𝗧𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗟𝗢𝗡𝗚 𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪, 𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠𝗘𝗥 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗠𝗔𝗡 𝗙𝗔𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗗 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗧𝗦𝗖 𝗕𝗢𝗔𝗥𝗗 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗘𝗦 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗩𝗘 𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗚𝗘

Juliet V. Garcia in recent years

Without access to a fully-functioning crystal ball, one's words don't always age well.  It's in that spirit that we examine the 2012 statement of David Oliveira,  an administrator for 18 years in what was then known as the University of Texas at Brownsville, now UT-RGV.

To give some context to this story, it must be pointed out that back in 2012 there was an ongoing push, led by UTB President Juliet Garcia, to simply allow Texas Southmost College to be absorbed by UTB and the ultra-rich University of Texas system. 

Such a move would have eliminated TSC, the local vocational/technical/community college and have ceded all its buildings and assets totaling $200,000,000 to one of the richest university systems in the world, the University of Texas.

David Oliveira

UTB administrator David Oliveira spoke out in favor of doing just that, allowing the University of Texas system to simply absorb TSC, its buildings, its assets, reasoning this way:  "We have enough welders. . . . We have enough plumbers. What we need is more people with higher degrees."

Oliveira's statement in 2012 did not age well considering that the soon-to-come advent of SpaceX, the proliferation and development at the Port of Brownsville demanding the very type of craftsmen, welders, plumbers and pipefitters being trained at Texas Southmost College.

Former Congressman Blake Farenthold(on the right)

U.S. Representative Blake Farenthold clearly disagreed with Oliveira's assessment, instead blaming the shrinking of the middle class on the inattention being given to the labor trades.

Farenthold was quoted in the Brownsville Herald:  "We need a renaissance of the middle class worker, people who can work with their hands. . . . We need to be developing our vocational schools because those are the jobs that are going to bring us out of the recession."

A decade later, considering the advent of SpaceX and the proliferation and development of industry at the Port of Brownsville, it seems that Congressman Farenthold's assessment was correct and insightful.