Avery Building at the Round Rock Higher Education Center (Macuser1112/Wikimedia)

The Texas State University’s student newspaper The Star reports that the Round Rock Higher Education campus has outsourced its facilities and custodial services. Outside companies’ employees, The Star reported, do not have to go through the process of becoming state employees, and the employers can “hire and fire employees without dealing with state paperwork.”

In addition to outsourcing custodial staff, university officials are considering outsourcing parking facilities operations, too.

Texas State has contracted with Chartwells for its foodservice, which also handles staffing for university’s partnerships with companies like Starbucks, Chick-fil-A and Panda Express.

According to its website, Chartwells offers “an exciting range of educational tools that help your students make wise, informed decisions.” The company’s clients inclue several universities across the nation, including Texas’ Angelo State University, Lamar University, and the University of Texas at Dallas.

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported in July that Del Mar College had joined Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in outsourcing its custodial staff and groundskeepers, replacing 17 full-time custodians, five full-time groundskeepers and 66 part-time employees. The school reportedly expected the change to save $720,000 annually.

TAMU-CC replaced its 57-member cleaning crew and expects to save $200,000 annually. The university contracted with Service Solutions of Knoxville, Tenn., which describes itself as “the premium provider of cleaning and facilities services”

Kilgore College, a community college in East Texas, outsourced some of its custodial staff to Marcis & Associates earlier this year. The school’s student newspaper reported that its board of trustees made the decision as a cost-cutting measure.

While online education has been a part of several colleges’ model for decreasing cost and increasing revenue, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board records, show outsourcing has been another popular cost-cutting measure across the state, covering everything from campus bookstores and computer services to student housing and administrative services.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that despite the pleas of university officials during the hearing, the board cut the programs based on tougher guidelines implemented last year to pinpoint less popular degree programs, and encourage schools to drop them.

As previously reported by the Texas Independent, Sul Ross State University in Alpine already began phasing out six degree programs considered “low-producing,” in response to the state program.

This same program also led to three programs being cut by University of Texas-Pan American. Both universities are cutting programs in the science fields, such as environmental studies-chemistry at Sul Ross and computer science at UT-Pan American.

The Houston Chronicle reports that programs at Texas Southern University and Prairie View A&M were cut, despite protests from university officials wh argued that cutting the programs would hurt low-income and minority students. At Prairie View A&M the masters in physics program was phased out, and at TSU, the bachelors in physics and masters in mathematics were phased out.

“We are not out to eliminate the options that students have,” said Texas Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes. “We are out to eliminate options that are not working for students.”

The board had identified a total of 545 programs statewide that it said were under-enrolled — meaning they had graduated fewer than 25 bachelor’s degrees in five years, 15 master’s degrees in five years, or 10 doctorate degrees in five years.

In the first phase of the review process, 145 programs were phased out by each institution’s choice. Then 62 programs were phased out by THECB mandate, which included programs that universities applied for and were denied or withdrew exemptions, said Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board spokesman Dominic Chavez.

Other programs phased out include Texas A&M International University’s Spanish Masters program; the University of Texas-El Paso bachelor’s in Latin American and Border Studies and master’s in Art Education; Texas A&M University-Kingsville and Tarleton State University’s bachelor’s in physics; and Lamar University’s bachelor’s in dance.

The full breakdown of programs, according to the Higher Ed Coordinating Board, is below, with those completely phased out highlighted in red. Programs listed in green have been granted extensions while the university works to attract more students.

Texas degree programs cut for low demand

Andrew Cannon, a researcher for the non-partisan Iowa Policy Project, said it will be hard to reduce the cost of government by 15 percent without affecting the state’s quality of education, for instance.

Andrew Cannon 

“I can tell you that education — whether it’s K-12 funding, funding for community colleges, or funding for our three public universities Iowa — is a large portion of the budget,” Cannon said. “Any further budget cuts are going to touch education. It would be very difficult to touch the budget without cutting education simply because it’s such a large portion of what the state spends its money on.”

Cannon pointed out funding for higher education in particular has seen large cuts over the last 15 years.

“Education costs money,” he said. “If you want quality teachers and quality facilities it’s going to cost money, so it’s hard to imagine having a world class education on a shoestring budget.”

And Mike Owen, assistant director of the Iowa Policy Project, said cutting government spending can not only harm education but the economy as a whole.

