Getting the Big Rocks In

[caption id="attachment_2815" align="alignright" width="342" caption="Val Cook"]

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TT: President Powers, you’ve described the upcoming legislative session as challenging — how challenging?

BP: We’re getting different reports. The early budgets are likely to be very draconian, and even under the best scenarios we’re going to have to make some tough choices about priorities. The critical thing in any budget climate is that we do it thoughtfully.

TT: In the first round of budget cuts, higher ed was hit disproportionately hard. Even though it accounts for only 12.5 percent of the state budget, it took 41 percent of the cuts. Why?

BP: Legislators don’t have any control over a lot of the state budget. If you took the part of the budget they do control, that ratio wouldn’t be so harsh. Nevertheless, that’s kind of a fault of government — that’s the box that this has gotten into. Public education and higher education is all that’s left.

TT: How does the University combat that?

BP: I put it in terms of the work done in the ’30s and ’40s on quantum mechanics and the work done in the ’50s on the double helix. No one would have ever thought those were going to have practical payoff for making our life better. And now everything in the biomedical area depends on the double helix and quantum mechanics. These are long-term investments, and very few of our institutions do that.

TT: For every dollar invested in UT and A&M, the state gets $18 back. That’s an incredible number, but should higher education’s value always be calculated with a dollar sign?

BP: No. If you look at, say, Russia and China, having a civic life that supports a democratic way of life is critical, even to our economy, and certainly to our constitutional democracy. Work in the arts, in the humanities, in philosophy, and understanding the global cultural world we live in — we don’t get NSF grants for that. But it still pays back to our society.

One of the things I think we need to do is return — the way the G.I. Bill did — to equating education generally and higher education particularly as the pathway to the American dream. It promotes prosperity, it promotes opportunity, and it promotes a democratic way of life. Those aren’t next-quarter profits.

TT: Do you think state legislators are thinking about that, taking that worldview?

BP: I think the state Legislature is mixed. They’re human beings, and they’re doing their best.

I like to tell the story of a professor who brings in a big vat and fills it up with big rocks — all the way up until the rocks are teetering. The professor asks the class, “Is it full?” They say, “Yeah, you’re not getting another one of those rocks in there.” Then the professor comes in with gravel and pours it in between the rocks. The class chuckles — OK, we’ve been had. Then the professor brings in sand to fill in between the gravel, then, finally, water. “Now is it full?” the professor asks. The class says yes, and the professor says, “You’re right. Now what did we learn from this?” Somebody says, “Very often when you think you can’t fit something else in, you can.” The professor says, “No. If you want to get the big rocks in, you’ve got to get them in first.”

That gravel isn’t unimportant. The gravel is: what are we going to do with TXDot, how are we going to get more technical efficiencies, how are we going to get graduation rates up? There’s a lot of very important gravel.

What I’m talking about are very big rocks. Where is the quantum mechanics and double helix for the next generation going to come from? And where is our civic life going to come from? For universities, that’s our job. But it’s easy to get caught up with the gravel.

TT: How can alumni help?

BP: By emphasizing the importance of higher education and, for UT alumni and the Aggies, the particular importance of having some very high-end research universities. UT and A&M are very high-quality institutions, and the quality is built in thimblefuls but can be spent in buckets. We have put together a very efficient and extremely productive workforce. You let that erode and it could take a generation to recover.

TT: Is that what’s at stake with this session? Are we talking about losing buckets?

BP: Yeah. Worst-case scenario we end up with an additional 10, 15, 20 percent cut. To be honest, best-case scenario is our funding stays flat. We can deal with flat.

TT: Is that realistic?

BP: I think that’s the best-case scenario. Look, we do not want to adopt the posture that we’re exempt from the pain. We are reorganizing, redesigning courses, looking at graduation rates and our administrative structure. We’re taking very seriously productivity gains, costs savings, those kinds of things. But there’s a limit.

TT: From a tone perspective, how are you going to and how should alumni approach this process?

BP: The tone ought to be: we as a state are facing challenges, but Texans can get stuff done. We need to do this thoughtfully and with a view toward what the big rocks are. I don’t think it ought to be combative, but it ought to be a serious, constructive warning.