The Lost Generation

Higher education is now a standard requirement for most job applications. Coupled with the low graduation rate of Texas students, the recent budget cuts on higher education will cause great harm to the future of Texas.

The Texas legislative branch have recently voted to cut the Texas budget in order to compensate for the deficit of 25 billion dollars. Sadly, most of the budget cuts will be centering around human and health services as well as education. As many public schools around the state will have a reduced amount of resources, college students may face a raise in tuition. Also, the cut back on grants for admission will eat away at a population of minority and lower income family students. As such, the already suffering minority population in admissions will decrease and many students will be forced to drop school all together.

Due to the potential increase in tuition for college students, minority students and students coming from low income families will most likely loose their grants for college education. As supported by Sara Calderon in the Texas Observer on April 14, 2011, " these cuts will come at a time when Latino students are making up bigger portions --or even the majority-- of the school-aged students in the states around the country." Therefore, especially when taking Texas into perspective, where the minority are the majority, students will be cut from grants to school. As a result, UT's student population would remain homogeneous rather than sparking the diversity they are pushing towards. The commissioner of higher education, Raymund Paredes, himself explained that these budget cuts on grants would put a whole 'lost generation' of students out of college due to pricing.

Although Rick Perry has held up an initiative to improve higher education and started a movement towards online education, this is not enough to improve the current situation. Western Governors University is an established university meant as a less costly and more flexible way to approach higher education: all you need is a computer and a little effort. Although it has encountered some success and growth since its birth in 1997.  However, this primarily targets working adults and does not help college students who are looking for the full four year experience. Although it is important to target adults as well, we should also focus on the youth that are trying to rise up in the social ladder.

Furthermore, the Texas governors position with UT's research resources are also in debate. As the UT student body president Natalie Butler explains, the breakthrough solutions created by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) which, along with Rick Perry's praise, want to separate teaching and research budgets. They think that this way, taxpayers have not been directly paying the teachers to teach, but for their research 'projects' which are irrelevant to the classroom. As Butler keeps reiterating, it is fundamental  for the University of Texas to fulfill its mission statement and keep up its first Tier research reputation as it not only interests brilliant professors to the university but also helps UT's professors teach not only book materials but also cutting edge discoveries. Cutting the research budget would create a great dis conformity with UT's motto "what starts here changes the world."

In the end, Texas's 44th ranking in the nation for graduating students might hit the bottom due to these budget cuts. Cutting grants to help out the Texas budget will essentially cause a lowering in admissions, diversity and grant recipients. So, why is the government doing this again?