Mike Owen 

“You start laying off teachers, start laying off police officers, start laying off street workers, that has a spin-off effect in the economy because people can no longer buy things themselves,” Owen said.

There’s also a question as to whether cuts in general are a good idea, Owen said, because there are rarely obviously wasteful items to remove from the budget.

“You’re going to cut things that are going to encourage job growth or income growth,” he said. “There is no Department of Waste, Fraud and Abuse.”

Branstad spokesman Tim Albrecht said according to projections, the state has already reduced the cost of government by 12 percent from the course it was on prior to Branstad taking office. And Branstad believes growth in jobs and incomes will come from the private sector, not the public sector.

“The governor believes the government’s role in this is to remove crushing regulatory burdens that stifle job creation, and enact pro-growth tax policies,” Albrecht said.

According to the Legislative Services Agency, the 2010 assembly appropriated $5.3 billion from the general fund for fiscal year 2011, and $7.2 billion overall.

Tim Albrecht 

The 2011 assembly appropriated $5.9 billion from the general fund for fiscal year 2012 and $7.1 billion overall. The 2011 assembly also appropriated $5.1 billion for fiscal year 2013 and $5.9 billion overall, with most agencies funded at 50 percent of the 2012 level.

Branstad has been traveling the state pitching a plan to reform education in the state, following a series of meetings on the topic. He’s proposing a change in the way teachers are evaluated and paid, among other things.

Those plans will likely call for additional spending, although the price tag for that is unclear at this point. But Albrecht said through advancement in best practices and technology efficiencies, further savings in the cost of government can be achieved.

“We believe that with our efforts to eliminate job-crushing regulations, encourage economic growth and the addition of new jobs, state government will be well-positioned to serve the needs of its citizens through private-sector growth and subsequent tax receipts,” he said.

Rep. Kraig Paulsen 

House Speaker Kraig Paulsen (R-Hiawatha) noted a 2 percent increase in aid for K-12 schools in FY2013 is already in place, after the Legislature provided 0 percent growth for schools in FY2012.

“We’ve already committed that we’re going to spend more on education, so that’s going to happen,” Paulsen said. “But we probably don’t know if it’s going to be more than what we committed in that. The governor has  a proposal there and we’re going to work on that as well. We’ve still got quite a bit of work to do.”

The state must invest in education at every level so Iowans can add value to themselves and be able to compete for jobs, said State Sen. Jeff Danielson (D-Cedar Falls).

Jeff Danielson 

“You cannot goose egg your schools and expect them to compete for the future,” Danielson said. “There’s no state in the country that can disinvest in education and be successful in the future. That’s not a strategy for success.”

David Swenson 

Iowa State University economist David Swenson said even though Branstad “got the state’s accounts into a terrific mess” in the 1980′s, he’s since taken ownership of the subsequent creation of a rainy day fund, using generally accepted accounting principles and a 99 percent spending limitation.

“He’s demonstrated early on that he’s just absolutely not going to entertain any kind of government expansive discussion unless it involves economic development,” Swenson said.

Of all of Branstad’s goals, he’ll probably be most successful in cutting the cost of government by 15 percent, Swenson said.

“Given the fact that we have a divided House and Senate…I just don’t see any movement towards a more expansive state government,” Swenson said. “I think he’s going to have his way.”

It’s a hot-button issue outside the UT System too — in San Antonio, trustees are considering revamping the tenure process for Alamo Colleges faculty.

Last week the Austin American-Statesman examined review records for tenured UT-Austin faculty, finding that while some professors had been given unsatisfactory reviews, not one had been fired since the early ’90s.

But in interviews with the Texas Independent, UT-Austin officials argued that firings aren’t the right way to measure the post-tenure review system’s success.

UT-Austin College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl

They may not be firing faculty at a moment’s notice, but by handing out strict reform plans to faculty whose performance doesn’t make the grade, Diehl said the college has encouraged professors to either step up their game or get out. While none of the professors the Statesman named had been fired, Diehl said, it’s no coincidence that many of them retired or left the university after poor reviews.

There are 421 tenured faculty members in the College of Liberal Arts, each up for review every six years. In a given year, Diehl said, seven or eight of them are handed negative reviews and go before a faculty committee he’s appointed, which develops a remediation plan to get the teachers back on track. It usually entails either more research work — and proving that they’ve been applying for grants, publishing papers or submitting them — or taking on more teaching duties.

In the past few years, he said, about half of those who go before the committee decide to leave UT rather than do the extra work.

