Texas Tech University has raised $1 billion in its quest to become the state's next Tier One school, an elite academic status the university says it's close to achieving.
The university has raised more money than any of its competitors-- the University of Houston, the University of North Texas, Texas State University and the University of Texas campuses in Arlington, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio-- and would be the state's fourth Tier One school, The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported.
While no designation has been announced, the university posted a booklet online saying it's "well on its way" to receiving the designation. But no timetable was given.
To reach the overall "Tier One" ranking, a university must show elite academics and research activities and receive the designation from several academic institutions, including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Association of American Universities, or AAU. The AAU is a consortium of 62 leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada.
Texas Tech chancellor Robert Duncan said that the designation is a "concept that has a lot of different meanings," but that the university has adopted a strategy to be more "AAU-like."
Texas Tech President Duane Nellis echoed those sentiments, telling the newspaper that "on many criteria we are reaching Tier One level, but to be more AAU-like we still have some more things we need to improve on as far as the size of our graduate program."
While state officials lament that Texas only has three overall Tier One universities --The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M at College Station and privately owned Rice University in Houston -- they say several others, such as Texas Tech, are moving closer to the elite designation. The University of Houston was named a Tier One school for research activity in 2011 by Carnegie, but it still needed designations then from other institutions for an overall classification.
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UT San Antonio president Ricardo Romo told the newspaper his school also is "making great progress toward Tier One," pointing out that the university has been recognized in world rankings.
