Higher Education

Kenneth Ashworth wrote a commentary piece about how the state would be foolish to abolish higher education board.  Ashworth is the former commissioner of the board, and because of this his argument seems to have some legitimacy to it.  He argues that if this board is abolished, then all the state funded schools, (which are funded according to student population) will open more, lower quality classes, in order to get more funding.  This will lead not only to lower education levels, but Ashworth thinks that many institutions will ‘overlap’ and offer many of the same classes, milking the resources of the undergraduates, to offer better programs for graduate degrees. Ashworth states that tuition rates would increase, which would cause higher learning to become even more inaccessible to the Texas general public.  All this seems like is cutting funding from one place, and expecting it to come out of the pockets of the public.  I would hate to see education in Texas drop any more quality than it already has, especially at the cost of the students who are trying to better themselves through their education.