It’s not the only way post-tenure review is handled at public universities, or even at other colleges at UT, nor is it necessarily the best answer for everyone, Diehl said. But a UT-Austin spokesman said Diehl’s is a good case study in how the university is toughening its standards, even while others criticize them as overpaid, out of touch or simply coasting by.

“The idea that our senior leadership don’t care about productivity couldn’t be further from the truth,” Diehl said.

In a conversation with the Independent, Diehl explained how he revamped the post-tenure review process, and why he still places a premium on faculty who choose to take on extra research, rather than teach extra classes.

TX Indy: Could you explain just what changes you’ve made to the faculty review process since you’ve taken over?

Randy Diehl: Post-tenure review was first implemented back in the ’90s when I was a department chair in the psychology department. At the time, there was a lot of confusion about what it was meant to accomplish. I had several senior faculty members who were not very productive who had been productive earlier in their career.

I became dean in June 2007, and I decided what we needed to do in the College of Liberal Arts is not to be a conduit to funnel post-tenure reports to the provost, but to have a process for determining where there were deficiencies in a faculty member’s record.

I appointed a committee — these were senior faculty, I deliberately chose people who were very productive and have a reputation for having high standards. In a given year, we’d have around 100 cases. I read every one of the reports.

Every report that includes a negative evaluation in any of three areas — teaching, research and service — that will automatically be brought to the committee. I will also forward any report that is positive, that I consider to be problematic in any way.

I let the committee know I was interested in increasing the rigor of the process. I felt heretofore we hadn’t been sufficiently rigorous. One of the problems with the post-tenure review in the past is that people would come up with remediation plans, and that would be that.

The new wrinkle is we’ll come back the next year and evaluate how well the remediation plan is working.

TX Indy: And what do you do if you come back and decide the plan isn’t working, after all?

RD: If a faculty member is unwilling to accept a remediation plan, is unwilling to do what is necessary to show that he or she is doing what is required of a tenured faculty member, I am not at all unwilling to consider termination — that’s something that’s been done infrequently if at all. Post-tenure review is meant to be a constructive process.

I would meet with the faculty member in question. I’d put in writing where the faculty member had demonstrated insufficient action or attention to the plan. We have a grievance process, and also a process for people who feel their academic freedom is being violated.

I’m not saying the first consequence would be termination, but I have no doubt at all that if remediation were simply being obstructed by the faculty member, the principle of academic freedom is not there to prevent faculty from doing their jobs.

TX Indy: But you’re saying that the process is also designed to help some faculty exit gracefully when that’s the best option for the university.

RD: An issue I had frankly with the Austin American-Statesman article was that it noted that this or that faculty member had received a negative post-tenure review, and in passing, almost as an afterthought, mentioned they had left.

There was a direct connection between the negative post-tenure review and the fact that they’re no longer with the university. Basically, the remediation plans are serious enough that retirement might look like an attractive option compared to having to fulfill the requirements of the remediation plan.

TX Indy: When you’re giving faculty members this choice between more teaching and more research, do you or the college have a preference as to which they pick?

RD: I definitely prefer that faculty member be seriously engaged in research, be an excellent teacher and be involved in the kind of service activities in the department or the community or the profession that we expect.

Being a Tier One research university means that we do prefer the faculty members to continue their research activity — but if they have opted out of the research track, they can now take on additional teaching duties instead. But that’s not our first choice.

TX Indy: Now that tenure reform is being looked at across the state, and the UT System’s framework for reform includes taking another look at post-tenure review, do you see your changes as a lesson to other colleges?

RD: We started doing this three years ago — this was before the current political issues had arisen. This entirely flowed from my own ideas about what we need to do to enhance productivity, and entirely consistent with what the provost and the president were advocating.

It would be presumptuous to say that our approach necessarily is the right approach — it would be presumptuous to say deans elsewhere aren’t doing equally rigorous forms of evaluation. I would recommend this kind of approach, or an equally stringent approach, to any other dean — but I don’t want to suggest that other deans aren’t doing very well.

This story has been corrected with a more accurate count of tenured faculty members at the UT-Austin College of Liberal Arts.

As a report by Texans for Public Justice showed, regents at A&M and UT have been among the most generous donors to Perry’s campaigns over the last decade. Regents from A&M donated a total of $2,036,290 and averaged $113,127 per regent, and regents from UT contributed a total of $1,669,263, averaging $83,463 per regent.

