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 A massive budget shortfall of at least fifteen to twenty five billion dollars is expected to be faced by Texas in the next biennium. Federal mandates like health care and court decisions like the K-12 education severely limit the state’s options.

This will affect the higher education to a great extent even as the budget axe falls on it. The Texas Republican Party faces both perils and opportunities in this situation. For example, if the legislature cuts down on the higher education budget without incorporating any changes, the burden will invariably be passed on by the university officials on to the students.

This in turn will lead to a political backlash as parents, students and alumni will invariably react. They may yet lose the support of the generation of youth forever. If they play their cards right, the Republicans can just about use this situation to their advantage. They can help students and taxpayers save billions of dollars even while providing expanded freedom of choice to them to enhance and empower students and their education.

State leaders can dramatically enhance education by harnessing the efficiency and power of the market by working on existing universities to create a true, free market. This will also eliminate abuse and waste to a great extent and help more numbers of students complete their degrees.

A set of reforms must be set in place in order to revolutionize education in Texas. Education system here has to necessarily be transformed into a responsive medium that caters to today’s entrepreneurial demands from the bureaucratic mass production, centralized 20th century model. Reforms must be based on a strong sense of public accountability, transparency and should cater to the free market spirit.

Salaries of lecturers and professors must be in keeping with the number of students they are able to rope into and retain in their classes. Apart from a basic wage of $30K and benefits, they can be given an opportunity to earn extra wages through bonuses that are tuition based.

A fixed tuition income percentage that comes from the total enrolment must be tied to the salaries of college centers, departments and administrators. Tuition must be directly rebated to students by individual departments, colleges and professors. This makes it easy to introduce real price competition between professors, departments and colleges who will strive to rope in more numbers of students by offering lower tuition rates.

Professors can be encouraged to take the help of assistant teachers and these assistants can be paid negotiated salaries from the bonus earned by the professors. Professors must be given a free hand to choose courses to teach in their field of expertise every semester. They must also be given the freedom to set limits for enrolment as this is the only way to meet student demand.

For undergraduate courses, there must be a fixed grading curve. Professors who deviate from this curve must face the consequence of losing a portion of their tuition based bonuses. Doing this will effectively help raise standards of education and also eliminate grade inflation.

Raising the standards thus is the only way to transform campus culture and the only way to ensure students prefer studying to partying.