Thinking beyond the UH Medical School

TMC-arial.gifBlogHouston.net’s Kevin Whited notes this Chronicle/Todd Ackerman article about the University of Houston floating a proposed new Texas Medical Center-based medical school in a collaborative project with The Methodist Hospital and Cornell University’s Weill Medical School.
Unfortunately for UH, the proposal has zilch chance of floating for much more than a few minutes amidst the shark-infested waters of Texas educational politics. Heck, the political forces in Texas cannot even agree to provide adequate funding of UH’s uncriticizable goal of becoming the state’s third tier I research university. The University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and Baylor College of Medicine — Methodist’s former longtime partner — are just a few of the powerful political forces that would almost certainly line up against the UH-Methodist proposal.
Yet, the UH-Methodist proposal has merit, so here’s a proposed modification. Rather than start another medical school from scratch, let’s merge the University of Houston system with the Texas A&M system and have A&M expand its fledgling medical school into the Texas Medical Center from its current central Texas outpost. From a broader standpoint, the merger makes sense because it gives the A&M system something that it desperately needs — a major urban presence — while also giving UH something that it has always lacked — that is, access to adequate endowed capital. Such a merger would also provide A&M with the law school that it has always coveted and would greatly facilitate UH’s elevation into a tier I research institution, which is something that would substantially benefit the Houston area.
While the University of Texas would almost certainly oppose such a merger, perhaps a deal could be struck at the same time to merge the Texas Tech University system into the UT system while organizing the remainder of Texas’ non-affiliated public universities into a third university system for funding and administrative purposes. Such a structure would give Texas a similar structure to that of the reasonably successful California model, which has generated far more first rate, tier I research universities (10) than the current dysfunctional Texas system (2). Indeed, almost anything would be a huge improvement over the current Texas system, which allocates a disproportionate amount of endowed capital to the UT and A&M systems while starving the remainder of Texas’ public universities.
Make sense? You bet. Chances of happening? Probably not much. But just as UCLA and Cal-Berkeley co-exist productively in the same university system in California, UH and A&M could do the same in Texas. And just as two major university systems work side-by-side together to educate Californians, a similar structure would be a substantial improvement in the educational system of Texas.

One thought on “Thinking beyond the UH Medical School

  1. All “Clear Thinkers” should be aware that Prairie View A&M University has had legislative authorization for establishment of professional schools, including schools of law and medicine, since 1945. The higher education leaders of this State know that PVAMU holds this much-coveted authorization but have fought against establishment of those schools at PVAMU.
    Undeniably, racism has been at the heart of the reluctance to allow Prairie View A&M, a historically black university and the 2nd oldest public institution of higher education in the state of Texas, founded in 1876, to seek and reach its full potential.
    Politics and racial custom continue to work against the enhancement of PVAMU but fortunately the University has the law on it side.
    Law trumps Politics and Custom, for, as we all know, “this is a country ruled by laws, not men”.

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