About 1,000 incoming students crowded into an auditorium on UTSA’s campus last Thursday, just as news began to spread about a proposed merger between the university and UT Health San Antonio, another renowned higher education institution just down the road. When word got out, they began to cheer.
Hearing about the buzz in the room, UTSA President Taylor Eighmy, who will remain president of the merged institution, stepped away from a flurry of calls and emails and headed down the elevator from his office to address the newest students entering UTSA’s Honors College.
“For 18-year-olds they asked amazing questions about opportunities for undergraduate research, about opportunities for growing nursing programs and for expanding our undergraduate offerings and public health,” he told the San Antonio Report. “They were very intrigued about … new programs to enroll as an undergrad and get admitted in med school automatically, and having that kind of vehicle available to them.”
Questions about the possibilities, consequences and logistics of the merger have swirled in the days since the proposal was approved by the UT Board of Regents, which governs both institutions in the system and has overseen similar mergers in other parts of Texas.
While the details are still being finalized, Eighmy sat down with the San Antonio Report to share details on some of the most pressing questions. UTSA has also launched a website with details on the merger process.
When will the merger actually happen?
The merger won’t be entirely finalized until 2026, but work will begin on the process right away.
According to a Frequently Asked Questions page detailing the merger, campus communities will receive an early plan for the integration process and a proposed timeline in the coming weeks, and will have the opportunity to engage in the process through working groups and task forces.
Those groups will help create a prospectus for the new institution, which will be presented to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) for approval before the merger can be finalized.
If approved by June 2025, as expected, the two universities will be considered “conditionally merged” as one of the largest merged institutions across the nation.
Additional site visits by SACSCOC, and the preparation of a final report in 2026, would make approval retroactive to June 2025, according to UTSA.
“It’s going to take some time to pull together how we operate as one institution academically, but we’re really envisioning the opportunity to blend and create new academic programs that haven’t been thought of today,” Eighmy said Friday.
Some aspects of the merger will be done more quickly, he added, and some could take as long as five years.
“We’re taking two wonderful, outstanding institutions that will become legacies, and creating a new university that we have a chance now to build a foundation for something that will be a world class institution in short order,” he said.
Will anyone lose their jobs?
Any time two major organizations in the same sector combine, there are questions about what will happen to professionals in the same positions at their respective institutions.
According to UTSA it is “premature to speculate on job numbers at this time, but the primary focus is on expansion and innovation that will likely lead to the creation of new roles and opportunities.”
Given the separate focuses and trajectories of the institutions, Eighmy sees the merger as an opportunity for growth, not consolidation.
“These two institutions are very complementary, both on steep trajectories,” he said. “We’re not thinking of this as one plus one equals two. No, it is really one plus one equals 10.”
UTSA reiterated that this combination is “not a cost-cutting project” and “is designed to build on strengths currently situated at both institutions and position them for long-term growth.”
Will UTSA become the main campus for the merged institution?
While the new university will retain the name of UTSA, the six campuses between the institutions will each retain its “unique focus and mission, reflecting its specialized work and educational goals.”
The downtown expansion efforts by UTSA will continue and contribute to the future merged campus.
Eighmy said the contributions, brand recognition and even strategic plan will be reworked in the coming years as the identity of the “once in a lifetime” opportunity comes to fruition.
“Both institutions have worked to develop their brand and brand recognition, and the UT Health San Antonio brand is absolutely critical, and so we’re going to have to navigate how to make sure that we honor both of our brands in a way that connotes this new university.”
The $2.2 billion combined institution will be the third-largest research university in the state with almost 16,000 employees, almost 40,000 students, and $6.5 billion in annual impact on San Antonio and Bexar County.
Which students will the new institution target?
UTSA and other colleges and universities in San Antonio have taken strides in recent years to remove barriers to first-generation college students and provide expanded opportunities to help students navigate higher education.
The UTSA Bold program, for example, provides tuition and fee-free college for top students, and the promise-to-promise program provides a path for students to transfer from one of the colleges in the Alamo College District to complete a four-year degree.
The new university presents opportunities for new programs, research opportunities and graduate school work — but the university will remain committed to the goals started with those initiatives, Eighmy said.
“As we grow into this model … we’re also going to be making all sorts of new programs available and attracting new undergraduates,” he said. “But we are intentionally going to honor how we serve our community, especially at the undergraduate level, and we may end up being a really massive and deeply impactful world class university, but we will never, never walk away from our moral obligation to serve our community and measure ourselves by how we enable trajectories and not by who we exclude.”
“We are going to grow our graduate programs and our doctoral programs significantly, but our undergraduate enrollment is still going to continue to focus on Texas and South Texas and Bexar County,” he added.
At the same time, the university hopes to keep students that are currently leaving San Antonio to go to the West and East coasts for college.
Why is this merger happening now?
The UT Board of Regents considered studies on merging the two institutions twice before, in 2002 and 2010, but ultimately decided not to approve the move at the time.
Now, after steep growth and growing collaboration between the two institutions, the combination is a natural step — especially with the projected growth in the region, Eighmy said.
“All of the population growth happening in the United States over the next 20 to 30 years is pretty much South Texas, and San Antonio is the epicenter of South Texas,” Eighmy said. “So we’re sitting in a place that’s kind of undergoing immense transformation.”
Positioning a university to capitalize on and grow along with the community is something that is necessary, Eighmy said, as well as deserved by the city.
“I think there will be a massive rallying around this,” he said. “I’ve already seen a ton of evidence of that from all the conversations I’ve been having and who’s been reaching out, sort of the common theme I’ve been hearing is, ‘What took you so long?’”
