Hadn't even thought of this GREAT POINT.

IS there a way to make our voices heard?

Also I saw the law school ranked third in texas for passing the bar. That's great and will only help.

A&M and tu are included in the 10% rule because tu was the university specifically found guilty of discrimination in the Hopwood decision. Being a flagship university does not create an exception to the US Constitution.

However, the number of high schools and high school students graduating in Texas has exploded since the Hopwood decision and continues to do so. Therefore, it might be reasonable to lower the percentage to 5% if not 2.5%. Population growth is the underlying issue. Will the top tier universities continue to admit the same % of graduating students as in the past or will they limit their enrollment and thereby admit a deceasing percentage? Tough call.

Visited Duke last weekend with my son. Total enrollment 11,000. 5,000 undergraduate and 6,000 graduate. Admit about 1,700 annually. Top quartile SAT starts at 1550 for two part SAT. That's an 800 plus a 750 or two 775s. Admission percentage around 7% or so as I recall. Tuition $47,500 plus $13,000 for room and board. Pricey as hell, but not hurting for applicants to say the least.

Personally I think that the State of Texas needs two more top tier universities to take the growth/admission pressure off of A&M and tu. Capping enrollment at 50k would naturally increase SAT scores at A&M and TU raising their standing while driving students to the next two top tier universities and increasing their prestige.

I wonder what they will do when the State of Texas population tops 100 million or so? And if you say that will never happen; what breaks the trend line?

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I remember this being the case in high school. I remember one student who said she was surprised when her college counselor told her that the academics at A&M and Texas were on par with one another. The acceptance rate at A&M (along sometimes with the name A&M) gets in the way of A&M taking that next step in being a top ten public university. We are stuck in just settling for the tail end of the top 25, and this plan could certainly take us a step back. Rankings don't indicate the education you'll receive in college, but like you said, they affect the perception and perception is everything.

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Ksig, too many students with not enough support affects ones education. Ask any professor or TA. It's a horrible thing.

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IS there a way to make our voices heard?

Also I saw the law school ranked third in texas for passing the bar. That's great and will only help.

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Bar passage rates don't mean much when it comes to law school prestige. Many low ranked schools tend to focus on bar prep and do well percentage wise on the bar passage rates. Like a high school that teaches solely to the TAKS test.

Measurables of incoming law students is what will increase the prestige of the law school, and just having the A&M brand is already helping with that.

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I wonder what they will do when the State of Texas population tops 100 million or so?

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I suspect UT Pan-Am, UTSA and UTEP will all have record enrollments

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My son was accepted to UC Berkeley but we decided we weren't going to let the whims of an 18 year old coerce us into spending $55K/yr for an undergraduate degree in biology which is essentially preparatory for grad school.

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Interesting. We raised our kids to get accepted to the best school they could, we'd find a way to make it work. There's just lots of different ways to approach these things...Ye

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Yes there are. And your situation may be different.

We told him upfront we weren't paying for UC Berkeley but he applied for bragging rights (he paid the application fee). The ROI for an undergraduate degree in biology isn't much without grad school.

The key is to do very well at a major research university as an undergrad (TAMU or t.u.), kill the GRE like he did the SAT, and then apply to grad school. This worked for his mom who I met at TAMU and she was accepted to a PhD program Stanford--and she was PAID to go.

Just getting accepted to the best school doesn't mean the best choice. The college experience counts for something as well. UC Berekely is still a large state school and I used to work with their grads when I lived in the SF Bay Area. More than a handful actually complained about how miserable their undergraduate years were compared to graduates from other state schools.

Are there schools that are worth the money? Yes. According to Bill Bennett, the former Secy. of Education --and who recently published a book/study on the ROI for colleges/universities--,there are a handful of schools that if you get in--you go. Period. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton qualify because they are truly elite and with small class sizes. If you want to work on Wall Street at Goldman Sach's, then you might really want to get into the Ivy League. You want to work for the State Department, then you go to the feeder schools for that. If my son wanted to major in Finance and got into the Ivy League, we would have paid for that.

