I could not agree more with Albert H. Kaufmann's
main arguments ("Great expectations, Insight, Aug. 19), or the recent columns
of Carlos Guerra, in support of enhancing the opportunities for higher
education in San Antonio and South Texas. To paraphrase Kaufmann:
It has long been the time, and today it clearly remains, the "time for
the city to demand" expanding and improving opportunities.
That is why it is so important to make the case
clearly and to avoid certain misconstruals and misunderstandings that may
hinder the arguments.
A focus on the South Side, while important, risks
losing sight of the overall balance. And in that connection, as in
some others, it obstructs the kinds of comparisons with other Texas cities
on which Kaufmann places great emphasis.
By listing and counting the number of four-year
universities that are within, say, 30 miles of other Texas cities, Kaufmann
undercuts his own case. First: he seriously risks confusing
the quantity of institutions with their quality.
To consider separately or collectively the various
colleges in the Dallas area or the Houston area shows this quickly:
By any measure, their quality varies. Forth Worth (and Dallas) have
no general public four-year higher education within their own borders.
Second: It also ignores issues of university
or college sizes and the historical circumstances of their founding and
development. For example, a number of the Dallas/Fort Worth-area
institutions were relatively recently normal schools or primarily teacher-training
centers. To recognize that is not to demean them but to draw attention
to the varying origins and paths that different colleges have taken.
That needs to be taken into account when evaluating the choices for the
San Antonio area. In other words, one can't speak simply of generic
universities or campuses.
Third: Many of the campuses that Kaufmann
mentions have not been well-supported by the state of Texas. Campuses
within the UT System, for example, have had many lean years as well as
flush ones. The relationship of periods of special need, including
the early years of new institutions, periods of major transition and times
of expansion to historical opportunities for adequate state financing or
the availability of special funding (such as that which followed the first
serious turn toward public higher educational development in this area
because of the MALDEF court cases) cries out for more serious attention.
Fourth and closely related: Unlike the situation,
say, in California or New York, branch campuses of the University
of Texas system have always remained in the shadows of UT-Austin; the expansion
of the Texas A&M and University of Houston systems seem to follow the
same lines of lesser development and unequal distribution of resources.
There is no relationship in Texas comparable, for example, to UCLA or SUNY-Buffalo
and SUNY-Stony Brook. To mandate more serious equalization among
campuses might prepare the way for an entirely new explosion in quality
and opportunities throughout the state of Texas.
Fifth: The catalogue of cities and universities
neglects several forms of difference. UT-Austin, Texas A&M at
College Station, and Texas Tech at Lubbock dominate their relatively small
cities in ways that the University of Houston or the University of Texas
at Dallas do not. In other words, the metropolitan and regional setting
of institutions must be taken into account. UT-Dallas, further, is
located outside the legal boundary of the city of Dallas; it actually sits
on the line between Dallas and Collin counties. UT-Arlington is a
suburban institution; the University of North Texas (until recently North
Texas State University) was a small town or rural campus on which a spreading
metropolitan region now encroaches.
"Great expectations" limits the power of its overarching
argument and its greatest importance by slighting
San Antonio's recent public higher education advances. While
Kaufmann mentions UTSA-Downtown's early success, he neglects to mention
that Dallas has failed lately in building a downtown center despite pledges
by a number of local and regional public and private universities.
UTSA's new campus breaks ground in several dimensions including its eye-catching
architecture.
Kaufmann's argument also downplays San Antonio development
in its comparison with UT-Dallas and with the city of Dallas. UT-Dallas,
which was chartered at the same time as UTSA, was built in Richardson,
just as far away from downtown Dallas and historically minority South and
West Dallas as UTSA. UT-Dallas, where I taught for more than two
decades before moving to UTSA, did not admit its first freshman until 1990.
It began as a graduate center in the sciences and expanded into an upper-division
university. Relatively few first-and second-year students attend
UT-Dallas.
Today, without having a downtown or inner-city center
(despite its having one briefly in the mid-1970s), its enrollment is less
than one-half that of UTSA's. In accord with the spirit of its founding,
UT-D looks more to suburban North Dallas' high-tech connections than to
the city whose name it carries.
Finally: The kind of analysis that Kaufmann's
piece begins also needs to make clearer connections and distinctions.
Among them is the curious and, to my mind, sad fact that with the exception
only of the University of Houston - which began as a private university
- none of the Texas public university systems has dedicated itself to high
quality or prestigious urban-based higher education. Nor has higher
education in metropolitan centers for integrated regional development been
attempted seriously. That perhaps begins to suggest the public higher
educational ground on which San Antonio might build for its own, its region's,
its state's and its international futures.
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Harvey J. Graff is Director of the Division of Behavioral and Cultural
Sciences, and Professor of History at the University of Texas at
San Antonio.