Over the past couple of months there has been growing evidence of a looming turf battle between The University of Texas at Austin (UT) and the University of Houston (UH) over particular projects recently announced by each institution that figure to have implications for Texas higher education governance going forward.
First, UH announced that it has plans for a proposed medical school in Houston, which drew a response from Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes that such a proposal would be a “tough sell” for reasons that securing adequate funding for a new medical school will be difficult and the fact that UT is opening two new medical schools in 2017. He added that Texas is “in danger of expanding higher education programs and facilities beyond the state’s ability or willingness to fund them adequately”.
This was followed, as I have previously written (“Bold New Vision for the UT System”, November 2015), by the announcement by UT Chancellor William McRaven of a major new vision for the UT system that would include the development of a comprehensive “intellectual hub” in Houston on a 332-acre tract of land near the Texas Medical Center, which drew a stinging rebuke by the UH Board of Regents and system leadership that this represented a “Trojan horse” and that UH should “strongly protest this invasion”. Commissioner Paredes followed by indicating his concern about new competition between the two institutions.
Full disclosure: I am a UT alumnus. Now allow me to comment that what we are seeing here is further manifestation of the lack of a coherent strategy for Texas higher education governance and the roles that each of our public institutions should play. (I should add that this incoherence extends to elementary and secondary education governance as well, but more on that in a later post). Every effort in my memory to bring coherence to this issue, which dates to the proposal over 30 years ago by a commission chaired by Larry Temple to design either a functional or a geographic approach to higher education in Texas, has failed because of parochial politics. I see no resolution to that situation in the immediate future, given the current race among seven of our institutions, including UH, to achieve national “Tier One” status and given the treacherous political terrain for any statewide office holder or legislator who tackles the issue. It’s not a political winner.
We currently have co-flagship Tier One research universities in UT and Texas A&M, both of which have clear statewide missions of service and higher education leadership and which share the visionary constitutional benefits of the state’s Permanent University Fund. So, while we wisely continue to incentivize the pursuit of excellence by other regional institutions, I say let the competition play out until we find the necessary political leadership to develop the coherent long-term governance strategy that we desperately need.
I just hope that the UT project does not develop beyond the “point of no return” before we find political leaders that have the “WILL” to create a strategy to have an effective and workable plan for Higher Education in Texas.
As we have discussed previously, one method might be to put all State Institutions of Higher Education under one governing board similar to the California System. I recognize that will be a hard sell because appointments to Boards of Regents is a plum appointment from the governor and most elected officials will not want to tackle that issue. Unfortunately for us that system seems to really work in California.
Competition between the universities is healthy in some areas but in Texas the big guys with the deep pockets will control the system until state funding to universities is equalized.
The Higher Education Excellence Fund, established by the Legislature some years back, was an attempt to solve the problem but it is only a “drop in the bucket” compared to the Permanent University Fund. The Tier I Fund is a similar fund but again it is peanuts compared to the PUF.
If we could get the Greater Houston Partnership and other business organizations to get involved there may be a chance to stop UT’s plan.
Even that may be unlikely.