Texas Education: Do Funds Equal Productivity?

In a recent post, I compared the number of programs in Texas and California public institutions of higher education that were ranked nationally in terms of faculty productivity by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

According to the Chronicle, the University of Texas at Austin has 28 ranked programs, and Texas A&M University has 14 ranked programs. For those of you scoring at home, that is a ratio of exactly 2:1.

Upon seeing those figures, my colleague wondered aloud whether that ratio was a result of the state's Permanent University Fund, which funnels royalties from oil deposits to the state's two largest university systems (apparently that was a change in 1984; before that, money went only to the two flagship schools).

However, the money is not divided equally. UT gets 2/3 of the money. That means that UT gets $2 for every $1 that A&M gets (Texas Tech gets none despite much of the oil reserves being in West Texas).

Again, the ratio is 2:1, exactly the same as the number of ranked programs.

As my colleague did, one cannot help but speculate (but it is just that -- speculation) whether these two ratios are causally linked.

Comparing California, Texas Higher Ed

Updated: 9:53 p.m., June 24, 2008 (see below)

A former mentor and colleague pointed me to these faculty productivity rankings by the Chronicle for Higher Education.

The same former mentor also talked about how Texas (population 23,507,783) higher education compares to California (population 36,457,549) higher education. That is, how do the two most populous states stack up?

As an imperfect measure of university quality, let's look at the institutions listed by the Chronicle. How many public programs are nationally ranked in terms of top faculty productivity? There is a problem of apples and oranges, as Texas has separate listings for medical schools, and California does not. In the interest of fairness, I will include all Texas public institutions including the medical schools.

Texas
University of Texas, Austin -- 28
Texas A&M University -- 14
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston -- 6
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas -- 3
Texas Tech University -- 3
University of Houston -- 2
University of Texas Medical Branch -- 2
Sam Houston State University -- 1
Texas A&M, Kingsville -- 1
University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth -- 1
UTEP -- 1
(Private school Rice has 6 ranked programs)

That gives Texas a grand total of 62 ranked programs at public universities including medical schools. How does California stack up? With 50% more population, California should have about 93 ranked programs if the two states are equal.

California
University of California, Berkeley -- 59
UCLA -- 41
University of California, Davis -- 21
University of California, San Diego -- 19
University of California, San Francisco -- 16
University of California, Santa Barbara -- 11
University of California, Irvine -- 8
University of California, Riverside -- 6
San Diego State University -- 5
University of California, Santa Cruz -- 1

It turns out that California has 187 ranked programs -- more than three times the state of Texas. Fifty percent greater population translates into 300 percent more ranked programs.

The top two Texas programs have 42 ranked programs. The top two California programs have 100. The top two Texas programs have 96,236 students, according to Wikipedia. The two top California institutions have just 71,564 students, also thanks to Wikipedia. More than double the ranked programs spread among 14,000 fewer students.

I make no inferences here, but rather I leave them to you, the reader. In terms of objective productivity, my California compatriots far outpace me and my Texas colleagues.

(Meant to be humorous) It brings to mind the current California Dairy Board advertising campaign: "Great milk comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California."

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Update: This page is getting a good deal of traffic from a blog by the Texas Faculty Association. Although I am all for a good crusade, this was not the crusade that I had intended. The quip about California cows was meant to be a throwaway at the end. Instead it can quite logically be read as me saying Texas faculty are unhappy.

This may be the case; however, it is at best a hypothesis. There is clearly a cause for the disparity outlined in these data, but it assuredly boils down to something more complex than faculty satisfaction. I have zero data concerning the relative happiness of the respective faculties.

With the current economy and the price of oil, one could make a not-so-bold prediction that Texas universities will soon make up much ground on their California counterparts. Texas' budget future looks far more rosy than that of California. When you combine Texas' oil and gas revenues with how long California took to come out of the last recession, it's a great time to be in Texas.

As a resident of Texas -- and a faculty member in Texas -- I found these data to be interesting. However, I did not intend to slight the state of Texas. Trust me. I live here, and I know better.

It is worth understanding why this disparity exists. But a throwaway quip should not be interpreted for my estimate of the answer. It remains an empirical question.

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* Population estimates for 2006 courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau here and here.

Perspective: Border Opinions Differ

Every few weeks I receive the following picture via e-mail. Every time it arrives, I think "hate speech" and move on.


The "Yours / Not Yours" image appears to be a screen capture from Google Maps with some very rudimentary photo editing.

It is usually accompanied by some inflammatory writing.

As I write this, I sit about 45 miles from "Yours." I lived here, in Las Cruces, N.M., for 5 years. As I've bored readers here many times, I edited the NMSU student newspaper for two years, and I worked at the daily newspaper for more than a year.

Perhaps for this reason, I just don't understand the vitriol. The line between "Yours" and "Not Yours" is simply arbitrary, and to treat it as anything more is foolish to me.

