Hey guys, here's the first thread in our SFA Challenges and Opportunities Thread Series. Today we'll be looking answering the question "Who are SFA's peer schools?"

I took a stab at it with a few criteria, so that we have a starting place:


I've broken our peer schools into two categories: Current Peers and Aspirational Peers.

Current Peers: These are the schools that are currently at, or right above our level.

Aspirational Peers: These are the schools we are striving to be, and not purely from an enrollment numbers standpoint. These could be targets based on name recognition, academics, and prestige.

Overall, I'd like to have 10 current peer schools and 5 aspirational peer schools on our list. Now you might be wondering, "I thought this thread was supposed to be about the challenges and opportunities facing SFA". And you are exactly right, but first we need to build a baseline. This peer list will be what we use going forward in this thread series to discuss enrollment rates, demographics, retention rates, endowment size, research dollars, strategic goals, etc. We'll use the historic data and strategic plans of SFA and our peers to help shape our discussions on SFA's challenges and opportunities.

So feel free to make the case for which schools should be included in each part of the list, and why they should be included.

P.S. UT RGV was founded in 2013 from a merger of Pan American and Brownsville UT Campuses. So while they're officially young, they've been around much longer. They merged to get access to those sweet PUF dollars from the UT System.

PPS: I'd really like someone to make the case for why we should include Arkansas, Ole Miss, & Mississippi State in our list of aspirational schools. Check out their enrollment & locations, they're more similar to us than you'd think, but I wanted someone else to have to do the dirty work of convincing all of you.

PPPS: The source of most of this data is Wikipedia. Don't judge me, most of it is cited and it was the most readily available.

SFA is actually a fairly popular and well known school for how small it is. I think the number 1 thing holding SFA back is location.
Nacogdoches is not the easiest place to get to, with the nearest airport being a 2 hour drive away. That's the reason we can't get high major teams in basketball to come to Nacogdoches to play in WRJ, not because they don't want to lose on the road but because it's really hard to justify a trip like that in a game with no reward and all the risk. It's also the same thing that will probably keep us out of a larger athletic conference at least for the foreseeable future.

I think until we get at least a small airport in Lufkin or something, Nacogdoches will always have a bit more trouble than a lot of these other schools when it comes to things like attendance, whereas Sam Houston may continue to grow at a quick pace because it is so close to Houston.

It's just the curse of being in such an isolated east Texas town.

I don't deny that SFA has a unique situation when it comes to geography and population density. However, I think the one main area where an airport holds us back is in scheduling high level basketball teams for home games.

I think it has less of an effect on attendance, atleast to the point where we're the same size school as we were 25 years ago. The trip from our major cities to Nac is the same as the trip to plenty of schools. Dallas to A&M, Austin to Lubbock, Houston to Texas State. And a host of other schools that are as geographically isolated as us. Hello out there Sul Ross!

My goal with this is to find a good group of peers to compare ourselves against, so that we can explore the state of SFA as a university. Are we really relegated to sub 13000 enrollments in perpetuity for a state that's exploding in growth like Texas is?

There are 100+ fbs programs, 300+ D1 basketball schools, hundreds of universities overall in the U.S who are near our size or larger. Let's find out who the best peers to compare ourselves to are so we can make sure we're doing everything to maximize our unique location and brand.

Well Lubbock has an airport.
And Texas State is geographically closer to a larger population than SFA.
Some of those examples have the unfair advantage of already having the "prestigious" reputation that SFA should strive to achieve, but doesn't yet have. People will go out of their way to go to Texas A&M because it is Texas A&M.
Part of it is also the reputation fas or different majors. SFA has absolutely no problem getting nursing students or forestry students from all over the world. Seriously I've met a student from Zimbabwe here for forestry who said that when he decided he wanted to go into forestry he never wanted to go to a different school than SFA. But for the most part all of the other majors are just kind of there. Not that SFA doesn't have amazing faculty everywhere. Hell. I discovered the standard for criminal justice professors at SFA is actually much much higher than the standard for professors at Sam Houston. But we don't have the reputation in a lot of those areas. We're kind of like a one trick horse when it comes to what we advertise and don't try and bring in a large mass of students.

I think another thing is Nacogdoches refusing to grow. In my entire time at SFA, I was told by so many people about how tons of companies, franchises, and attractions want to come to Nacogdoches. Being apart of the oldest town in Texas is a huge marketing point. But the city council keeps refusing to let the city grow, out of a fear that they will somehow become less historic. I'd love to see Nacogdoches grow, and I think that would help SFA to develop a lot more as well.

