Rising to tier one will take time, money, political will

All seven candidates — the University of Houston, Texas Tech University, the University of North Texas and the University of Texas System campuses at Arlington, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio — all need to pump up research expenditures, academic competitiveness of faculty members and students, endowments and other benchmarks before they could be considered the likes of UT-Austin and Texas A&M University.

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