University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin, informally UT Austin, UT, University of Texas, or Texas in sports contexts,  is a public research university and the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. Founded in 1881 as "The University of Texas," its campus is in Austin, Texas—approximately 1 mile (1,600 m) from the Texas State Capitol. The institution has the fifth-largest single-campus enrollment in the nation, with over 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and over 24,000 faculty and staff. The university has been labeled one of the "Public Ivies," a publicly funded university considered to provide a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League. 

UT Austin was inducted into the American Association of Universities in 1929, becoming only the third university in the American South to be elected. It is a major center for academic research, with research expenditures exceeding $550 million for the 2013–2014 school year. The university houses seven museums and seventeen libraries, including the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum and the Blanton Museum of Art, and operates various auxiliary research facilities, such as the J. J. Pickle Research Campus and the McDonald Observatory. Among university faculty are recipients of the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Emmy Award, and the National Medal of Science, as well as many other awards.

UT Austin student athletes compete as the Texas Longhorns and are members of the Big 12 Conference. Its Longhorn Network is unique in that it is the only sports network featuring the college sports of a single university. The Longhorns have won four NCAA Division I National Football Championships, six NCAA Division I National Baseball Championships and has claimed more titles in men's and women's sports than any other school in the Big 12 since the league was founded in 1996. Current and former UT Austin athletes have won 130 Olympic medals (73 gold, 37 silver, and 20 bronze), including 14 in Beijing in 2008 and 13 in London in 2012.

The first mention of a public university in Texas can be traced to the 1827 constitution for the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Although Title 6, Article 217 of that Constitution promised to establish public education in the arts and sciences,  no action was taken by the Mexican government. After Texas obtained its independence from Mexico in 1836, the Texas Congress adopted the Constitution of the Republic, which, under Section 5 of its General Provisions, stated "It shall be the duty of Congress, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide, by law, a general system of education." On April 18, 1838, "An Act to Establish the University of Texas" was referred to a special committee of the Texas Congress, but was not reported back for further action.  On January 26, 1839, the Texas Congress agreed to set aside fifty leagues of land (approx. 288,000 acres) towards the establishment of a publicly funded university.  In addition, 40 acres (160,000 m2) in the new capital of Austin were reserved and designated "College Hill." (The term "Forty Acres" is colloquially used to refer to the University as a whole. The original forty acres is the area from Guadalupe to Speedway and 21st Street to 24th Street 

In 1845, Texas was annexed into the United States. Interestingly, the state's Constitution of 1845 failed to mention the subject of higher education.  On February 11, 1858, the Seventh Texas Legislature approved O.B. 102, an act to establish the University of Texas, which set aside $100,000 in United States bonds toward construction of the state's first publicly funded university  (the $100,000 was an allocation from the $10 million the state received pursuant to the Compromise of 1850 and Texas' relinquishing claims to lands outside its present boundaries). In addition, the legislature designated land reserved for the encouragement of railroad construction toward the university's endowment. On January 31, 1860, the state legislature, wanting to avoid raising taxes, passed an act authorizing the money set aside for the University of Texas to be used for frontier defense in west Texas to protect settlers from Indian attacks.  Texas' secession from the Union and the American Civil War delayed repayment of the borrowed monies. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, The University of Texas' endowment consisted of a little over $16,000 in warrants  and nothing substantive had been done to organize the university's operations. This effort to establish a University was again mandated by Article 7, Section 10 of the Texas Constitution of 1876 which directed the legislature to "establish, organize and provide for the maintenance, support and direction of a university of the first class, to be located by a vote of the people of this State, and styled "The University of Texas." Additionally, Article 7, Section 11 of the 1876 Constitution established the Permanent University Fund, a sovereign wealth fund managed by the Board of Regents of the University of Texas and dedicated for the maintenance of the university. Because some state legislators perceived an extravagance in the construction of academic buildings of other universities, Article 7, Section 14 of the Constitution expressly prohibited the legislature from using the state's general revenue to fund construction of university buildings. Funds for constructing university buildings had to come from the university's endowment or from private gifts to the university, but operational expenses for the university could come from the state's general revenues.



The 1876 Constitution also revoked the endowment of the railroad lands of the Act of 1858 but dedicated 1,000,000 acres (4,000 km2) of land, along with other property appropriated for the university, to the Permanent University Fund. This was greatly to the detriment of the university as the lands granted the university by the Constitution of 1876 represented less than 5% of the value of the lands granted to the university under the Act of 1858 (the lands close to the railroads were quite valuable while the lands granted the university were in far west Texas, distant from sources of transportation and water). The more valuable lands reverted to the fund to support general education in the state (the Special School Fund). On April 10, 1883, the legislature supplemented the Permanent University Fund with another 1,000,000 acres of land in west Texas previously granted to the Texas and Pacific Railroad but returned to the state as seemingly too worthless to even survey.  The legislature additionally appropriated $256,272.57 to repay the funds taken from the university in 1860 to pay for frontier defense and for transfers to the state's General Fund in 1861 and 1862. The 1883 grant of land increased the land in the Permanent University Fund to almost 2.2 million acres. Under the Act of 1858, the university was entitled to just over 1,000 acres of land for every mile of railroad built in the state. Had the original 1858 grant of land not been revoked by the 1876 Constitution, by 1883 the university lands would have totaled 3.2 million acres, so the 1883 grant was to restore lands taken from the university by the 1876 Constitution, not an act of munificence.

On March 30, 1881, the legislature set forth the structure and organization of the university and called for an election to establish its location. By popular election on September 6, 1881, Austin (with 30,913 votes) was chosen as the site of the main university. Galveston, having come in second in the election (20,741 votes) was designated the location of the medical department (Houston was third with 12,586 votes).  On November 17, 1882, on the original "College Hill," an official ceremony was held to commemorate the laying of the cornerstone of the Old Main building. University President Ashbel Smith, presiding over the ceremony prophetically proclaimed "Texas holds embedded in its earth rocks and minerals which now lie idle because unknown, resources of incalculable industrial utility, of wealth and power. Smite the earth, smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth."  The University of Texas officially opened its doors on September 15, 1883.