So now finally to look at schools we should aspire to be like. I think Arkansas and Ole Miss are good examples but I think better ones would be schools that were small FCS schools who made the transitions and were able to make the jump. Look at Boise State. They weren't setting the world on fire as an FCS school but they committed and made the transition and then became one of the most popular schools in the FBS.
Maybe we look at what Wichita state did to make a massive spike in attendance over a few year period of time.
Arkansas and Ole Miss type schools should be end goals. But we should look at the path to get there.

TallTexan said:

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So feel free to make the case for which schools should be included in each part of the list, and why they should be included.

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Not going to tackle your bigger question at this sitting (I will later when I have more time), but I want to make a couple of quick comments about what you've posted so far...

1) Those are some fantastic, eye-opening facts and figures. Thanks for pulling them together, Texan. Very interesting!

2) I'm blown away by a couple of the endowment numbers. A&M CC has only 14.8 million, while UT Dallas has 469.8 million. Wow! Extremes on both ends of the spectrum.

3) I wish Isaac would move this General Discussion Forum near the top of the Forums list, at least temporarily. I think you'd get more traffic there. Many folks who immediately focus only on sports may be overlooking it at the bottom of the list, and what you're attempting to do is too valuable to be missed.

Some excellent points there 03. My point was, we're not so far in the middle of nowhere that it's impossible to get people here. We're like a 2.5-5 hour drive from the major populated areas, and Texas(contrary to the beliefs of most northerners) is gigantic. So 2.5-5 hours in not an impossibly long distance.

I totally agree that SFA needs to market better. When I was getting my master's degree in Tech Commercialization at Texas, I ran into so many Texas grads that were astounded how hands on our finance professors were, and how the school had an investment fund that let students make the trade decisions. That's almost unheard of in the rest of the U.S, it's typically graduate level. Also, and I truly believe this, we have one of the prettiest campuses in Texas. There's not many places like Nacogdoches in the spring. I wish the Dallas morning news or Texas Tribune would rank Texas Universities by major. When the vast majority of students are staying in state to get the tuition discount, it matter less that your school is ranked top 50 in the country if your specific academic program sucks.

Boise State is a great example. I know there's a few more similar stories out there, but can't think of them off the top of my head. So is Wichita State(they have a larger surrounding market), but I believe their basketball has paid dividends beyond what they even expected. But sports as marketing is the topic of a separate thread.

And I had no idea that Nac was so anti-growth. I lived in Austin for 4 years, there's a right way and wrong way to do growth, but Nac needs to lean more on the pro-growth side, but manage it properly. I mean last time I was in Nac (August 2016), the square was still 1/4 empty and 1/4 filled with antique shops open only on the weekends. I'd love to see a bustling downtown area, with more Liberty Bell's and fewer empty windows. You can have a historic town, but it's only useful if people believe it's a town worth traveling too. But I digress, maybe this should be it's own post, one I'm not qualified to write in it's entirety.

Let's try to branch out our peer schools a bit as you mentioned. Having a Texas centric list will be useful for comparing tuition, professor salaries,etc, but it's less useful if all our schools have huge built in advantages that we can't overcome. Lufkin aint turning into Houston anytime soon to give us an unlimited supply of students. I'll see if I can pull in some more schools like Boise for us to consider, but definitely open to suggestions.

Edstile, I too was surprised by some of the facts, especially when it comes to attendance increases/decreases, retention rates, etc. But those are for another posts.

And I may add a cross post or two into one of our football threads to get eyeballs on the topic, as the more input we have, the more useful our discussion become.

And I'd love to see which schools you think should be in our peer group.

Per chance, does anyone know if SFA keeps a list of peer institutions? I'd imagine they have one for strategic planning, although I'm not sure how quick to share it they'd be.

So I didn't include Tarleton on this list, but I just saw on A&M Systems official website that they've just surpassed 13k enrollment last year. Up from 9400 in 2007.

I may add them, as they are similarly remote compared to SFA. Also, the A&M system has some really freaking awesome tools to look at student populations. Cool A&M enrollment tools

Tarleton may be the most interesting school out there due to how much they've grown. They're currently in the process of transition to D1, with a task force hired to get them an invite to a conference by 2018.

