I get the point of having a system, I just don't get the point of having a grad school being independent, nor the idea of having 2 campuses under the same system so close together.
Isn't there a UT Dallas? Or is it named that but outside of the city proper? I'm legitimately asking, not being a jackass.
I could get it if there were campuses further spread apart. Like UNT, UNT Wichita Falls, UNT Tyler, etc. (I'm just throwing out random places in the northern part of the state). But Dallas is legitimately 35 miles away, why not just make it a satellite campus of UNT? That's what the University of Rhode Island does, there is the main campus, and then a campus in Providence about 25 miles away from the main one. In fact, a lot of schools do that. Wouldn't having a campus in Dallas that is part of regular UNT be more beneficial? More class locations, more room for students, more opportunities, more people being interested and able to go to the school because of the extra location...there are a lot of great things. Maybe down the line, once it's established, it can be separated into it's own institution. But I just don't see how making a random new school in Dallas that has no history, no tradition, etc., is beneficial.
UT Dallas is in Richardson about 3 miles north of the city of dallas proper
there is already a UT Tyler as well.....and Midwestern in Wichita Falls
the reason that unT dallas exist is because the idiots that run south dallas wanted to waste state higher education resources to create toilet scrubbing jobs and floor sweeping jobs for their voters that have not even graduated high school......it had nothing at all to do with higher education or lack of available or affordable higher education in dallas proper or in south dallas it never has and never will.....it was nothing more than a plan to get on the higher education dollar gravy machine and to try and get some of that for an area that has nothing going for it and never will have much going for it in the hopes that it would spur something else that would employ the unemployable and the uneducated and the unwilling
it already is a seperate university that happened in 2009...the reason they want it apart from the campus in Denton is so they can get away from any type of actual accountibility and so they can get away from anyone that would view it as the total and complete failure that it is
in 2009 they had an enrollment of 2,109 in 2010 it was 2,084 and in 2011 it was 2032......so enrollment has declined every year since it went independent of the Denton campus......quite a success story.....and this is in spite of the fact that the "system" "tightened their belt" and built their second classroom building bigger than it needed to be without state approval or state funding knowing full well that "the system" might never get state funding for the bonds to build that building bigger than the state was willing to fund......but it was a "calculated gamble" (with Denton students money no less)
the FTEs (full time enrollment equivalents) which is a student taking 15 hours have gone from 999.07 in 2009 to 1052.73 in 2010 to 1109.82 in 2011 so they have gotten students to take more hours, but they are still pretty much a 100% part time university......with all the overhead and administration of a full time university and with a building they built larger than needed on a "calculated gamble"
at the time it was started UTA was actually on a several year string of declining enrollment and the requirements for unT-dallas to become a freestanding university were 3,500 FTEs......that was lowered several years later to 2,500 and then to 1,000 which they finally were able to meet in 2009 about 6 years after they projected they would meet the 3,500 requirement.....and along the way they were also repremanded by the THECB for trying to double count Denton students as dallas students as well to bump up the FTEs to get to the twice reduced 1,000
as of now they are trying to agrue with the State of Texas that DCCD students that take classes at unT-dallas because of the abundance of available and unused space should be counted as unT-dallas students as well since "they are here right!" and they should get state funding for those students as well.....the states answer was to mock them and laugh at them and explain to them that DCCD students are already funded and the fact that dallas has space for them just shows what a failure they have been in their goal of being an actual university VS a state funded, two year, part time, community college
the entire thing was an exercise in wasting education dollars and wasting "system" students (see Denton) tuition dollars as well and it was nothing more than a failed economic development exercise guised as meeting a "need" for higher education that never existed
