Looking Back and Forward
20 Years of South Texas Initiative Educational Achievements

Dr. Deborah Santiago

"Ignorance abatement" had a lot to do with overturning inequities in higher educational opportunities across the bottom third of Texas during the 1980s.

That was the winning tactic described in Uvalde last Friday by a panel of former activists who helped opened the gates for Hispanic students to earn respected college degrees close to home.

"We were seen as 'them,' not 'us,'" said Dr. Deborah Santiago, a Washington D.C. policy analyst who recalled the struggle to not only drop educational barriers in the Borderlands region, but to overturn cultural misperceptions and out-of-date political standards that had been in existence since the beginnings of the Texas educational system in the mid-1800s.

Dr. Santiago was one of three distinguished lecturers invited to Rio Grande College to offer a 20-year retrospective on educational reforms stemming from the South Texas Initiative. She was joined by Dr. Norma Cantu, a former civil rights attorney-turned-law professor whose bulldog grip to lessen the odds against Texas Hispanics getting college degrees helped win a huge legislative appropriation to upgrade college and university programs south of a line from El Paso to Corpus Christi.

Many of the arguments about geographic disparities in higher learning that Cantu brought to the landmark 1987 court case, LULAC v. (Gov. Ann) Richards, were based on research data compiled by Dr. Leo Sayavedra, a longtime South Texas educator.

Recently retired as the president of Texas A&M International University, Sayavedra recalled his efforts to become familiar the structure of power and educational policy-making in Austin. He spoke of not only encountering naivety and ignorance in political circles about the lack of higher-level educational programs available to South Texans, but downright opposition to the principle of raising learning programs in the region to par with the offerings of institutions north of Interstate 10.

"We also deserved a piece of the pie," said Sayavedra, who recalled not being able to enter the first grade until he was aged 12, due the need to help his parents, migrant farm workers. By the time he was 22, Sayavedra had earned his degree from Trinity University in San Antonio. He was later one of only three Hispanic graduate-degree recipients from the University of Texas at Austin.

Although the trial overturned the LULAC's assertion that racial discrimination was at the core of South Texas' educational injustices, the jury did note that the state had failed to establish a first-class system of colleges and universities across the broad region.

Sayavedra recalled that before the goals of the South Texas Initiative were realized, per capita expenditures for students at the flagship institutions above Interstate 10 averaged about $295, while only $69 was applied per student enrolled in South Texas' scattered colleges and universities. "We'd always been separate but seldom equal," Sayavedra quipped.

The Texas legislature took the rulings of the Brownsville case as a wakeup call and okayed the appropriations of up to $450 million to expand educational facilities and degree programs. The funds were divided between three of the state's major university systems which had already brought existing South Texas institutions to their umbrella.

Sul Ross State University used its share of the funding to create three new campus buildings and expand degree programs for Rio Grande College. The University of Texas took under its wings Pan American College at Edinburg, Texas Southmost College at Brownsville and The University of Texas at El Paso. Meanwhile, the former Texas A&I University, Corpus Christi State University and Laredo State University consolidated into the Texas A&M University system. At each of these institutions, enrollments skyrocketed.

"In the Hispanic community, if the woman has a college degree you can guarantee that her kids will also go to college," said Dr. Sayavedra.

According to Dr. Santiago the now burgeoning South Texas institutions rank in the nation's top ten for Hispanic enrollments. She stated that the region's colleges and universities are registering 90 percent increases in undergraduate degrees, while statewide the rate is only about 40 percent.

"The institutions that flourished out of the South Texas Initiative are trendsetters, far ahead of the curve," she declared. "What the State of Texas has achieved (in advancing South Texas education) is of importance to everyone in the nation," added Santiago.

Dr. Joel Vela, RGC vice president, took Santiago's cue to boast that his College is the second largest producer of Mexican-American teachers in Texas. Likewise, he stated that RGC's education graduates have the highest (99 percent) course passing rate of any border institutions.

Looking ahead, speakers at the forum stressed the need for more professional schools, like the pharmacy college that has opened at Texas A&M/Kingsville. More options for master's degrees and more diversification undergraduate programs were also cited.

Sayavedra concluded his talk by urging all citizens to become active stakeholders in seeing that South Texas higher education achieves these goals.

"Everyone needs to be involved…especially in politics," he advised. "You gotta catch (politicians) in the halls, in the backrooms and in the boardrooms and make your argument something they'll want to support."