If we want to see SFA have the growth that Boise or Wichita State, there's a lot of work that needs to be done on all fronts. SFA needs to market itself as absolutely much as possible. I think SFA needs to dedicate more towards athletics and try again to vote for a student fee(maybe by talking more about how it helps the college so professors can't talk their students out of it). Athletics does promote the school, as was evident by the NCAA tournament. Hell, I remember the one year the BOTPW was actually televised I heard several friends who had never heard of SFA talking about watching that game. It gets the brand out there. And we need to do something about student retention. There are a lot of students who use SFA as a buffer so they can get into their "dream college". We lose on average around 60-70% of every freshmen class after their first year to transferring out or dropping out. That's a huge reason why our attendance numbers haven't grown in years.

Another bit of data worth mentioning that may help some of you guys as you look at peer schools. I used the map of closes D1 schools and SFA's footprint population in 2016 to go back and look at our population growth in our footprint. SFA's direct footprint grew from 806k in 2000 to 904k in 2016. That's about 12% growth over 17 year. Not spectacular, but not bad at all.

Just thought that was an interesting fact. It'll be more important in a week or two when we look at enrollment growth, retention rates, etc.

A little background before I get into the meat - My daughter with be at SFA starting in 2018 so we have been really getting to know the university. She is going for Deaf Education so there aren't a lot of schools with that major. Lamar and SFA were of the few that were available.

I am surprised that Lamar is that high on the endowment. While Lamar had some compelling things from a major perspective for her (leaving with a minor in deaf interpretation) the campus is no where near as nice as SFAs and the area is very rough. One block either side of campus and you are in a rough part of town. One that in no way did I feel comfortable having my 18 year old daughter living in. The buildings while nice from a distance as you approached them - signs were missing letters, water stains on walls. It just appeared that routine maintenance wasn't done that often.

The college visit experiences couldn't have been been more different. We went to both schools version of Showcase Saturday. SFA rolled out the red carpet for all involved. She loved it - as did we. Lamar had 4 students and a staff member running the whole event. There was no indication that there was something "special" going on. No one from admissions or the various schools for prospective students to talk to. They were only giving out shirts to those already accepted to the university. It was just ... odd. My daughter, when we first got in the car to leave Lamar, said "It's like they aren't even trying."

As to how to improve ... calling with my vast knowledge of SFA I mean my very limited knowledge is that SFA's biggest "hindrance" is the logistics. What I mean by logistics is first the location and the what is available to me when I get there. The perception - and perception is reality - is that SFA is in the middle of nowhere. Growing up in Houston SFA was always referred to as being in Nacanowhere. From a people moving perspective, if I am looking at bringing my basketball team to SFA for a home and home or something more significant I have to look at how long will it take me to get my players from A to B. From a Texans perspective 2 hours to get to Nac from IAH isn't bad but think about someone from the Northeast where in 2 hours I can cross 15 states ... okay that is sarcasm but you get where I am going with this. Not only do you have the travel portion of getting there but there is also the problem of where to stay while there. The selection of hotels in Nac isn't that impressive. Hampton Inns and Choice - from a chain perspective. Again - perception. Are my players going to be pampered? Will the alums/family traveling with the team find what they are seeking in hotels,restaurants, etc. Growth in Nac would mean huge growth for SFA.

03. I agree with what you say on some of this but you are wrong on retention. SFA returns a little over 71% of its freshman class. That's documented. SFA has made some real progress in some areas but in my opinion has not marketed its strong environmental science/forestry programs as well as they could. I know that forestry is not a huge demand but environmental science is. I think the school of business has done a excellent job of marketing itself. Forestry and the sciences not so much !

drhuggybear said:

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A little background before I get into the meat - My daughter with be at SFA starting in 2018 so we have been really getting to know the university. She is going for Deaf Education so there aren't a lot of schools with that major. Lamar and SFA were of the few that were available.

I am surprised that Lamar is that high on the endowment. While Lamar had some compelling things from a major perspective for her (leaving with a minor in deaf interpretation) the campus is no where near as nice as SFAs and the area is very rough. One block either side of campus and you are in a rough part of town. One that in no way did I feel comfortable having my 18 year old daughter living in. The buildings while nice from a distance as you approached them - signs were missing letters, water stains on walls. It just appeared that routine maintenance wasn't done that often.