We never pressured our son to do any of this, but--again--we have to be smart with our resources. After considering everything we concluded that $220K for a 4-year B.S. in Biology/prep degree at Berkeley wasn't as good an investment as $95K for an undergrad degree at at t.u. (or TAMU if he had chosen to go there). He is after all 18, doesn't want to be pre-med so he is going to do....what? Of course he could do like my friend with a biology degree who is in real estate. Or he could change majors completely.

Keeping up with the Joneses used to be be "see how many Lexi I have in my garage". Now in Katy I actually hear at parties, "Jill didn't get into UT, and didn't want to go to TAMU, so we had no choice but to pay her way to TCU, her second choice. Of course we make too much money, so we have to pay the full $50K+ per year". Her degree choice? Theatre Arts/Dance. She is back living at home and working for her dad--as a receptionist.

I hope you didn't think I was criticizing. Everyone is in different situations. And y'all clearly didn't make flippant decisions.

My Aggie '12 daughter is in law school at Yale. A more expensive undergraduate degree would have not meant much. Her younger sister is at Dartmouth College. That's working out well for her and the experiences she's having will be invaluable to her life. And for her they would have been hard to replicate at A&M. But yes, I drive a fifteen year old vehicle...

I do caution parents on making ROI 100% of the choice (not implying y'all did) . I still feel that education is life expanding well beyond the job it helps you get.

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I still feel that education is life expanding well beyond the job it helps you get.

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The key is to do very well at a major research university as an undergrad (TAMU or t.u.), kill the GRE like he did the SAT, and then apply to grad school. This worked for his mom who I met at TAMU and she was accepted to a PhD program Stanford--and she was PAID to go.

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That's not a bad way to go (that's what I'm doing) but make sure from the outset he has his goals in mind. Tell him to get started in research as soon as possible in a good lab (somewhere where he has some creative control on a project and isn't just cleaning and maintaining equipment), and try and publish at least once before graduating. Also look up requirements for national fellowships (NSF, NDSEG, etc) and have him tailor his activities to those (for example, the NSF stresses broader impacts, so join a service organization or something).
GRE is a breeze and the practice tests are good enough that you basically know what you'll get before you go.

Also a good early program at TAMU for research is USRG; they basically pay 5-6k for you to stay in the summer and work in a research lab. I'd say it's a good springboard to more prestigious research internships and looks great on a resume. Also, it can lead to publications which are huge.

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I wonder what they will do when the State of Texas population tops 100 million or so?

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I suspect UT Pan-Am, UTSA and UTEP will all have record enrollments

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The California model is to have many tier 1 schools that are large but not huge. The thing about scale is that, like everything else in life, there are tradeoffs. Being large provides greater opportunities for diversity in an academic sense. But there are diminishing returns.

I'm actually posting from a conference about higher Ed. There are people doing really creative and interesting things, but scale is a huge challenge, and infrastructure can become limiting in lots of ways. One really simple example: hands on experience in labs should be one of the big reasons to do on campus vs online learning. Way too much of lab instruction most places is much too cookbook. There are some really interesting projects doing inquiry-based projects and even real research for undergrads, but they are hard to implement or even try if every teaching lab is scheduled for every class periods do people have to be hustled out of the room for the next class.

tu is doing something very interesting in STEM with their freshman research initiative. But they committed a huge amount of money and space to it.

http://www.chron.com/local/education/campus-chronicles/article/Head-of-A-M-Health-Science-Center-forced-to-resign-6299356.php

This was the guy responsible for billions in bio defense contracts, yes?

More color on the situation from this The Texas Tribune June 1 article

I'll leave it to interested readers to dig out the various shades of color involved.

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More color on the situation from this The Texas Tribune June 1 article

I'll leave it to interested readers to dig out the various shades of color involved.

