Annual Giving Newsletter | Fall 2012
Best in Class The world today is more integrated and offers greater choice and easier mobility than at any time in history. In such a time, it’s more important than ever to understand your own identity and what differentiates you from others. Businesses know this instinctively; whatever makes them special is their “value proposition.” In order to succeed, large, traditional institutions must actively consider their niche — their reason for being — and put laser-focus on being the best within that niche, the best in class. The ecological niche that UT Austin fills is that of the national research university. Becoming the highest expression of that model is our reason for being. The world needs trade schools, community colleges, and good four-year colleges in abundance. But our value to the state and to the world is closely tied to the extent to which we embrace and embody the identity and mission of the national research university.
As a practical matter, this means that we compete for faculty and for students with other national research universities — including private universities. It means we attract research grants at the highest rate. And it means the scholarship that both our faculty and our students produce drives national conversations on important topics. The University of Texas is already the top school in America — public or private — if you want to study accounting. It’s the No. 1 public university if you’re getting a master’s or PhD in education. I want to get so many of our programs into the top ranks of their fields that they pull UT Austin as a whole to the top of the public list. That is when we will know we have realized the vision of the authors of Texas’ constitution. In The University of Texas at Austin, the state of Texas has a treasure and a rare chance that comes along perhaps only once a century to put its flagship
university at the very top. We all have a role to play in making UT Austin best in class. The Campaign for Texas is about this very thing and why your investment in UT is so important. Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to help make us the best.
Hook ’em Horns,
Bill Powers