Texas A&M Partners with Texas Wesleyan to Buy Law School for $20M, Create Special Degree Programs
Texas A&M University announced today that it is purchasing Texas Wesleyan University’s law school for an estimated $20 million or more, as part of a plan to put Texas A&M among the top 10 public universities in the country by 2020.
Texas Wesleyan will continue to own the land and buildings under the agreement reached by the two institutions, and they will work together to offer joint degree programs and develop other collaborative offerings, according to the Associated Press and a Texas A&M announcement in the university’s TAMU Times.
The law school, which will now be known as Texas A&M School of Law at Texas Wesleyan University, will offer a joint juris doctor and Texas Wesleyan master of business administration degree, as well a Texas Wesleyan undergraduate / law school 3+3 program, making it possible for a student to earn both a bachelor’s degree and a JD in six years.
In the announcement, Texas A&M’s president, R. Bowen Loftin, said that “Expanding Texas A&M’s graduate professional programs is one of the key tenets of Vision 2020, our long-range plan to become one of the country’s top 10 public institutions by the year 2020. If you look at the top universities—our peer institutions—most of them have a law school.”
Texas Wesleyan President Frederick G. Slabach called the arrangement “a mutually beneficial collaboration with limitless possibilities.”
Texas A&M will create the first public law school in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.
In 2014, the University of North Texas is scheduled to open a new law school in Dallas, the AP article notes.
Additional and related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Federal Judge to Serve as Founding Dean of New Law School in Dallas”
Star-Telegram: “Texas A&M to buy Texas Wesleyan University School of Law”
Updated at 3:25 p.m. to fix a grammar problem.
