At the very top state institutions, like UCLA, Berkeley and the University of Texas, however, the trend of downward minority enrollment remains persistent and discouraging.
I'm very proud of what we've done with the State University and the City University. They're totally different institutions than they were when I took office.
But very early in life I became part of the majority culture and now don't think of myself as a minority. Yet the university said I was one. Anybody who has met a real minority - in the economic sense, not the numerical sense - would understand how ridiculous it is to describe a young man who is already at the university, already well into his studies in Italian and English Renaissance literature, as a minority.
I have a bunch of friends at the University of California at Berkeley, so that's always a fun drive. Last summer I took five road trips to Berkeley. It's so beautiful. I like to take the scenic routes and make stops along the way.
Increasing postsecondary enrollment and success, particularly among first-generation, low-income, and minority students, is good for students and our state's economy.
Every show on television has a downward trend because there are so many more things to watch. You can only deal with what is the benchmark of a hit series and 'Survivor' clearly remains a hit series.
Coaching at Texas and playing at the University of Oklahoma, I had the opportunity to see a lot of guys in Texas - Texas lettermen - who I played against.
Our trend in the privatization process and gradual withdrawal of the state from certain assets remains unchanged.
To give you an idea about how old I'm getting, we had some family living in Texas for a while, and we went to the Texas museum at the University of Texas in Austin, and they had this whole Texas Instruments section, and my Speak & Spell was an exhibit in the museum.
Many university presidents assume the language and behavior of CEOs and in doing so they are completely reneging on the public mission of the universities. The state is radically defunding public universities and university presidents, for the most part, rather than defending higher education as a public good, are trying to privatize their institutions in order to remove them from the political control of state governments. This is not a worthy or productive strategy.
My father is Nigerian; my mother is from Texas and African-American. My father was the first in his family to go to university. He flew from Nigeria to Los Angeles in the '70s to go to UCLA, where he met my mother. They broke up before I was born, and he returned to Nigeria.
We can all be grateful that there is a place like (University of) North Texas! North Texas has been unique among schools in the country that offer jazz studies . . . quality!
Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.
A lot of my family is from Texas, stuff like that, so I was always in Texas, and when you grow up in Texas, around Texas, you want to go to the biggest Texas school, and UT was that.
Texas history is a varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive.
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
Look, I still think Texas is a - is a red state. It's going to continue to be a red state. I think as people stay more time in Texas, they become red. They see what, you know, Texas, kind of low tax, you know, a pro-business economy is doing for them as well. It's a well-run state.