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I couldn't make head or tails of the real reasons he was let go.

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I wonder what they will do when the State of Texas population tops 100 million or so? And if you say that will never happen; what breaks the trend line?

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Diminishing supply of water. Increasing traffic on interstates and in cities - inability to build our way out. Gradual lowering of birthrate in Mexico leading to less immigration. Lowering birthrates/Europeanizing of native population. Eventual urban problems bringing down major cities, as happened in Midwest.

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I wonder what they will do when the State of Texas population tops 100 million or so?

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I suspect UT Pan-Am, UTSA and UTEP will all have record enrollments

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The California model is to have many tier 1 schools that are large but not huge. The thing about scale is that, like everything else in life, there are tradeoffs. Being large provides greater opportunities for diversity in an academic sense. But there are diminishing returns.

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The other aspect of the California model is to have a rigid three tier system. Elite students go to elite UC schools. Good students go to good CSU schools. Average students go to community colleges. The big difference with Texas is not letting good students into elite schools. Not sure if that is our culture however to have such a harsh separation and force the good-but-not-elite students out of A&M and UT (and make them both smaller). But that decision back in the 60's is what is credited with producing what many consider the greatest public university system in the world.

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The other aspect of the California model is to have a rigid three tier system. Elite students go to elite UC schools. Good students go to good CSU schools. Average students go to community colleges. The big difference with Texas is not letting good students into elite schools. Not sure if that is our culture however to have such a harsh separation and force the good-but-not-elite students out of A&M and UT (and make them both smaller).

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The "good students" leave the state because there is a big drop from A&M and Texas to the other state schools.

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The other aspect of the California model is to have a rigid three tier system. Elite students go to elite UC schools. Good students go to good CSU schools. Average students go to community colleges. The big difference with Texas is not letting good students into elite schools. Not sure if that is our culture however to have such a harsh separation and force the good-but-not-elite students out of A&M and UT (and make them both smaller).

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The "good students" leave the state because there is a big drop from A&M and Texas to the other state schools.

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All the better reason to improve the other state schools.

The UT-System seems to be trying, at least with the two I'm most familiar with, UT-Dallas and UT-Arlington.

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The other aspect of the California model is to have a rigid three tier system. Elite students go to elite UC schools. Good students go to good CSU schools. Average students go to community colleges. The big difference with Texas is not letting good students into elite schools. Not sure if that is our culture however to have such a harsh separation and force the good-but-not-elite students out of A&M and UT (and make them both smaller).

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The "good students" leave the state because there is a big drop from A&M and Texas to the other state schools.

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All the better reason to improve the other state schools.

The UT-System seems to be trying, at least with the two I'm most familiar with, UT-Dallas and UT-Arlington.

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Exactly. Meanwhile if we commit to having A&M/UT straddle the line between good/elite with diluted admissions and teaching standards, we'll be sending many of the actually elite kids to Berkeley/East Coast.

Can we actually do anything about this other than complain on texags?

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Can we actually do anything about this other than complain on texags?

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1. Get BMA's involved.
2. Get political power involved.
3. Get the media involved - Texas Tribune, Texas Monthly, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle.
4. Tell Aggies you know about it.
5. Write letters.

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I wonder what they will do when the State of Texas population tops 100 million or so?

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I suspect UT Pan-Am, UTSA and UTEP will all have record enrollments

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UT Pan-Am is merging with UT Brownsville and the combined university will now be called UT - Rio Grande Valley.

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Can we actually do anything about this other than complain on texags?

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Stop giving money and tell them why.

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The other aspect of the California model is to have a rigid three tier system. Elite students go to elite UC schools. Good students go to good CSU schools. Average students go to community colleges. The big difference with Texas is not letting good students into elite schools. Not sure if that is our culture however to have such a harsh separation and force the good-but-not-elite students out of A&M and UT (and make them both smaller).