An examination of Federal Election Commission campaign finance records shows that twelve of the eighteen regents between the two universities have already given to Perry’s latest campaign. On each board, six out of nine regents from both A&M and UT have given.

A&M regents Jim Schwertner and John D. White have both contributed $5,000 to Perry’s campaign, while Richard Box, Phil Adams, Morris Foster, and Judy Morgan all contributed $2,500. Only regents Elaine Mendoza, Cliff Thomas, and James P. Wilson have not contributed to Perry’s campaign.

While he has not donated to the presidential campaign, Thomas —also appointed by Perry as a past board member of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority — did contribute $251,000 to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns. Wilson has also donated to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns, contributing $177,300.

Among UT regents Alex Cranberg, James Dannenbaum, Paul Foster, Printice Gary, Brenda Pejovich, and Robert Stillwell all contributed $2,500 to Perry’s campaign. Regents Wallace Hall Jr., Steve Hicks, and Gene Powell have not contributed to Perry’s campaign.

Hicks has contributed $265,000 to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns, and Powell has given over $100,000. While Powell may not have donated to Perry’s presidential run, as the Washington Post reported, he has helped lead fundraising efforts for Perry.

As the Texas Independent reported Thursday, Perry has been criticized for promoting a system of crony capitalism in Texas, but little attention has been paid to his financial ties to officials he’s appointed to oversee the state’s public universities, or to those backing controversial reform proposals for higher education.

During the during the Republican primary debates, opposing candidates have criticized Perry for his executive order mandating a vaccine manufactured by a campaign donor and lobbied for by a former Perry chief of staff. His management of Texas Enterprise Fund — handing grants to companies that contributed to his reelection fund — and the job growth he has claimed as a result of the fund, have both prompted criticicism.

But his vision for remaking the state’s public universities, and his appointment of regents willing to carry it out — both of which have been controversial in Texas — have yet to become major issues in his campaign.

“One reason these appointments don’t attract much criticism is that many voters think that’s typical behavior by politicians. They’ve seen it in both parties,” said Dallas Morning News political columnist Wayne Slater. “Every governor in my memory here has had stories about how many donors get appointments.”

According to a report by from Texans for Public Justice, Perry’s campaign received $17,115,865 from 921 of his appointees from 2001 to 2010, accounting for over 20 percent of the total money he’s raised. As the Texas Independent reported last year, his appointees to university boards of regents were some of Perry’s most generous supporters.

Perry’s appointments to the University of Texas and Texas A&M regents are also less educated compared to boards of other large state university systems with fewer college degrees, on average, than their counterparts in California, Florida, Georgia and New York.

A joint committee of the Texas Legislature is considering reforms to the regent appointment process, and extra steps to vet officials to ensure they’re qualified.

Slater said that if Perry wins the Republican nomination, he could face charges that he’s too involved in the state’s higher education. “The main critique of Perry with regard to higher education is that the governor’s office has been too intrusive in trying to meddle in the affairs of universities for political reasons,” said Slater.

“There are stories that he pressured regents to resign because they backed his Republican opponent last year. More damaging are questions about how he is on the side of efforts to deemphasize research, following the recommendations of a conservative think tank,” said Slater.

As Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka wrote earlier this year, “Rick Perry is waging an undeclared war on higher education — in particular, on the state’s two flagship institutions, the University of Texas and his own alma mater, Texas A&M. He has delegated higher education policy to the Texas Public Policy Foundation.”

Perry’s appointees to the Texas A&M Board of Regents have ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the conservative Austin think tank to which Perry donated the proceeds from his book “Fed Up!” and that, until recently, advocated a controversial reform package dubbed the “seven breakthrough solutions” for higher education.

Jeff Sandefer, author of the “seven solutions,” is also a member of the TPPF Board of Directors and is a major campaign donor to Perry. According to Texas Ethics Commission records, Sandefer has donated $712,739 to Texas GOP candidates, including $407,889 to Perry.

Texas A&M Regent Phil Adams, who donated over $340,000 to Perry’s campaigns, is also a member of the TPPF Board of Directors.

Another controversial figure viewed as having been put in place by Gov. Perry in order to push reforms is Rick O’Donnell, a former executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, hired by UT as a special advisor to the Board of Regents, at a salary of $200,000 during a hiring freeze. He was fired not long after, as the Texas Independent reported, after accusing his UT System bosses of stymying his attempts to access data on faculty members’ salaries and course loads.

