HIGHER EDUCATION GETS A BETTER PROPOSITION

You’ve probably heard all you ever want to hear about Proposition 2, the Higher Education Fund (HEF) proposal that will come before state voters on November 6. Supporters such as Dr. Robert Rut ford, president of the University of Texas at Dallas, have been spending a lot of their own time to tell everyone what the proposition means. Rut-ford’s not so worried about voters disagreeing with the proposition as he is that Texas voters will go to the polling booths, vote for president and never finish looking at the ballot. He fears “voter fatigue.”

If approved, Proposition 2 will create, beginning in September 1985, a $100 million-a-year Higher Education Fund, from money dedicated to it from the state’s general revenue fund. Twenty-six public colleges and universities will use the money to help pay for construction of new campus facilities. Currently, the institutions must go before the Legislature for each special request.

The proposition also calls for the restructuring of the Permanent University Fund (PUF), which currently provides about $2 billion a year from Texas oil and gas fields to the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University. If Proposition 2 passes, schools such as UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas and more TAMU extension centers would be eligible for PUF funds-and thus could be taken off the state’s budget. The UT Health Science Center at Dallas is already a part of PUF. The restructuring of the fund would also allow UT and TAMU to use the money for land acquisition, building maintenance, capital equipment and library books.

Although it’s next to impossible to find anyone connected with higher education who is opposed to Proposition 2, five of the 13 state representatives who oppose it are from the Dallas area. They are Rep. Patricia Hill, R-Dallas; Rep. Fred Agnich, R-Dallas; Rep. Frank Eikenberg, R-Plano; Rep. Gwyn Clarkston Shea, R-Irving; and Rep. Carlyle Smith, D-Grand Prairie.

Of the five, only Hill could be reached for comment. She is adamant about her opposition to the HEF, saying that she believes it could eventually cause the state to raise taxes, since the money for it comes from the state’s general revenue fund. She says that the $100 mil-lion-a-year fund is excessive because in the past, the public colleges and universities have asked the Legislature for only $30 to $40 million a year for new projects.

Hill says that the positive side of Proposition 2 is that it will allow PUF funds to go toward building maintenance. But, she says, “There are just some universities that we don’t need. Enrollments are going down at some of them. And I don’t think the universities are starving.”

Supporters of UTD say that the university is starving for a top-flight engineering school. They hope that PUF funding will help make it possible.