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Today, it is supposed to be 103 degrees in Austin, Texas. I am so glad not to be in that hair dryer of a town right now. 

Besides avoiding the heat, a pair of Supreme Court rulings about affirmative action and student loan forgiveness from earlier this summer reminded me to be grateful for having entered Austin at the perfect time and, more importantly, exited Austin at the perfect time.

As a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, I’ve been a follower of to undo the college admissions system. Before his success suing Harvard and North Carolina over affirmative action, his first target was the University of Texas.

When Blum first set his sights on UT, the school was a public university that worked for many the way a state school is supposed to work: A great education at a low price. 

The stated mission of the school back then was quintessential Texan: Be the biggest and the best state school in the universe. 

However, Blum and his allies have worked to deprive everyone of the biggest and the best. It is a head-scratching phenomena that so well in the “Sum of Us,” saying once a public good becomes available to all citizens, regardless of race, class and influence, those that once exclusively enjoyed those benefits will work to undermine and destroy that public good so no one gets to benefit.  

Not only did I get a degree and then immediately a job alongside Ivy Leaguers, but the costs were so low that I ended up with the reverse of student loans — I took the unused money my parents set aside for college and started a retirement account. 

It’s hard to imagine that happening in Texas these days and not just because it’s too hot to think about anything besides the heat. 

Here in Hawaii, though, the two Supreme Court rulings are not at the top of our troubles when it comes to higher education. 

Besides the better weather here, one of the (innumerable) reasons I like not being in Texas is that the problems outside of Texas aren’t Texas-sized and are therefore manageable. 

Years ago, I taught at the much smaller Emory University in Atlanta. It’s one of the top private universities in the country and the price tag for the school is exorbitant, exponentially greater than the cost of my UT-Austin education. 

Texas and Georgia have very robust higher education environments. Hawaii simply doesn’t, and that is why the leading off-ramp for so many of our residents is their freshman year of college.

The UH system is essentially a higher education monopoly here in Hawaii. This has allowed state legislators to repeatedly meddle in the school’s affairs and distract from its mission.

As Rep. Amy Perruso wrote this week, “UH has had such difficulty at the Legislature in the past five years or so that its internal governance system is starting to fray and system leadership is less able to fund its new strategic plan and vision. The reality is, we, as legislators, are doing so much more harm than good, and it is time we change our ways.”

Watching the fights in the state government over stupid things like college football stadiums makes me wish for what I saw teaching students at Emory.

Emory kept Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia on their toes, just as Rice does to UT-Austin. It gives students more options for higher education and puts pressure on state institutions to keep up with their neighboring schools. That’s missing here.

Hawaii needs a top-flight nonprofit private research university. 

It’s time to encourage a big player in Hawaii’s educational environment to come off the sidelines and help Hawaii.

Kamehameha Schools has done a good job with starting the pipeline to a meaningful education with their preschool and early childhood education programs. It is time for the pipeline to be extended at the other end.

I’ve been thinking about the benefits of a private research university as I read Given what he wrote about his hometown, the author Malcolm Harris would probably wave his hands and say no, the takeaway from his book should not be to build a school in Stanford’s image. 

Hopefully, a school in Hawaii could be created with an ethos dedicated not to capitalism, like Stanford, but instead to meeting the challenges of the rest of this century and those of the 22nd.

We need a school to reverse the exporting of talent from Hawaii. A private research school that would give Hawaii’s top high school grads another option in their homeland would be a remarkable investment in making sure our islands are prepared for the challenges here and elsewhere in the world.

When I asked Kamehameha Schools if there had been any recent discussions (or restrictions) about getting involved in higher education, Kamehameha Schools said in a statement that Hawaii “already offers excellent higher education opportunities” and that its fosters in students “a deep connection to their cultural heritage” that will eventually call them back to the islands.

“At this time, Kamehameha Schools has no plans to set up an institution for higher education,” the statement said. “We remain focused on delivering world-class educational opportunities though our preschools, K-12 campuses and community partnerships.”

If now is not the time for Kamehameha Schools to answer the call, perhaps there are others who will help create a more diverse and dynamic higher education system here in Hawaii.