate the current system and enter college with substantial advantages in life already. We are a very long way from the ideal of higher education as the “great equalizer,” with colleges acting as engines of mobility, leveling the playing field for each generation. Rather, public higher education too often provides yet another chance for the upper middle class to engage in opportunity hoarding at the expense of the taxpayer—and even worse, at the expense of students from low-income families.

How about it state legislators?

UTEP does enormous public good in helping lower income students climb the income ladder.

Shouldn’t the state allocate more money to the school that does the best job enhancing social mobility?

We deserve better

Brutus

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UTEP earns public support

July 31, 2017

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

 

1 Comment | State Government | Permalink
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Interstate 10 video

July 9, 2017

Many of you have been asking what driving on I-10 will be like when the construction is finished.

Take a look at the flyover video here.

You may have to the start the video over a few times to orient yourself.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Independence day 2017

July 4, 2017

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.  Benjamin Franklin

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.   John Stuart Mill

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
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School districts–charter options (1)

June 22, 2017

We learned the other day (thanks to the Times) that some at EPISD may be considering operating or facilitating charter schools.  We hope that the people at the Times realize that they have struck upon an opportunity to educate the public while selling more newspapers by covering this complex topic in depth with a number of articles.

Without regard to what the Times does, we intend to discuss the subject in several blog posts.  We have learned that making our articles short and limiting them to one point works better with many of our readers.

As it turns out, Texas law allows school districts to operate in the charter format one of three ways:

  • They can adopt a home-rule school district that applies to the entire district
  • An individual campus can operate under its own charter
  • The district can hire a private firm to run programs on school district property

The rules are complicated and vague and will be subject to much argument and probably lawsuits.

We will write about how these options can be adopted in future posts.

Stay tuned

We deserve better

8 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
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