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The "good students" leave the state because there is a big drop from A&M and Texas to the other state schools.

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All the better reason to improve the other state schools.

The UT-System seems to be trying, at least with the two I'm most familiar with, UT-Dallas and UT-Arlington.

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Exactly. Meanwhile if we commit to having A&M/UT straddle the line between good/elite with diluted admissions and teaching standards, we'll be sending many of the actually elite kids to Berkeley/East Coast.

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Rice, Georgia Tech, Duke...

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I wonder what they will do when the State of Texas population tops 100 million or so? And if you say that will never happen; what breaks the trend line?

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Diminishing supply of water. Increasing traffic on interstates and in cities - inability to build our way out. Gradual lowering of birthrate in Mexico leading to less immigration. Lowering birthrates/Europeanizing of native population. Eventual urban problems bringing down major cities, as happened in Midwest.

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Yep...more evidence of perrysharp venality. By now everyone should know how they kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and created the aids virus in cahoots with the Koch bros...

Big belly laugh goes out to the sheetforebrains blaming perrysharp for a degradation of tamu standards that hasn't even happened yet (sounds like the same guys or their offspring who predicted global cooling and mass starvation for the new millennium back in the 70's).

Sid, a substantive comment from you, devoid of invective, would be of value.

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More color on the situation from this The Texas Tribune June 1 article

I'll leave it to interested readers to dig out the various shades of color involved.

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I couldn't make head or tails of the real reasons he was let go.

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I don't think we'll ever really know, but here's my perspective on some additional background.

It was never billions in biodefense contracts. The BARDA contract was for $97M, which is not chump change, but it was never clear to me from the press releases how much was for TAMU and how much was for Glaxo and the other partners... or how many years the 97M was spread over. BARDA and many of the other initiatives Giroir was associated with were about vaccine manufacturing. A problem with that focus area is that it's not a particular strength that was already at A&M and it wasn't associated with much effort as far as I could see on building up that area on the academic side. In fact, one irony is that A&M had one of the real worldwide leaders and innovators in vaccine production in plants in Dr. Charles Arntzen, who was briefly Dean of Ag in the 1990s before he moved to Cornell (Arntzen had been brought in from outside IIRC). There was a rumor that Arntzen fell our of favor as Dean of Ag because he had offended some old Ags by not understanding the importance of the mohair judging team. A second round of plant-biotech production was when Prodigene moved to work with TAMU after being getting started around Iowa State in the early 2000s. Prodigene actually was producing marketable products in corn. Unfortunately for Prodigene, failure to control volunteer corn after harvest led to a USDA fine and massive bad publicity. The building they were in is now where the Ag DNA sequencing facility is housed, I believe. It's down near Pebble Creek off 6.

Giroir was pushing production of vaccines as a biotech goal for TAMU. There are connections between Giroir, companies in the biocorridor, and the NCTM - in particular Caliber Biotherapeutics is based on tobacco and uses the modular GMP tech that was pushed as a rationale for the NCTM when it was created. When Ebola arrived last summer, Giroir was named Texas Ebola Czar by Perry and the local news was saying Caliber could play a role in the response:

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Dr. Brett Giroir CEO of the Texas A&M Health Science Center says they're currently in talks with the federal government for Caliber to mass produce an experimental drug called Zmapp. Giroir says, "Zmapp is a therapy a mixture of proteins called antibodies. These are things that your body normally makes, but these are antibodies that are made in plants and made specifically to attack the Ebola virus."

Caliber, a member of the Texas A&M Health Science Center team, makes drugs from plants and is capable of producing two million of these tobacco plants into thousands of doses a year.

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Zmapp was a product already being made in tobacco by a company in Kentucky. Apparently this did not go anywhere (at least so far).

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Two of the centers, one run by Texas A&M University and the other by the biotech company Emergent Biosolutions, submitted proposals by the Nov. 10 deadline. The third, run by Novartis, which is getting out of the vaccine business, did not.