As the Texas Tribune reported, when Texas A&M Chancellor Mike McKinney retired, it was speculated that he was forced out because of his failure to swiftly implement the Perry-backed reforms. Emails revealed that the chancellor had been pressured by other regents, and members of TPPF, to implement reforms. An email to an A&M regent from Sandefer’s father was critical of McKinney’s inability to implement the “seven solutions.”

Even while former backers move away from the “solutions,” they’re gaining popularity with GOP leaders across the country. In Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott is considering similar higher ed reforms aimed at lowering tuition and applying business principles to award degrees more efficiently.

“Perry’s involvement in higher education reform isn’t an issue for Republican primary voters because they agree with him,” said Mark Jones, head of the political science department at Rice University. “They see academia as being elitist in their ivory towers wasting the tax payers money on frivolous research.”

So while critics in Texas say those efficiency-based reforms threaten the very thing that’s made the state’s public universities great, Perry’s unlikely to face much criticism for his views on higher ed from an opponent within his own party.

“I think there’s this frustration with Congress not doing anything about the job issue and a lot of partisan fighting, and I certainly want to be a a problem solver, not a partisan fighter,” she said.

Vilsack, an Ames Democrat and former first lady, said every family is having those conversations, and the occupy demonstrators are just expressing that in a more “vocal” way.

“We have real issues here,” she said. “People are underemployed, they’re unemployed, there are young people at [Iowa State University] today who may be going to graduate school simply because they don’t have any other opportunities and incurring debt because of that.”

One of the things people are upset about is what Vilsack called a “Main Street/Wall Street disconnect.”

“I think there’s also frustration with…how these companies got away with not giving back or somehow corporate executives still getting huge bonuses,” she said.

Students should not be left on the “government dole,” he said in one debate, when they could be in “institutions of higher learning, paying in-state tuition, pursuing citizenship.”

In Texas the law was passed with overwhelming support from the legislature, and twelve other states around the country have passed similar laws — which can reduce a student’s cost of attending college by thousands of dollars — based on similar rationale.

A recent study by the UCLA North American Integration and Development Center estimated the total earnings of federal DREAM Act beneficiaries over the course of their working lives would be between $1.4 trillion and $3.6 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office also estimates that the DREAM Act would “would reduce deficits by about $1.4 billion over the 2011-2020 period.”

But two University of Houston researchers have found the Texas law has led to few real economic gains for undocumented immigrants in the decade since it was passed.

“Unchanged federal policy on financial aid and legalization for undocumented students may dampen the state laws’ benefits,” UH economics professors Aimee Chin and Chinhui Juhn write in the 2010 study. Those benefits are so small the impact isn’t even unmeasurable, the study says.

In an interview with the Texas Independent, Chin said that by “peeling away the causal relationship of the impact of the law,” the authors of the study thought they’d “get big effects.” Instead, she said, they were “surprised we didn’t find more of an increase in enrollment.”

In an environment where undocumented students can’t gain citizenship, “the return on investment is relatively slow,” said Chin. The economic impact is minimal because it would be difficult for employees to justify hiring undocumented workers with bachelor’s degrees.

According to Chin, the “current debate about these laws providing in-state tuition for undocumented students is not really about the costs and benefits of the laws themselves, and more about sentiments about immigration.” Strong opinions and emotions have colored the debate, and people base “their opinions about immigration rather than based on the empirical evidence on the policy”

“Obviously politics cannot be taken out of policy-making decisions, but I do hope that on the margin, policy makers will consider scientifically rigorous evidence when making decisions,” said Chin.

Maria Fernanda Cabello, an undocumented student at Texas A&M University, told the Huffington Post that while she’s “thankful that he signed the in-state tuition into law,” his lack of support for a federal version has left them “kind of in limbo.” This echoed the sentiments from other Aggies in interviews with the Texas Independent.

Without a pathway to citizenship, they say, Perry’s defense of in-state tuition for undocumented students falls flat.

We must say to every Texas child learning in a Texas classroom, “we don’t care where you come from, but where you are going, and we are going to do everything we can to help you get there.” And that vision must include the children of undocumented workers. That’s why Texas took the national lead in allowing such deserving young minds to attend a Texas college at a resident rate. Those young minds are a part of a new generation of leaders, the doors of higher education must be open to them. The message is simple: educacion es el futuro, y si se puede.