The college visit experiences couldn't have been been more different. We went to both schools version of Showcase Saturday. SFA rolled out the red carpet for all involved. She loved it - as did we. Lamar had 4 students and a staff member running the whole event. There was no indication that there was something "special" going on. No one from admissions or the various schools for prospective students to talk to. They were only giving out shirts to those already accepted to the university. It was just ... odd. My daughter, when we first got in the car to leave Lamar, said "It's like they aren't even trying."

As to how to improve ... calling with my vast knowledge of SFA I mean my very limited knowledge is that SFA's biggest "hindrance" is the logistics. What I mean by logistics is first the location and the what is available to me when I get there. The perception - and perception is reality - is that SFA is in the middle of nowhere. Growing up in Houston SFA was always referred to as being in Nacanowhere. From a people moving perspective, if I am looking at bringing my basketball team to SFA for a home and home or something more significant I have to look at how long will it take me to get my players from A to B. From a Texans perspective 2 hours to get to Nac from IAH isn't bad but think about someone from the Northeast where in 2 hours I can cross 15 states ... okay that is sarcasm but you get where I am going with this. Not only do you have the travel portion of getting there but there is also the problem of where to stay while there. The selection of hotels in Nac isn't that impressive. Hampton Inns and Choice - from a chain perspective. Again - perception. Are my players going to be pampered? Will the alums/family traveling with the team find what they are seeking in hotels,restaurants, etc. Growth in Nac would mean huge growth for SFA.

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Hi drhuggybear and welcome to the boards and to SFA. I was just the second male to graduate from SFA with a degree in Deaf Education. The first male graduated a semester before I did. That was way back in 1979. I loved every single minute I spent at SFA. Your daughter is going into a very fine program. Best to her.

INiedrauer said:

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I'll also see what I can do to get General Discussion moved up. These types of conversations are good ones to have.

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Thanks Isaac!

SFA_03_ I agree, it will take a full court press for SFA to move up an order of magnitude in the college world. That could be 15-20k enrollment, FBS football, National University recognition, or more rigorous academic requirements or some combination of those. My hope is that w/ these threads we'll be able to motivate ourselves enough to hold the BoR and Univ admin accountable for goals they set. And maybe even influence those goals as well. Also, Tarleton is an excellent case study for us. 3600 students in 10 years would put us just over 16000. That's a sizeable, but realistic increase.


DoctorProfessorHuggyBear- Congratulations on your daughter getting into the Deaf Ed program. I know we have a great program. I'm glad you both enjoyed the showcase Saturday, it was great when I attended one in 2008. I had the grades to get into almost any university, but when I visited SFA for homecoming and showcase saturday before I applied, it just felt like home, like a place I'd known my whole life. I've never regretted going to SFA.

BigJack85- Our retention rates are getting better for 1st year students, but it looks like some of our graduation rates(both 4 & 6 year) could still use some work. That'll be a thread we tackle soon. And I definitely agree, we need a much better marketing effort on behalf of the university.

Fastest growing flagships

Per our conversation about including Mississippi and Arkansas schools, check out the above article.

Quote:

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"Another is that some schools are pursuing huge expansions, particularly southern flagships in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and South Carolina, all with growth rates higher than 50 percent. 'Bama was the fastest-growing, at 92 percent. Out-of-state enrollment is a big factor too: At each of the four fastest-growing schools, nearly or more than half of undergrads are from out of state. Of course, that appears to be a revenue strategy too: Tuition is far higher for out-of-state students than for state residents."

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Talk about sports as marketing. And some of these schools aren't even good at it. Arkansas has been a bottom-dweller for years in football, but gets increased awareness for being in the SEC. Enough so that out of state students are willing to attend. A&M has added 18000 students since 2011. 18 thousand. Freaking insane.

But there are obviously other ways to grow school enrollment and prestige, and I'd like to have a mix of these.

A few schools like Tarleton, a few like Arkansas and Mississippi State, a few like UT Dallas that's building an academic powerhouse(from 10k students to 28k since 2000).

As they say "That which is measured, improves". Our peer schools will be our benchmarks for looking at historical data and future plans to make sure SFA is measuring the right metrics and most of all, improving.

Some other universities that have somewhat similar geographical challenges to SFA. Did some digging in online databases(thanks Austin Public Library!) and found some relatively similar universities to SFA(or atleast they were in 2005).



