Texas Association of College Teachers
5750 Balcones Drive, Suite 201 Austin, Texas 78731
Phone: (512) 873-7404  Fax: (512) 873-7423  E-mail address: tact@bizaustin.rr.com

With the Spring TCFS/TACT Conference coming up February 17-18, I wanted to drop you a personal invitation to join me for our semi-annual legislative visits to meet with elected representatives and their staffs about issues important to us as faculty.  I have enclosed our most recent, but always changing, short list of issues. 

As the first activity of the Spring Conference, we will buy your breakfast at the Crowne Plaza Hotel February 17 in Austin at 8:00am.  From there, we will travel to the Capitol to meet selected individuals in small teams.  Let our staff know if you would like for us to set a meeting with your legislator.  

If you are not able to be with us, please consider joining or re-joining TACT by clicking here or seeing attached.  We need your support, and every membership includes the Educators Professional Liability Insurance, which is an essential component in the turbulent waters of higher education.

I hope to see you at the conference.

Sincerely,

Peter Hugill, Ph.D., President

Professor of Geography

Texas A&M University at College Station

1.     Faculty Salaries.  Salaries in Texas are lower than the average of the ten most populous states.  (See 2011 AAUP study)  Also, enrollment in public universities in Texas has grown by more than 260,000 over the past three years. (Texas Tribune, Oct 27, 2011)

2.     Higher Education Funding should be a priority: the current biennium saw a 9.3% decrease in G.R. funding.  Texas GRANTS was cut by $55 million.  We cannot expect to increase the number of Texas university graduates while simultaneously slashing the Higher Education budget.

3.     Texas Retirement System.  TACT wants to maintain the solvency of the system, maintaining current benefits and allowing for cost of living increases.  The latest budget dropped the contribution levels to the constitutional minimum of 6%.   TACT opposes reform ideas that would take the guaranteed money of a pension and transfer it to a 401(k) type plan.

4.        TACT is concerned about some of the recent higher education reform ideas.  TACT is open to higher education reform but it must be done with faculty input (such as the AAUP criteria recently put in place at the University of Texas), not by think tanks whose only motivations are fiscally based.