Complete with a Spanish “yes we can,” that speech used rhetoric very similar to language from Democratic politicians today to support the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act — otherwise known as the DREAM Act.

Perry signed House Bill 1403 into law a few months earlier, effectively granting undocumented immigrants in Texas the ability to receive in-state tuition at publicly funded colleges and universities.

A decade later, that law is the centerpiece of growing conservative criticism of Perry’s record as Texas governor.

While the law has been compared to the federal version of the proposed DREAM Act, the Texas version has significant differences. The law requires student to reside in Texas with a parent while attending high school, and graduate from a high school or receive a GED in Texas after living in the state for at least three years.

An amendment by Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) requires students to sign an affidavit indicating they will apply for permanent resident status as soon as they can — a measure similar to the federal bill.

The federal DREAM Act, though, is much larger in scope, and requires much more of undocumented students hoping to qualify. The bill’s most recent incarnation requires students to prove that they arrived in the United States before their 16th birthday, and requires them to register for the military draft. There is also the so-called “good moral character” requirement, a sort of criminal background check.

The Texas bill was introduced by former state Rep. Rick Noriega (D-Houston), who would run an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate against Sen. John Cornyn six years later. Noriega had 19 co-authors on his bill, which passed unanimously through the House Higher Education Committee, where nobody testified against the bill.

State Rep. Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) was the only House member to vote against the bill, joined by Mike Jackson (R- Flower Mound), Jane Nelson (R- Denton), and Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) in the Senate.

Lately, Perry has made a point of mentioning how little resistance the bill met at the time.

As the Texas Independent reported in 2010, Noriega said the passed thanks to “the efforts of a very large coalition of businesses, chambers of commerce and advocacy groups. The lone voice in opposition would always be the anti-immigrant community.”

The support for the bill was bipartisan, including some of the staunchest immigration opponents the Capitol has to offer — even state Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler), who’s known for far-right positions on undocumented immigrants, Sharia law and the enduring mystery of President Obama’s birth certificate.

But other Republicans have grilled Perry in presidential debates over the Texas version of the DREAM Act. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said he “just can’t follow” the argument for offering in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants, calling it a “$100,000 discount if you’re illegal aliens,” and a “magnet” that draws people into the country.

According to the Dallas Morning News, last year Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board reported that 12,138 undocumented students, or about one percent of all Texas college students, received in-state tuition.

As the Teas Independent reported, even Texas’ Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst piled onto the criticism of the 2001 law, saying that he “would not have signed that law.”
The National Review Online’s The Corner blog called the Texas law “mini-amnesty.”

Perry defended the Texas law during last week’s Fox News/Google debate. “I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said, if you would limit access to education for people who’ve come to the country through “no fault of their own.”

Meanwhile, Perry also opposes a federal DREAM Act, sticking to his 10th Amendment guns, saying the federal law is “just amnesty and I’m not for amnesty.”

Today, Texas’ Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst piled onto the criticism of the 2001 law in an interview with Dallas TV station WFAA:

“If we’re not going to give fellow Americans who live in Louisiana or Oklahoma or New Mexico the ability to come into Texas and have in-state tuition and save, then is it fair to give that break to people who are not citizens here?” he said. “So, I would not have signed that law.”

WFAA’s Brad Watson points out that Dewhurst was elected in 2002, a year after Texas passed the bill authored by former state Rep. Rick Noriega (D-Houston), who left the Texas Legislature to mount an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate.

Dewhurst is in a big race of his own now — the front-runner in a field vying to replace Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison — and breaking with Perry over the in-state tuition law can only help him among a tea party movement that’s made him something of a punching bag so far — for passing up appearances at senate candidate forums, and for failing to push through tighter immigration measures in this year’s legislative session.

The law, a precursor to the proposed federal Dream Act, has met a slew of challenges in Texas over the last year, including a lawsuit in Houston and a resolution from the Texas A&M University student senate — as the Texas Independent reported in 2010 — and bills in the Texas Legislature to roll back the 2001 law.

As the Austin American Statesman’s Jason Embry points out this morning, Dewhurst may not be supporting the law today, but if he was interested in taking a strong stand against it last session, he sure had the chance:

It’s worth noting that Sen. Brian Birdwell filed a bill to repeal that in-state tuition law just this year in the Senate, where Dewhurst is the presiding office. The bill, Senate Bill 1631, was referred to the Higher Education Committee, chaired by Democratic Sen. Judith Zaffirini. It was heard but never emerged from that committee.