UT road trip seeks ideas for local site
McRaven plans to bring Houston, state leaders on visits to schools
The group of Houstonians, state leaders and others who will plan how to develop a 300-acre “blank canvas” the University of Texas is buying in Houston will be asked to leave their preconceived notions about higher education at the door.
They’ll also be in for a cross-country trek.
University of Texas Chancellor William McRaven said Thursday that he wants to fly members of the group around the country, showing them examples of what he thinks can be done in Houston.
Stops on the trip would include North Carolina, Boston and Los Angeles, which all boast thriving economies fueled by universities working closely together in relatively close quarters. The Houston project, McRaven says, isn’t about UT competing with UH and other Houston schools — it’s about all of the schools working together to elevate Houston and Texas.
But UT has a long way to go to convince others it wants to play nice. UT’s move has stoked a longstanding, deeply held belief by University of Houston boosters that the flagship is unfairly funded by the state and wants to keep UH in its place.
UH leaders and some state lawmakers worry that a UT campus in Houston would siphon research funding, faculty and students from UH. And the cities McRaven has point-
“All I’ve asked is, give me an opportunity.” William McRaven, UT chancellor
ed to aren’t perfect analogies — none features two totally separate public university systems working together.
“When Chancellor McRaven lays out his plans for avoiding the wasteful duplication and painting it as a virtue, he cites L.A. and Boston,” Michael Olivas, director of UH’s Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance, wrote in a report criticizing UT’s plans. “But he fails to even identify a public campus in Boston, and disingenuously cites the sole public research university in Los Angeles — ignoring the completely different public college situation” in Texas, a state with multiple, independent public university systems.
Cooperation increases
But collaborative hubs are becoming more common — even among public universities — as schools strive to do more with less, experts said. The world-renowned Research Triangle Park in North Carolina fields calls from university leaders across the globe asking for advice on how to launch similar collaborations, said Bob Geolas, the president of the nonprofit that runs the research park.
Collaboration doesn’t exclude competition, however. Faculty shift among Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. The competition is healthy, Geolas said, but the schools have pulled in more increasingly scarce federal research funding when researchers from all three schools go after a grant together.
“It’s that greater collaboration and going in as partners that help expand research dollars,” Geolas said. “In our case, they’re taking advantage of their close proximity.”
In California, the University of Southern California, University of California-Los Angeles and California Institute of Technology pulled in federal funding to lure a technology-focused hub. Boston is bursting with universities, including Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, Northeastern and the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Collaborative hubs have popped up in Singapore and China, Britain and Germany.
UH leaders have said they would welcome healthy competition in Houston, but only if it’s fair. UT has access to a rich state investment fund, the Permanent University Fund, that UH does not, meaning UT has access to millions more in state funding.
UH President Renu Khator summed up the feeling to the Chronicle editorial board this month: “We’re not afraid of competition — but make sure it’s competition and not takeover.”
Such fears are not uncommon, but assuming McRaven is truthful about his intentions, they’re likely unfounded, said Noel Tomas Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mistrust lingered for years between UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s two doctoral-granting universities about 80 miles apart. But eventually, faculty at the institutions that “historically didn’t like one another, didn’t trust one another,” started writing grants together, Radomski said.
“That’s what we’re seeing more in Wisconsin and what I’m witnessing in other states,” Radomski said. “It’s a perception of fear — because it’s an unknown and it hasn’t been done.”
If McRaven and Khator sit down — “go out to a bar or coffeehouse or whatever” — start talking it out “and put their fears away,” then a UT campus in Houston could help UH researchers bring in more grants and offer them more facilities in which to work, Radomski said.
“The whole point should be, ‘How can we benefit the greater Houston area and how can we benefit the great state of Texas?’ ” he said.
Transparency vowed
McRaven has acknowledged it’s on him to build that trust. On Thursday, he told the state Higher Education Coordinating Board that he was “guilty as charged” of failing to consult state officials before his decision to buy 100 of the 300 planned acres in Houston.
Half of the UT regents didn’t even know UT was planning to buy land here until days before they voted on the purchase, he said. McRaven said he was worried that if word got out UT was looking to buy 300 acres in Houston, real estate prices would skyrocket.
Looking back, McRaven told the board he would consult with the members first: “Had I not been as new to the job I probably would have been a little smarter.”
Now that the land purchase is in motion, McRaven promised to be transparent. He’s extended an offer to UH to help plan what to do with the land and will name his task force of Houstonians and state leaders this month. He’ll report to the coordinating board monthly and the task force will present him a report on the best way to use the land by December.
Still, McRaven said he knows there are skeptics.
“If we decide to sell this land tomorrow, then we’ll make money,” he told a panel of state lawmakers Wednesday.
On Thursday he added, “All I’ve asked is, give me an opportunity.”