quote:
I wonder how many now discredited da's from the 50's/60's still alive today are willing to admit they opposed opening the university to non-regs, women...worried it would irrevocably change the school for the worse?
How many of you are willing to second guess Rudder for ramping up enrollment back in the day?
Some people just have a blind spot re: the future
No one. But this isn't about sexism, racism, general distaste of equality, or realizing an all-male military college is, in its very nature, a completely different kind of animal than non-military schools and making the choice, for better or worse, of being more like Virginia and less like VMI.
This is about one or more of the following, depending on your particular viewpoint:
1)
A fear that we can't grow this fast, this quick, in this current environment without hurting the quality of the education. Many budgets are getting cut, they're not growing. At the least, many budgets are not growing at a rate that there is- and what I believe as legitimate-fear that we will have to start spending less money per student, among many other fears. That's not desirable, at all. That means larger classes, that means less hands on work in lab settings, that means all sorts of things.
The solution would be to raise tuition. Except, ideally, you raise tuition because the quality of education is improving. We'd be raising tuition to
sustain a good, not great, education. That model doesn't fit any side of this argument.
2)
A fear our primary education system cannot, under current circumstances, produce quality high school graduates at a rate fast enough to fill our spots and, thus, lowering the quality of student on our flagship campus. This is secondary, but Texas' primary schools are hardly running along at full steam right now. They're struggling to keep up, often for the same budgetary reasons secondary education is struggling to keep up.
In 10 years, will we have 30,000 more students capable of scoring the same SAT that our student body is scoring right now?
If you don't think so, that means we're going to be filling our in-state quota with less-qualified students.
Last year, our state had one of the worst average SAT scores in the country.
3)
Some actually want A&M to increase the quality of its academics, not just sustain its quality of academics. This plays off of my second point.
I believe in accessible education for all students, but I do not think growing flagship campuses is the organ for that. There are 10 other Texas A&M campuses for that. In my mind, the flagship campus should foster a high quality, difficult, and elite educational experience.
We should have different products, for different people with different skills and/or seeking different experiences.
Let's grow Kingsville, let's grow Commerce, let's grow San Antonio, let's grow Central Texas- they are close to growing populations with lots of kids that are looking for a different kind of experience than what more, for sincere want of a different term, "elite" universities provide.
Those schools are close to populations, have plenty of room to stretch their legs, and can help provide a variety of educational products without
running the risk of hurting the flagship campus and maybe even helping
improve the flagship campus.
