When Ricardo Romo became president of the University of Texas at San Antonio a decade ago, he resolved to transform the sleepy commuter campus into a premier research university.
Today, UTSA is one of the fastest-growing universities in Texas and quickly is shedding its commuter label as it attracts more high-quality students and professors. But the goal of joining the ranks of top-notch research universities still is decades away.
That reality has prompted a handful of San Antonio lawmakers and community leaders to float the idea of merging UTSA with the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, a move that could catapult the combined institution to the top of the heap among Texas universities vying for “Tier One” distinction.
After years of urging, state lawmakers passed a bill this spring that lays out a pathway to flagship status and a pot of money for seven emerging research institutions, including UTSA and the University of Texas at El Paso. But in keeping with the history of higher education in Texas, the terms of competition seem to favor wealthier schools while short-changing South Texas and border institutions that serve a large population of minority students.
For Romo, it must be deja vu.
At a UT System Board of Regents meeting he attended soon after being named president of UTSA, regents skipped right over UTSA and the UTEP when talking about which institution would be Texas’ next flagship research university.
Romo looked at Diana Natalicio, president of UTEP, and said: “What are we, chopped liver?”
But merging UTSA with the health science center would give the combined institution significant firepower. UTSA’s federal research spending would jump from $22 million per year to a combined $117 million, marching the institution to the front of the line for receiving money under the state’s flagship bill.
It also would help San Antonio compete outside Texas, where most top research universities include a medical school.
“We would be the next Tier One. No question about that,” said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio.
Van de Putte built political support for a merger back in 2001, but regents concluded the time wasn’t ripe, the schools’ missions too different.
A couple of those former regents, Cyndi Taylor Krier of San Antonio and Charles Miller of Houston, believe it’s time to take a fresh look. So does state Rep. Joaquin Castro, Democratic vice chair of higher education, and his brother, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro. House Speaker Joe Straus of San Antonio isn’t taking sides in the discussion, but is keeping an open mind.
“We can’t wait two decades to become Tier One,” Mayor Castro said. “It seems to make sense to combine those stellar assets. It certainly merits further discussion and analysis.”
But not everyone thinks so.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” said Tom Frost, a local education philanthropist. He said UTSA should focus on access to higher education and the health science center on improving medical care. Trying to “blob it all together” only would dilute those efforts, Frost said.
In the end, however, the decision rests with UT System regents. At the moment, it’s not on their radar, said Francisco Cigarroa, chancellor of the UT System and former president of the UT Health Science Center.
Mergers are risky, Cigarroa said. Regents would need a compelling reason to make that move, and it would come with no guarantee the combined institution would rocket to Tier One status.
“Tier One status is not only a numbers thing, it is a cultural issue where you garner a national reputation. And that takes time,” Cigarroa said.
Stacking the deck
There is no uniform definition of a premier research university, often dubbed Tier One, a reference to U.S. News & World Report’s eponymous college-ranking system.
At a minimum, it means spending $100 million annually on research, having strong graduate and Ph.D. programs and the ability to recruit outstanding faculty.
In the upper echelon, it means acceptance into the Association of American Universities, an elite club of 62 top-flight research universities in the U.S. and Canada.
In Texas, only UT-Austin, Texas A&M University and Rice University, a private institution, are members of that club: California counts nine; New York, six.
California envy became a rallying cry in Texas in support of the so-called Tier One bill, meant to cultivate Texas’ next flagship. By 2012, the bill could dole out around $212 million each year to research universities using a convoluted matrix of criteria, according to the Coordinating Board. But one pot of money is still empty, and another is contingent upon a constitutional amendment to go before voters on Nov. 3.
An initial bill crafted by Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, laid out an even-handed map to Tier One that had the backing of all seven presidents.
However, Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, filed a competing bill that set a much higher bar for tapping state funds, including amassing a $400 million endowment or awarding more than 200 doctoral degrees per year.
