The Ultimate Aggie Revenge Against UT
For you people from foreign states, the ultimate college rivalry in Texas is Texas A&M (think Rick Perry) and UT (think Walter Cronkite).
You can also think of Paul Begala when you think of UT. Begala went after Governor Rick Perry today. Perry is making strange noises over in the corner about reducing UT from a world class university to a cut-rate McDegree school.
Research is another bugaboo for Perry. He and his supporters say they want academics to spend more time in the classroom, but it is doubtful America would have won World War II or created the Internet without basic research at public universities.
Intriguingly, Perry has called for a $10,000 bachelor’s degree. In the same vein a century ago, another governor, Thomas Riley Marshall of Indiana, proclaimed, “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.” Sure, we need to find ways to reduce tuition. But Perry’s approach would push universities to hire lower-cost and less-qualified instructors, explode class size, and leave faculty members little time for research.
Perry is whining about the cost of a college education and thinks he can reduce that cost by cutting research and top quality professors. But, that’s not what caused the problem. Dropping state funding for public colleges year after year after year to save on taxes has sent tuition sky-high. Perry’s tax cuts are smoke and mirrors. He simply passes on costs.
Example: cut funding to state parks and then double the cost of a fishing license. Then close the state parks, keep the fishing license money to give to your friends to do “cancer” research, which somebody needs to go to jail over, and call it leadership.
Perry is the dumbest man west of anywhere east. He should not be messing with any university in Texas, much less the flagship school. But, he’s gonna run for President again because saving money instead of children is a helluva campaign slogan right now.
Full disclosure: half my family went to UT and half went to A&M. They all turned out smarter than Rick Perry.
Thanks to Kary for the heads up.
A $10,000 bachelor’s degree would only be worth about $5,000 the way Perry planned it. I suppose he will subcontract it out to Walmart–always low prices.
1Deregulation helped lead to the higher tuition rates. These days a college degree is not worth it. You are in debt for the rest of your life. We do need lower tuition, but not Perry’s way. Anything Perry does is wrong. Anything.
2A couple of things here, Juanita, and I sure don’t mean to start a war of wof words, but ask and Aggie who their biggest rival is, and they answer Texas. Ask a Longhorn who their biggest rival is, and they answer Oklahoma…I guess it all depends on which end of the periscope one is looking through.
Anyway-
You cannot have any kind of discussion on higher education costs unless you include the Queen of Wrecking It All–Geanie Morrison of Victoria! She authored the bill that deregulated tuition costs several years ago and never blinked when tuition shot up!
Additionally, she created the Crossroad Commission on Education to study how we can have better education, more students prepared for college and more college graduates in the Crossroads area. So far, all this Commission has been able to accomplish is dividing Victoria with their epic failure at shopping the University of Houston-Victoria around for a new owner. They courted A&M, Texas Tech and who knows who else. They ar going to make a run at it again according to A&M Chancellor John Sharp–yes, that John Sharp–a local Victoria boy.
3EVERYBODY in my family who went to Texas A&M turned out to be smarter than Rick Perry.
Please, can we think of Johnny Manziel, and maybe Kevin Sumlin, BUT NOT Rick Perry when we think of A&M?
A football rivalry shouldn’t result in the dumbing down of every major university in Texas, because, believe me, he’s not just aiming at Texas. It ‘s all of them. Texas Tech, SMU, TCU, U of H, although I think Rice would laugh him out of town.
Educated people aren’t going to vote for these clowns, and they may have finally caught on to that. So, those they can’t intimidate, they will keep ignorant….. I guess.
4I sorta resent having A&M represented by Rick Perry because he’s *not* representative of most of the 50,000 students we have here. Still, I worry that Miemaw is sadly wrong: I know too many people who hold degrees (and higher degrees) but keep voting for these clowns because somehow they think the whole Kenyan Muslim party has to be wrong. It’s just sad…
5Please don’t start with the Aggie jokes. Perry is enough already. Spare me.
6I once asked my brilliant A&M son the reason for the “dumb” image. He said it was the political science majors there. My guess is that one of them was Ricky.
Any decent governor would want his state to be known for having several great universities, not less.
7@Cheryl: I think Rick wants Texas to be known as the state with the lowest taxes and least educated so that companies will move there and hire people for less money than if they outsourced to China.
8Both my daughter’s each earned a bachelor’s degree for $10,000. One from UT, the other Rice. Thirty years ago.
The inflation calculator informs me that it would be 27000 in today’s dollars.
I don’t know about UT, but one of those daughters took her kid to look at Rice. It is now 45000 a year. They are doing a massive amount of building. Just like my volunteer fire department and EM district.
I’m told by my university teacher sil that pensions account for a lot of that.
Can’t wait for ol Rick to get that distance learning fun classes to morph into we can all get a degree from UT with just our computers.
9Perry sees education as a product made of a piece of paper instead of as a process.
10Perry does not understand the difference in a degree and an education. Degrees can be sold cheap, but an education is costly. It could be much less costly if the State of Texas would restore funding.
p.s. I know the difference between a degree and an education because I managed to get a UT journalism degree in 1969 without getting much of an eduation – at least in the classroom! I finally got an education in graduate school years later!
11“They all turned out smarter than Rick Perry.”
I’ve got rocks in my garden smarter than Rick Perry.
If he wants to raise the IQ level in Texas, he should move out – and if those who voted him into office moved out too, Texas would the smartest state in the Union.
12I believe the story on Rick Perry is that he graduated from A&M with like an Ag degree, he wanted to go to veterinary school, but couldn’t get in because his grades weren’t good enough…. so he went back home to Haskell to work on the family farm raising cotton. Then a couple of years later, he ran for office, and that’s his career path…. He didn’t learn the value of an education as a child, nor in college, and his life experience has been that he didn’t like farming, so he became a politician were you can make money on every corner selling hot air.
13I’m sorry, in the first paragraph you set up a comparison between Rick Perry and Walter Cronkite and my brain imploded and everything went black. What were we talking about…?
14Volkswagens cost more.
15I think glf hit the nail on the head. It also solves his immigration problem, as immigrants will move on to other states as there will be no jobs here. They’ll all be taken by uneducated Texans. How can we get rid of this buffoon? Do we have anyone who can beat him?
16All those companies that Rick is trying to lure to Texas are not likely to be impressed with the educational offerings that Perry is so hot to enact. Low taxes are one thing. Bone ignorant employees is a whole other deal.
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