Dive Brief:
- University of Houston officials are breathing a sigh of relief after University of Texas System Chancellor Bill McRaven this week announced plans to cancel a research expansion project in downtown Houston, and to sell $200 million of land purchased in the area.
- The plans which had riled UH leadership and legislators for its potential encroachment on the school's mission and possible pathway for program duplication will halt what McRaven described as opportunities for collaborative research and economic development in the city.
- Critics long expressed dissatisfaction with the system's failure to secure public and legislative buy-in for the proposed development, which would have been five miles from the UH campus.
Dive Insight:
The State of Maryland is currently in mediations stemming from a federal lawsuit which found that it maintained a racially segregative system of higher education through program duplication. At the core of that suit, and similar efforts for public institutions to expand brand footprint and academic offerings, are considerations of potential legal violations and legislative reaction.
Distributions of racial and industrial access are primary elements of creating collaborative development partnerships. For systems, this could be cultivated with initial discussions with member institutions before expansion into new geographic areas and proximate institutions beyond the system.