My daughter, our youngest, decided to attend the University of Iowa this fall.

She has known for some time that she wants to major in English, and so had her sights set on the University of Texas.

For a time, I was feeling really smart about that Texas guaranteed tuition contract I bought when she was in kindergarten (oh, yeah, after tuition deregulation six or seven years ago I totally saw THAT train wreck coming.) And she’s a really good student — her GPA is over 100 points. It looked like things were going to line up nicely for her.

But because she’s also in a good school with lots of good students, UT capped her.

The only way to be sure they would let her in is if she were in the top 8 percent. She’s in the top 11 percent. UT says she’s welcome to populate one of the campuses in the outer hinterlands (I won’t let her go to UT-Arlington because they are drilling) and then they will let her come to Austin her sophomore year.

In addition to creating the financial train wreck of tuition deregulation, our legislature in their infinitely stupid policy making, told Texas colleges and universities — the public ones — they had to let in the top ten percent of every high school.

Now, Iowa knows what they’ve got when they’ve hooked a student like Paige. She scored so high on their admissions rubric, they offered her the regents scholarship package.

Got to buy lots more sweaters.

Texas never hesitates to squanders it best resource … its people.