At a conference put on by the Texas Public Policy Foundation — whose recommendations for restructuring higher education include emphasizing teaching and less research — senior fellow Ronald Trowbridge told the audience that 21,674 scholarly articles were published on William Shakespeare from 1980 to 2006, and asked:
“Do we need the 21,675th?”
University of Texas President William Powers Jr. reply, as cited by The Statesman:
Yes, we do.
“It’s very hard to know today what (research) is going to be valuable in the future.”
He has called on the Board of Regents to protect research on the Austin campus.