Rep. Alonzo Advocates Against State-Wide Hiring Freeze for Universities

Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas   This state-wide hiring freeze will be detrimental to the cultivation of knowledge across the state. This freeze will create a vacuum of talent both in faculty and students. Texas universities compete with universities across the nation to recruit and hire the most prominent and best qualified candidates from around the globe. If our universities cannot secure these valuable candidates they will be hired elsewhere which may in turn drive potential students away and damage university reputations. Universities ability to fill the demand for newly popular majors and newly vacated positions will also be diminished. Popularity for any given college major changes frequently and colleges have to hire as the growth occurs. This freeze will cause students in growing majors and common majors to be underserved by a shrinking staff. Concurrently this will damage their educational experience making them less competitive in the job market than their counterparts who were educated by a properly staffed department. The ability to acquire and hire the best minds is a crucial component to the success of our state and higher education institutions. The current hiring freeze would force Texas schools to lose their competitive edge and damage their reputations as some of the premier higher education institutions in the world.