Legal Commentary

The First and Last 100 Days?

By Tom Kirkendall

Over at the University of Houston, the university is celebrating the arrival of its impressive new Chancellor and President, Renu Khator. As a part of that celebration, the university has posted this interesting website entitled Building Our Future: The First 100 Days that solicits ideas from the university and Houston communities on the direction of the city's primary public university. Check it out and participate in an exciting time for UH.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the optimism scale, the desperate state of Texas Southern University continues. Ubu Roi over at blogHouston.net provides this good overview of the daunting challenges facing new TSU President, John Rudley (previous posts on TSU are here). As Roi points out, one of TSU's better schools -- its law school -- is at risk of losing its accreditation, and that news comes on the heels of a regional accrediting body recently placing the entire university on probation. Meanwhile, President Rudley is wrestling with the legislative requirements for obtaining $40 million in emergency funding that the institution desperately needs just to keep the lights on.

As noted earlier here, here, and here, TSU is a once-essential institution that is at serious risk of becoming irrelevant. During the era of segregated education in Texas, TSU was arguably Texas' best university for minority students. The institution educated many of Texas' finest minority leaders, including Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland. However, over the past 20 years, TSU has been bypassed by both the University of Houston-Downtown Campus and Houston Community College as the preferred open admissions alternatives for the Houston area's college students.

At this point, a merger of TSU with one of the other university systems probably makes the most sense, but even that alternative is not easy. Merging UH-Downtown and TSU would serve the purpose of largely consolidating Houston's open admissions institutions, but the UH system does not have sufficient endowed capital to absorb TSU, a shameful legacy of Texas' underfunding of UH's endowment in comparison to the other two major public university systems in Texas, the University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems. Texas A&M already has an open admissions university in its system at Prairie View A&M and UT probably has little interest in increasing its investment in the Houston area given the UT Health Science Center's huge presence in the Texas Medical Center. So, TSU is not a particularly good fit for those far wealthier systems, either.

Thus, at least for the time being, TSU will continue to muddle along. But don't be fooled. TSU is on life support and the emergency measures for keeping it alive are are inadequate to provide the long-term vision that the university needs. It's well past time for state and community leaders to put their parochial interests aside and come up with a long-term plan for TSU that provides the institution with a specific purpose within the framework of college alternatives for Houston area residents. Sadly, dangling $40 million in front of TSU to keep the lights on is not going to accomplish much of anything in defining TSU's purpose.

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on February 06, 2008 (boomark / email).