I don't want to get too much into why our growth rate is so low comparatively, that's a topic for another post, just to show that growth can be done. I added UT Tyler, not because they're on our level, but because if they grow at 50% through 2025, they'll be nearly the size we are now. I know UT Tyler is less in the middle of nowhere than Nac, but it's not near a real metropolitan powerhouse like SHSU benefits from.

Thoughts on whether these are the types of peers schools we should compare ourselves to?

While many of these schools are similar to SFA in "being in the middle of nowhere", they all do have an airport in the city or at least the county.
That does open up so much for the town and the university as it makes it so much more accessible for anyone and everyone to attend the university.
That along with almost all of these cities being much larger than Nacogdoches(Flagstaff: 130000) gives them an edge.
On top of that, in Texas, we do have to compete with literally tons of other colleges that are easier to get to.
I'm not saying every Texas student will fly in to get to college, but when you make every trip back home a minimum of a two hour drive, it can dissuade you from going when you can pay just as much to go to Sam Houston which is a 30 minute drive.
Not saying this is the case for every student, but the accessibility of our town is unique, not just in geographic location but in the fact we have no form of public transportation that really goes not Nac.

I don't think attendance growth should be the #1 priority. I think the biggest priority should be getting the SFA brand out there. Making people proud that they graduated SFA. Make the name SFA carry weight when people are saying they graduated there.
Having a large student population doesn't always do that for you. Look at the UCF, they're the second largest university in the US and I keep forgetting that's a college.

SFA_03 said:

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I don't think attendance growth should be the #1 priority. I think the biggest priority should be getting the SFA brand out there. Making people proud that they graduated SFA. Make the name SFA carry weight when people are saying they graduated there.
Having a large student population doesn't always do that for you. Look at the UCF, they're the second largest university in the US and I keep forgetting that's a college.

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Totally agree with this. I don't want to simply grow for growth's sake alone(looking at you A&M). However, it's kind of disappointing that the Admin has set a goal of moderate growth(I've seen number between 13.8-15.5) thrown around for where they were expecting to be at this point.

And from the numbers, I haven't seen SFA knocking it out of the park in academic prestige lately, so I don't think that's it. I'm not saying we're bad at academics, I'm just saying it doesn't appear that SFA has traded growth for much tougher entrance requirements.

I think you hit exactly on the point that the SFA brand should be priority number 1. If all our students were as proud of the University as Sawmilllers are of the school and basketball team, it would go a long way. I think that there's a synergy we can achieve between brand & growth with a focus on academics. A lot of Texas Universities focus on growth, knowing that money follows enrollment numbers and with good PR you can still achieve those "vaunted academic rankings". Other than UT Dallas, UT, & Rice, few Texas Universities seem to be taking the academic first, growth later mindset.

I for one believe there's a market in Texas for a mid-sized university with quality academics that isn't impossible to get into. I think we can fulfill that niche, along with the other areas we already excel.

While I agree with your statement on airports, I don't think that alone costs us so many kids. I think it's the lack of statewide recognition of what the SFA brand is. We're not, and I hope we're never another Texas State, Lamar, or Sam Houston. We're not a Texas A&M cult like experience, nor a Texas preppy one. Maybe next week we'll cover what the SFA brand is currently and what it should be.

I've always viewed SFA as a great university for blue collar kids moving to white collar careers. I know that's a bit of a simplification, but SFA students always seemed to me to have a good work ethic at their core.

I think we need to do a better job of promoting our great programs. For example, SFA's speech therapy program is better than UT's, from the quality of students I've seen it churn out. We should have one of the top teaching colleges in the state, and we should make sure that people in Texas know it.

But overall, if I'm looking at peers to measure growth, retention rates, and academics against, I think we could use a good mix of a few of these schools that are more remote, a few more academic focused, and a few more growth focused.

These are good peers to track how we're doing and steal the better ideas from. SFA is unique, but for the purpose of some of our future discussions I think we these are decent benchmarks.

What are you're thoughts on Arkansas Tech as a benchmark?

Almanac of Higher Education- 2015?

Here's the Almanac of higher education. It has incredible info on different colleges & universities. Thought some of you might be interested.

