“I believe that children are the future….” So goes one of the 1990s most cloying, yet irritatingly catchy songs. “Teach them well, and let them find the way….” I’ll bet the treacle melody is already running through your head right now. Hard to get out, isn’t it? Try slapping a classical CD into your PC—Mozart, maybe. Let good music drive out the bad.

Still, the sentiment is sound. And like most clichés (such as “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”) it’s anchored in the truth. Such simple realities, which are easily obscured by ideology, don’t go away just because we hide our eyes.

Careful parents know that the help they give their children in choosing a college will make a profound difference in how they turn out—in the development of their souls as well as their scholarship or success. That’s why millions of dollars are spent every year on tutors, SAT preps, campus visits, expensive applications, and 1000-page college guides. But too few of these resources address what is really the central question of college education—what does a given school teach, how well, and why? That is what we try to do in Choosing the Right College, a regular publication of Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Serious high school students also want to know what College best fits their interests.

In the current edition of Choosing the Right College, which I edit, over 130 schools are covered in greater depth than you’ll find anywhere else. Here is what we have to say about Texas schools which are covered. They are in alphabetical order:

This Installment:  Texas A&M University

This school has undergone rapid changes during the last 40 years, none greater than in 1963, when the college converted itself from an all-male military academy to a full-fledged coeducational university. But Texas A&M, which every year hosts a traditional candlelight “Aggie muster” ceremony, has retained much from its military-school past. The university still sponsors the Corps of Cadets, which, with 2,000 members, is the largest uniformed body of students outside the three U.S. service academies. And it is still in agriculture and mechanics that the university excels. However, A&M is actively attempting to improve its liberal arts programs.

The agricultural and engineering programs at Texas A&M have been and remain among the finest on campus. Roughly 20 percent of the undergraduate population majors in some type of engineering. Virtually every engineering program offered, from aerospace to petroleum, ranks among the top 20 in the nation, and several are among the top five.

The university’s offerings in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are certainly extensive. A student interested in this area can even major in somewhat obscure fields like agricultural journalism, dairy science, or wildlife and fisheries sciences. The College of Veterinary Medicine is widely considered to be one of the most advanced in America .

In 2000, the college was the birthplace of the first animal specifically cloned for disease resistance. (For the record, we’re not at all convinced that this is cause for rejoicing.) After testing hundreds of cattle, Bull 86 was found to be naturally disease-resistant to brucellosis, and resistant to tuberculosis and salmonellosis under laboratory conditions. Cells from Bull 86 were used to produce a genetic clone, Bull 86 ² . Since then, Texas A&M researchers have also cloned goats, pigs, and cats, making the university the “first academic institution in the world to have cloned four different species,” according to the university. Happily, the Texas legislature seems likely to ban human cloning—setting at least some limit to the mad science practiced at College Station .

The university’s former president, Ray Bowen, left the helm in 2002 to take a faculty position in mechanical engineering. He was replaced by Robert M. Gates, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the early ‘90s. Bowen’s departure and Gates’s arrival were welcomed by many at the university. Bowen had made several moves that some alumni thought were aimed at conforming A&M to the progressivism often characteristic of elite public universities, such as Bowen’s Vision 2020 report, a set of 12 recommendations designed to make Texas A&M one of the top 10 public universities in the nation by the year 2020. One of the goals posited by the plan was to “diversify and globalize the A&M community.”

To achieve this result, Bowen adopted a “plan that will require students to take six hours of international or cultural diversity classes.” Conservatives contend that the plan was implemented merely to pacify critics who say that A&M students suffer from their culturally - deficient surroundings. One conservative student says that the multiculturalism requirement is “just one step in a larger plan to sacrifice the values that make A&M special” for greater academic reputation and prestige. The student follows this assertion with the worst accusation one can make against an A&M president: “He wants to make us just like the University of Texas .”

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