There is a lot to a name of a university

On Thursday, December 12, The University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) and The University of Texas at Pan America (UTPA) will learn its official new name as one university.

For those new to our saga, UTB and UTPA are consolidating to form the largest Hispanic serving institution in the United States.  Our goal is to become a true bilingual and bi cultural University that serves students who want to immerse themselves in a true international experience.  This also provides the UT Systems with the opportunity to build a technological university from scratch.  No holds barred.

It was decided early on that to create one new university out of two old ones, it should not retain the names of either nor be the same university with two campuses named differently.  This is a clean slate.  Well, almost.  Reality is never as easy as theory.  UT Systems used social media to gain a perspective of what people from the Valley wanted the name to be.  A surprise candidate showed up coming in the third most popular.  This third candidate was to keep The University of Pan American as the name of both.

So, I went to the Monitor, the newspaper for McAllen and Edinburg, the home towns of UTPA and the Brownsville Herald for the UTB area to read the comments.  Just as expected, the comments from the Monitor defended keeping the UTPA name and the one comment from the Herald was that it would send a message that UTB was just being absorbed by a larger university.

This is the first official public step (lots have been going on behind the scenes between the two universities to manage the consolidation) to creating a new university.  With all that needs to be planned and implemented academically to create a unique college education, it seems interesting (the dreaded word that hides complex thoughts) that a small issue of name could create more chatter than what programs are going to happen, how the quality of education will improve and what our graduates will look like.

This is to be noted to universities nationally.  As the cost effectiveness of a four year degree is being debated in the press, we find college attendance declining throughout the U.S.  More prospective students and their care givers are preferring programs that will lead directly to a career in the shortest length of time and not put the students into serious debt. Will we be seeing more consolidation of campuses as less students attend and  more emphasis is on jobs, technology and not educational enlightenment?

Maybe this consolidation of universities is not unique, but a wave of the future.  If so, the name will be the first public hurdle.