10%

Currently there is a bill that, if passed, will eliminate the law that state colleges must admit anyone who is in the top ten percent of their high school. The bill was created because of a high amount of students graduating in the top ten percent of their schools and thus filling up all the freshman slots the colleges had. The bill states that students in the top ten percent will now only make up half of a state college's freshman admissions. 

This editorial by an unnamed author sates that the reason for such a bill is that there are too many students that are graduating in the top ten percent. Said author thinks that to solve this problem we need to build more state colleges. However if we were to do that we'd have even more schools that will need to be funded. The author even states that "Among other definitions, Tier One schools have more than $100 million in yearly research expenditures." Looking back on the article in my previous entry, our state is already grossly underfunded. Why should we build schools that we can't pay for? 

If we increase the number of state colleges they'll just end up like our countless amounts of public schools, underfunded and unable to give people a decent education. Seriously, back when I was in public school we didn't have enough desks for everyone. Hell, we didn't even have up-to-date textbooks. Although oddly enough we had plenty of lockers... I'm not quite sure how that happened.

Funds for Unemployent Are Subpar

As we all know, the current job market has lead to extremely high unemployment rates. Acording to an article by the Austin American Satesman this is causing the state unemplyment fund to pay double what it was paying last year. Not only that but the state unemployment insurance trust fund is not going to have the amount of money it legally needs. In fact it'll  have  $812  million less than what it's supposed to. However, Texas will be able to recive $556 million if they take into account part-time workers and the like. But they will also have to re-calculate the icome of those that have been laid off.