Of all the problems in our country, this just does not rank for me. I've walked the streets of Ciudad Juárez with camera in hand. I've walked down the streets that the tourists do not walk down. I have seen the poverty and despair first-hand. Wanting to leave that for the chance to break one's back picking chiles in Doña Ana County just does not strike me as a crime against humanity.

Yet this is the issue for many Americans. Hence the semi-regular arrival of the photograph above.

Last week, however, I saw the image below courtesy of my friend and fellow NMSU alum Joy Victory. Joy lives in Mexico City and posted the following photograph of an Absolut Vodka billboard on her excellent blog this week.


Photo courtesy of Joy Victory, El Blog de Joy.

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According to Joy, "This billboard sits above the corner of Nuevo Leon and Sonora, a busy intersection in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City."

The billboard, quite clearly, is part of Absolut's In an Absolut World campaign.

According to Absolut's Web site, "The starting point of the advertising campaign was simple ‘what if everything in the world was approached with the ideal in which we approach ABSOLUT vodka?,’ " according to Karl-Johan Bogefors, Global PR Manager, ABSOLUT Vodka.

Therefore, one is to infer that Absolut interprets the map on the billboard as the "ideal" cartography from the Mexican point of view.

What a stark contrast to the image above.

Clearly, the economics of Mexico City are far different from border towns. The money of the United States acts like a vacuum to the worst elements of a poorer nation (and those south of it).

As far as I can tell from this Web site, the map on the billboard includes:

• Present day Mexico
• Republic of Texas (1836-1845), which was apparently claimed by the U.S. from 1845-1848.
• Mexican Cession (1848)
• Gadsden Purchase (1853)

At present, I'm sitting about 8 miles from the border of the Gadsden Purchase. A little more than 150 years ago, I'd be on the virtual Mexican border.

This map shows a series of somewhat arbitrary political and military decisions. Twenty miles or so south of here is the town of Anthony (New Mexico and Texas). It's a poor town by U.S. standards. But the quality of life there is vastly different than Juárez, another 25 miles or so to the south.

My point is simply that many of the people living in Anthony are surely descendants of those people who lived in that area 155 years ago. They are American citizens because the border crossed them, not the other way around.

Those ancestors likely played no role in the Gadsden Purchase. I doubt they voted or were polled. Instead, they got lucky.

And if the history of the matter really is that arbitrary, it is difficult for me to muster any passion for the position that looks at the Rio Grande river as if some demarcation of truth where on one side you are entitled to a better education and a much longer lifespan. On the other side of the line, poverty and despair. That's "yours."

And I am supposed to believe this is "not yours."

I'm sorry. I just don't.

It's Great to Live in Texas When ...

... you click on CNN.com headlines such as "March roars in with deadly storms," and the dateline is Columbus, Ohio, where I used to live.

There's a nice photograph of policemen on horses directing traffic in the snow.

Wow.

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UPDATE: 2:08 p.m. Here's a fresh photo of a foot of snow from Dublin, Ohio, courtesy of brand strategist and should-be Ph.D. student Tim Laubacher. Thanks, Tim!

Hispanic Media Matters in Texas

Hispanic Spending in Texas to Surpass $2 Million

Primary Showdown Benefits Telemundo, Univision as Clinton, Obama Camps Pour Money Into Lone Star State

By Ira Teinowitz

Published: February 25, 2008

WASHINGTON (Adage.com) -- The Hispanic market in Texas is seeing an unprecedented boom in campaign spending as presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton vie for supremacy in the Lone Star state.

Together, the candidates spent nearly $2 million advertising to Spanish-speaking Hispanics in California, and broadcasters are saying spending ahead of the March 4 Texas primary could top that.

"I've been in Spanish television since 1985, and this is most active season I've ever seen," said Enrique J. Perez, senior VP-sales for Telemundo Station Group. "For the first time, Hispanic media is being planned side by side with general media."

OK, So Maybe Lubbock Is Good for Walking

All right. So Lubbock is barely within 500 miles of one of the nation's top outdoors places to live.

Today CNN.com has a story on "Metropolitan areas ranked for walkability."

Maybe Lubbock is on that list. I like to walk, after all.

No such luck. I've plotted the top 15 here. The closest is Denver, a short 546 mile drive.

Young professionals ... are driving a national trend toward more walkable communities, says the author of a report to be released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for reasons to besmirch the Hub City. But CNN keeps posting these stories, and I am a curious person. And sadly, Lubbock is seldom on the list. Unless the list is of dry counties.

Lubbock, Texas, Gets Pretty Cool Clouds

Spring Weather Never Gets Old

It was 74 degrees today in Lubbock.

First week of February.

Ahhhh.

King of the Hill Christmas in Lubbock

Drinking beer in the alley with friends in West Texas.

There's even a picture of the state of Texas on the can!