What is the highest state/public university tuition in Texas?

This is for Texas Residents/College Students: are your colleges and universities going down hill?

• I'm considering relocating to Austin, Texas (or San Antonio) after nursing school. My parents are getting old and sick and I have a sixteen-year-old brother who lives with them and might need some guidance himself as he approaches college age. My family lives in a shithole, dead-end, ghetto town in Florida called Bradenton (or Bradentucky as the locals call it). I refuse to live there, or anywhere in the state of Florida for that matter. But, oddly enough, I really dig Texas and I think Austin or San Antonio would be awesome Texan cities to live in that are relatively close to Florida. I already know that Texans value the whole "surivial of the fittest" thing, and that its schools are usually populated by white students with rich parents who can afford all the tuition, books, and living expenses out-of-pocket. If I move to Austin or San Antonio, I plan to finish my medical education (pharmacy, nurse practitioner - haven't decided yet), but I'm concerned that Texas schools have become flooded by immigrants and competitive students to the point where they're "hypercompetitive." Out here in Oregon for example, getting into any nursing program is what getting into medical school was like 20 years ago - it's THAT bad. You more or less need straight As in all your prerequisite courses in order to compete - and book smarts usually don't mean you're going to make a good nurse. In fact, I'd argue the opposite but that's just me. If I go through all the trouble of relocating to Central Texas to be geographically closer to my ailing family (who live in Florida - yes, it's a long flight but considerably shorter than Oregon), am I going to face a "hypercompetitive" school culture (again this would be for medical programs in Texas like pharmacy and/or advanced nursing programs) with long waiting lists, hundreds of applicants for few spots, immigrants, slashed budgets, etc? One of my chief concerns about Austin is that all of the IT workers who are currently losing their jobs will be turning to the health care professions because it's one of the last "frontiers" in employment, and they'll be competing with less entitled, resource-rich, and monied students for coveted spots in programs. Would some of you Texas residents who are familiar with the college and university systems in Central Texas (chiefly Austin and San Antonio) help me put all this into perspective realistically. Is your college/university system overburdened right now, or is it still accessible to the average joe? BTW: I'm not blasting immigrants - I know a lot of Mexican people come north to American for educational advancement and I think that's wonderful. But the migration adds to the bulk of students competing for funding, resources, and college admissions - as does the slew of white, laid-off IT workers switching careers for job security. I love Texas and hope to live there some day but want to make sure there are opportunities for advancement before I decide to relocate.

• Answer:

  UT San Antonio is a lot easier to get into and a lot less competitive than UT Austin. It's also a lot crappier. I also think Austin is a way cooler city. UT is pretty bad with financial Aid (once again, more likely to get money from San Antonio than Austin) but tuition is not that expensive. I think it's considered one of the best values in the country for being such a great school (UT Austin). Undergrad semester is like 4k. Other schools in Austin that I'm familiar with are ACC and St. Eds. I don't know anything about their nursing programs though. St. Eds is really expensive, though. And UT is not that diversified. It is mostly rich white kids from small towns but the school and professors are awesome. It's not super hypercompetitive once you get it. There's a lot of very lazy students who still graduate. Also, have you considered Houston? It's really really big on hospitals and medicines so it would definitely be easy for you get a job there once you graduate. I think it has a lot of nursing schools too. It's a big city but if you find the right places to go and live, it can be pretty awesome.