Insert text line in array

Question

I am looking for a (clean) way to keep text aligned in a situation like the following:

thesis under the direction of:    
[tab] Title [&] Name [&] University    
with the supervision of:    
[tab] Title [&] Name [&] University    
[tab] Title [&] Name [&] University    
[tab] Title [&] Name [&] University

The (dirty) way I found so far is to fix empirically the width of the first and second column. Here's an MWE

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{titlepage}

\vspace*{\fill}

\noindent{\emph{thesis under the direction of}}\\[.3cm]
\hspace*{.4cm}\begin{tabular}{p{.1\textwidth}p{.4\textwidth}l}
Title & First Name Last Name  &  University A\\
\end{tabular}

\vspace*{.5cm}

\noindent{\emph{with the supervision of}}\\[.3cm]
\hspace*{.4cm}\begin{tabular}{p{.1\textwidth}p{.4\textwidth}l}
Title & First Name Last Name &  University B\\
Title & First Name Last Name &  University C\\
\end{tabular}
\end{titlepage}
\end{document}

I was just curious to know whether there would be a cleaner, more systematic way of doing that?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Can you use tabbing?

\begin{tabbing}
\emph{thesis under the direction of} \\
\hspace{.4cm} \= Longest Title \= Longest First Name Last Name \= Longest University A \kill
\> Title \> First Name Last Name \> University A \\[.5cm]
\pushtabs
\emph{with the supervision of} \\
\poptabs
\> Title \> First Name Last Name \> University B \\
\> Title \> First Name Last Name \> University C \\
\end{tabbing}

(The \pushtabs and \poptabs commands are unneeded here, but may be useful in other casses.)

Answer 2

Since you are willing to specify the longest entry for each column you could just define a macro to place the text within an appropriate sized box to yield:

Using a \parbox for the University name allows for longer names. The width of this paragraph is set to the width that would be taken up by Longest University.

Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{calc}

\newcommand*{\Attribution}[3]{%
    \par\noindent%
    \hspace*{0.5cm}% control leading indent
    \makebox[\widthof{Longest Title}][l]{#1}%
    \makebox[\widthof{Longest First Name Last Name}][l]{#2}%
    \parbox[t]{\widthof{Longest University}}{#3}%
}%

\begin{document}
\noindent
\emph{thesis under the direction of:} 
\Attribution{Title}{First Last}{University A}

\bigskip
\noindent
\emph{with the supervision of:}
\Attribution{Title}{First Name Last Name}{University A}
\Attribution{Title}{First Name Last Name}{University B}
\Attribution{Title}{First Name Last Name}{University C}
\Attribution{Title}{First Name Last Name}{University with a really long name}
\end{document}