Each biennium, the Texas Legislature receives
testimony from chancellors and presidents of our public
universities. The purpose of the testimony is twofold: to
articulate each institution’s needs in the new biennium, and
to answer for taxpayers the fundamental question: Have
you used well the resources We the People made available
to you?
As a result of more than a decade of shortfalls in State
revenue and therefore funding for higher education -- and
precipitating increased costs in tuition, the public has joined
elected officials in asking:What are you doing with our
money?
The question of how universities spend money
students and the public give us has led to a broad
discussion, throughout American society, of the value of a
college education. At first, University administrators and
faculty found answering this question a significant challenge.
We are accustomed to describing the value of a college
experience in the very visionary, soaring language of Final
Things and Immeasurable Nurturing of the Spirit.
Anthony Kronman, former dean of Yale Law School,
stated it best: a University experience should develop in
each of us a “sympathetic imagination.”This invocation of
higher things has not satisfied those eager to quantify the
University credential.
So…what does “sympathetic imagination,” if one
has it, provide when the bearer begins to look for a job?
The Economist
, using Scorecard data compiled by the
Obama administration, seeks to answer that question
by comparing anticipated and real earnings of college
The Imagination & The Reality to Soar
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