History and Mission Statements

On January 22, 2004, Governor Perry issued Executive Order RP 31 requiring the Coordinating Board and each institution and system work together to provide “the information necessary to determine the effectiveness and quality of the education students receive at individual institutions” also to provide “… the basis to evaluate the institutions’ use of state resources.”

The Texas Accountability System for public higher education provides data for 35 public universities, nine health-related institutions, the four Texas State Technical Colleges and three two-year Lamar State Colleges. The state’s community colleges were added to the System in early 2005. The System currently has three essential components:

• Key Accountability Measures. A small number of key accountability measures were identified for each goal. There are five categories of accountability measures (Participation, Success, Excellence, Research, and Institutional Effectiveness and Efficiencies) for the general academic and two-year institutions. Health-related institutions include an additional area for patient care.
  
  
• Contextual/explanatory Measures. Additional measures are included to help place the key accountability measures in context and/or to better describe the efforts of each institution.
  
  
• Institutional explanation and description. Each institution was given the opportunity to provide further information or explanation. Each institution was also given the opportunity to add one or two additional measures.

Institutions have been grouped for "like" comparisons. The groups will be neither permanent nor prescriptive and will be reviewed every two years to reflect institutional changes as well as changing higher education needs.

University and health-related institution groups agreed on group targets for 10 of the key accountability measures. In most cases, each group's targets are set as a percentage increase/decrease by fall 2007 from the current level of each institution in that group. Fall 2004 data is used for the base for targets included in this document. Exceptions:

• Graduation rate is percentage point increase
  
  
• FTE Student/FTE Faculty is point decrease
  
  
• Space utilization is hours per week
  
  
• Health-Related Institution certification pass rates are set to a standard

Each institution’s progress for those measures is shown.

Community colleges measures were revised in 2006, and group targets were set in December 2006.

University and Health-Related Institutions' Mission Statements