But those centers had no experience manufacturing using tobacco. So they had to work with the tobacco facilities that the Defense Department had financed.

Dr. Russell, the retired Army biodefense official, said Barda might have saved time by dealing directly with the tobacco companies but probably felt a need to justify its investment in its own centers. Others say dealing with centers it was already familiar with allowed Barda to move faster.

Still, no contracts have been awarded. Some industry executives say Barda found the bids too high. While Emergent, Texas A&M and Barda say the proposals are still under evaluation, Barda is exploring alternatives.

The initial plan was to have the other centers produce ZMapp using the same technology employed by Kentucky BioProcessing. But another tobacco facility, Caliber Biotherapeutics, could not reach an agreement with Kentucky BioProcessing on licensing the technology, said a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because contract discussions are continuing. Moreover, this official said, Kentucky felt it could not devote manpower to helping Caliber when it was scrambling to produce ZMapp on its own.

So Barda is now letting tobacco production companies use their own technology.

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Giroir was also associated with the Perry crony crowd including McKinney and Diedrich. When he was first hired at TAMUS, it was in a new position created for him when Murano wouldn't hire him by going around the search committee for the TAMU VPR. Although Sharp is also viewed by many as a Perry crony, he seems to be in a different circle of the friends of Rick. Many of the others are gone now: McKinney, Kimbrough, Diedrich, Fossum, and now Giroir.

That's my probably inaccurate/incomplete read on the background.

The term 'Perry crony' hasn't been used enough in this thread

Sid, I'd really be interested in a substantive comment...

OK, so the USNWR rankings don't matter.

Do any rankings? Here's one I think most Aggies would think we'd be in...

The 10 most powerful college alumni networks

That list was compiled with random data points not consistently shared by the 10 schools listed. For some it was # of billionaires, while others it was how big their alumni base was (posters here said diploma mill schools were bad), while others it was the percentage of students who found jobs or went to grad school, etc, etc.

Here is a link to a list of the schools with the largest endowments. Texas A&M is 7th.
A&M has over $11 billion while mighty Cal has barely over $1 billion

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Here is a link to a list of the schools with the largest endowments. Texas A&M is 7th.
A&M has over $11 billion while mighty Cal has barely over $1 billion

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Lol. Cal (just the university) has an endowment of $4 billion if you look at any other source. $11.1 billion is for the entire TAMU system (11 universities, 7 state agencies, two service units, a comprehensive health science center, a geographically separate law school, and a medical school, which Cal doesn't have and what typically brings in the big bucks). Even so, having the most money doesn't prove anything. It's what you do with it that matters.

I understand that. But again. Perception. Why are UVA and UM on that list but not us, when factually we should be. That list is about as rigorous as a buzzfeed quiz, but, in it's way, it's telling.

And our $11 billion is system wide. The UC system endowment is $13 billion, but they have twice the students our system does.

Looking at that list sorted by endowment per student, we're 44th and the sips are 54th.

These sorts of things underscore just how damaging some of the notions being discussed may be to Texas A&M. We should be further along academically than we are given our resources.

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Why are UVA and UM on that list but not us

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Because they produce more CEOs, high level politicians, and more otherwise wealthy, famous, and powerful graduates than A&M does?

Don't get me wrong, A&M's network is solid, but it's not the over the top best, most tight-knight, most powerful alumni network in the world that many Ags make it out to be. Outside of Texas, its value declines steeply. Schools like Michigan and UVA have networks that reach far beyond their respective states.

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UT-Austin is about to leave A&M in the dust. A&M's competition will be UT-Dallas and UH.

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WOW! Guess I won't pump my kids towards our beloved Texas A&M! One thing I will assure you is that MY KIDS WILL NOT GO TO tu! If A&M don't want them, Stanford, Michigan, Washington or Harvard is where I'll promote them to attend.