Good stuff. I think we (SFA) has to grow from a funding perspective. We don't have the big endowment ($77 million based on 2017 USNWR) I'm not at all saying we need to be 17,000 students but we should be north of 13k. The BOR has taken some steps to prioritize STEM fields. I'd take it a step further and try to add a doctorate in environmental science. I imagine that the existing faculty in the school of forestry and agriculture has the people to do that. The only question is how many people would it attract? I know that adding a single doctoral program will do nothing to increase enrollment but it does signal our intention to become a leader in that part of the science space. I also think dorm 14 and 16 need replaced. I realize that requires $$$ from the state. I think the impact on the aesthetics of the campus would be huge.

BigJack, I 100% agree on the funding. What pushed me over the edge from reading about SFA strategy and moved me to start research for this thread was when I learned that SFA is planning a $100 million fundraising campaign for the 100th anniversary. And when I saw that, my first thought was "No way SFA has the ability to raise that kind of money".

This is the same admin that's had trouble hitting a target of 13800 enrolled students. That's why I started this thread, was to bring to light areas where we could improve, and funding is definitely one of them. I know we don't have a multitude of billion dollar donors lining up to put their names on buildings, but we ought to be able to raise 100 million in 5 years. And I would have confidence in that if the university hit their goals on enrollment & grad rates, or could even get an athletic fee passed.

It's going to take a real, strategic, all hands on deck effort to hit $100 million. I'm more than happy to help, granted my monetary donation would be a drop in the bucket, but I will support the University every step of the way if they have a great strategic plan, but strategy has been my concern all along.

To give credit where it's due, I think the STEM initiative is both needed and is progressing nicely. I do like the idea of an Enviromental Science PHD(Also would be a great feature for a fundraising campaign given recent turns on protecting the environment).

Overall, while I don't think we should be a 25k enrollment university anytime soon, I think 13000 undergrads with 2000 graduate students is attainable in the next 5+ years. I'd also focus much more strongly on the academic brand.

Based on feedback & additional research, I pulled together what I feel is a good peer list for our future discussions. These will be the guys we compare academic requirements, strategy, retention rates, enrollment growth, etc against.



For our next large topic, we'll take a look at retention rates & graduation rates between us and our peer schools. That might take me a week or two to put together. In the meantime, I might do an interim post from SFA's official 2015-2023 strategy page.

Also, this is way out of my realm, but does anyone want to do a future post on SFA joining a University System vs staying independent? That's a topic I'd love to hear about but am completely unqualified to write. Thoughts?

Love the idea of a conversation re: joining a university system vs staying independent. I'll sit back and read for a while before responding since I'm not certain where I stand on the issue. Should be very informative!

INiedrauer said:

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I THINK the SFA endowment is actually now handled by the Texas A&M university system.

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TBH, I'd hope we'd join any other university system before that one. But I suppose just for endowment management isn't a bad idea.

No. You are wrong. Some of the funds fall under the purview of a manager that A&M uses but our funds are separated. They are part of SFA's three foundations.

djsfw57 said:

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Love the idea of a conversation re: joining a university system vs staying independent. I'll sit back and read for a while before responding since I'm not certain where I stand on the issue. Should be very informative!

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SFA has discussed the topic MANY times in the past 25 years. It ain't happening soon. Unless the state forces it. There was a survey of the faculty and stakeholders a few years ago that indicated if SFA moves to a system it would be Texas Tech.

BigJack85 said:

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djsfw57 said:

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Love the idea of a conversation re: joining a university system vs staying independent. I'll sit back and read for a while before responding since I'm not certain where I stand on the issue. Should be very informative!

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SFA has discussed the topic MANY times in the past 25 years. It ain't happening soon. Unless the state forces it. There was a survey of the faculty and stakeholders a few years ago that indicated if SFA moves to a system it would be Texas Tech.

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BigJack, found that survey of faculty yesterday and the Tech thing surprised me. I think it'd be interesting because in Tech system, we're more likely to be viewed more favorably than the line of clones in the two big systems. Not to mention, Tech just outfoxed A&M in the Lege for a veterinary school, which is a pretty large accomplishment. That said, I like being an independent.

Tall,

If SFA "was" to join a system I generally agree that Texas Tech or the Texas State system are the two best fits. Angelo State has prospered under the Texas Tech system. I could see a political scenario where Midwestern State and SFA join either the Tech system or Texas State system in the next 10 years. I hope it doesn't happen but it's a possibility.

There are only 4 schools that aren't part of a system. SFA, Midwestern, TSU and TWU.

Axe 'Em Jacks!