UTSA awards 61 doctorates a year, and its endowment is about $56 million.
Critics say Duncan’s criteria favored his hometown university, Texas Tech, and the University of Houston. The final bill is a combination of the two.
“Some wanted to stack the deck in favor of a few universities,” said Rep. Castro. “We tried to get the final bill as even as possible.”
The most immediate incentive involves a state match for private gifts of at least $2 million. A lesser match is provided for smaller gifts. But that doesn’t favor UTSA or UTEP, where $2 million gifts are rare.
According to Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, that’s no accident.
Texas has historically shortchanged South Texas and border universities, Shapleigh said, and under-funded higher education as whole.
“When Lubbock has 60 Ph.D. programs and the 5 million people who live in border counties combined have 50, that tells the story,” Shapleigh said.
Shapleigh has asked Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to support a plan to funnel extra money to disadvantaged institutions, but Dewhurst declined, citing increases for university operations and financial aid over the past few years.
In turn, Shapleigh pointed to a state survey showing Texas spends an average of $5,000 per student at emerging research universities, compared with $12,000 at similar institutions in other states.
“In Texas, Tier Ones should be called Potemkin U — all is a facade without the funding needed to compete for faculty,” Shapleigh said.
No easy task
Charles Miller, former chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, is tired of hearing about how badly Texas is doing.
“It undersells how good we are and makes us sound like beggars. We are not,” Miller said.
Despite a state funding disadvantage, Texas competes pretty well for federal research dollars, Miller said, aided by world-class powerhouses such as UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
But in Texas, health science centers aren’t attached to universities, leaving them out of important rankings and making it harder for standalone academic universities to compete nationally.
At the University of California at San Diego, for instance, 36 percent of the university’s $2.5 billion budget comes from medical center and medical group revenues. At UTSA, — which is about the same age and has the same student enrollment — 41 percent of the $375 million budget comes from student tuition and fees.
UC-San Diego climbed its way into the crème de la crème in just over 20 years since its founding; UTSA won’t get there for another 15 to 30 years, according to Romo.
That gap is reason enough to at least explore a merger, Miller said.
“I don’t think there is a conclusive answer, I just think it is time to study it” again, Miller said.
Miller chaired the UT System Board of Regents in 2001, when Van de Putte spearheaded a bill directing UT to conduct a feasibility study of the merger.
Released in September 2002, the study concluded such a merger “is not ripe” and could distract the two institutions from their priorities.
According to Van de Putte, regents got “nervous,” with Dallas- and Houston-based regents turning “antagonistic because they did not want UTSA to leapfrog them.”
Miller dismissed the politics, saying the study was probably right. But seven years later, both institutions have matured, and collaborations in research and degree programs have flourished.
The San Antonio Life Sciences Institute, for instance, is a collaboration between the two institutions where researchers can work together on projects and has been so successful that it won $8 million in state funding over the next two years.
Researchers also share specialized equipment. For instance, UTSA doesn’t have a magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI, so scientists use one at the health science center.
“Maybe some day (the two institutions) will merge, but for our practical purposes, we are not waiting for that to happen,” said Charles Wilson, a neuroscientist at UTSA.
A merger could enhance those relationships, and perhaps even save money on overhead. But logistically, it would be no easy task, said Romo.
“No question it would be nice to have a medical school attached to you. It’s a powerhouse, but it doesn’t come without any strings,” Romo said.
For example, the health science center recently invested $9 million upgrading computer software for human resources, a system that differs from UTSA’s. Just connecting the two wouldn’t be cheap, Romo said.
Plus, a merger wouldn’t do anything for UTSA’s undergraduate programs, and little for its doctoral programs, he said.
“Ultimately, I don’t know how a merger would happen,” Romo said. “In the meantime, what we’re tasked to do and what I’m expected to do by my bosses is keep moving that institution up, keep plugging, keep working away.”
As originally published, this story contained an error.
