School may hold lessons for UTSA
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Nestled among tall eucalyptus and pine trees, the University of California at San Diego has a camplike feel, reminiscent of the days when scientists bunked in seaside cottages pursuing the mysteries of the Pacific Ocean.
The flame for discovery that started with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the early 1900s was passed on to a medical school and university created on top of the marine institute in the 1960s.
Today, it’s a Tier One research institution with 29,000 students, at least six Nobel laureates and 51 doctoral programs.
In Texas, the University of Texas at San Antonio opened in the early 1970s with similar optimism and dreams of research prowess.
But the two young institutions took very different paths. UTSA also grew to 29,000 students, but spent its early decades as a commuter college catering to the region’s low-income and underserved students, with little emphasis on research and graduate programs until recent years.
Many say UTSA’s focus on access was - and is - appropriate and necessary.
But some professors from the early years say a lack of money and vision stunted UTSA’s development.
Until the 1990s, the flagship UT-Austin was the only belle at the ball in the eyes of state lawmakers and university regents. A lawsuit prodded them to funnel more money to South Texas and border institutions, and overcrowding at UT-Austin forced them to build up more Tier One research universities.
"We were getting some lofty language in the beginning, but we knew we were an impoverished stepsister to Austin in those days," said Judith Sobre, an art history professor at UTSA since 1974.
But now Texas is trying to catch up, and UTSA and six other up-and-coming universities have another shot at Tier One