Election Results: Texas Prop 4 Commits $500 Million toward University Research

Texas leaders have fully embraced the importance that strongly supported top-tier research universities can serve for attracting and retaining high-wage technology companies and as drivers for future economic growth. With Tuesday’s passage of Proposition 4 by a solid 56.7 percent majority, it is evident the voting population of the Lone Star State gets it as well.

Proposition 4 is a constitutional amendment establishing a national research university fund to help emerging research universities in Texas striving to achieve national prominence as major research universities. The pool of money, to be capitalized initially by an existing $500 million higher education fund, is to be “a dedicated, independent, and equitable source of funding” that is distributed by a yet-to-be-determined formula established by the legislature or an agency designated by the legislature. That said, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University, already tier one research institutions, are not eligible to receive any of the funds. The goal is to raise one or more of seven public universities to the same status: Texas Tech University; University of Texas at Arlington; University of Texas at Dallas; University of Texas at El Paso; University of Texas at San Antonio; University of Houston; and the University of North Texas.

Among major proponents for the proposition was Texans for Tier One, which was co-chaired by former Texas Lieutenant Governor and former University of Houston System Chancellor Bill Hobby as well as University of Texas System Board of Regents Chairman James Huffines. The group funded an economic analysis, Texas as a “State of Minds,” which argued that adding only two more Tier One universities to the state’s economy by 2035 would have a cumulative impact by that time of “$161.1 billion in total spending each year, $81.8 billion in annual output, and 344,393 permanent jobs. The State government would gain more than $4.2 billion in annual fiscal revenues, with local tax authorities seeing benefits of about $1.3 billion per annum.”