UH fears a Trojan horse with horns
Regents object to planned UT Houston campus
Tension between the University of Texas and the University of Houston boiled over Thursday as UH regents reacted with alarm and suspicion to plans by the Austin-based system to establish an “intellectual hub” in Houston.
After hearing that UT’s purchase of 332 acres south of the Texas Medical Center was a potentially illegal “land grab” and an “invasion” of UH territory, regents unanimously approved a statement protesting UT’s planned Houston expansion.
UT Chancellor William McRaven announced Nov. 5 that he intended to purchase the land — not for a full campus, but for a collaboration and research center that would attract new investment to the state’s fourth-largest city. Concerns soon arose, however, that the UT facility could drain research money or coveted faculty
from UH.
On Thursday, McRaven told the Houston Chronicle that he has no intention of competing with Houston’s top public research university.
“The University of Houston is a great institution — recognized by the Carnegie Foundation for its impressive research activity and becoming more nationally competitive every day,” McRaven said via email. “Bringing more of UT to the city of Houston and creating an intellectual hub in the city in no way creates competition for the University of Houston, nor do we see this as a UT versus UH scenario.”
But the regents, meeting later in the day, were skeptical.
“I’m having trouble believing that the reasons represented for doing this are the real reasons,” regent Welcome Wilson Jr. said. “For me the word Trojan horse is the key here. And I think it’s our job to make sure that we maintain our area here.”
His father, Welcome Wilson Sr., a former regent who leads the UH Political Action Committee, urged the regents to “strongly protest this invasion.”
‘ Thumbing its nose’
Law professor Michael Olivas, who heads the Institute for Higher Education Law & Governance at the UH Law Center, argued that UT was “thumbing its nose” at the state’s higher education coordinating board and current Houston schools by not consulting them before buying the property.
The statement approved by the regents argues, in part, that UT already has a significant edge over UH because it has access to the Permanent University Fund, a state-owned investment fund that funnels hundreds of millions exclusively to the UT and Texas A&M systems.
“If the State of Texas is to allow duplication of services and competition as a practice for higher education in the future, then we respectfully ask the legislature to provide parity in resources, including PUF, for the University of Houston System before allowing the University of Texas System’s expansion into Houston,” the statement said.
McRaven said UT jumped at the chance to buy the land, and intends to develop it carefully over decades as a resource for all of the system’s institutions.
Opportunity exists for higher education to grow in the fourthlargest city in the nation, McRaven said, citing other cities like Boston and Los Angeles that have numerous universities.
“There is room in Houston for multiple academic and research opportunities — in fact, a proliferation of these types of opportunities is endemic to a thriving, modern, world-class city,” McRa- ven said.
Tilman Fertitta, the billionaire restaurateur who chairs the UH board, said the comparison to Los Angeles, home to the University of Southern California and the University of California-Los Angeles, was “the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen.”
Competition concerns
Raymund Paredes, the state’s higher education commissioner, also has expressed reservations about UT’s plans to expand in Houston.
“I’m concerned about new competition between the two institutions,” Paredes said in an interview this week.
“The University of Houston wants to become a national research university and the fact that the Legislature and the governor have supported that notion — that we need more public research universities, top-tier, first-tier public research universities in Texas, including the University of Houston — suggests the coordinating board has a responsibility to protect the University of Houston.”
During a symposium at Baylor University this week, state Sen. Kel Seliger, a Republican who chairs the higher education committee, pondered why UT — which already has a “profound presence” in Houston with a Health Science Center and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center — needs to expand in the state’s largest city.
“What an impact it would have made if the UT system had said, with its enormous resources, it was going to lower the tuition of all system students by half, or it was going to pursue real areas of excellence,” Seliger said.
“How this becomes a priority is a little of a mystery at the moment.”