Editor’s note: The following article was written by UT San Antonio President Taylor Eighmy, PhD. An abbreviated version also appeared in the commentary section of the San Antonio Express-News.
For decades, civic leaders have used the phrase “anchor institution” to describe large, place-bound organizations, such as universities, that drive local economies. Historically, the term has been defined by a checklist: major employer, research engine, builder, purchaser and healthcare provider.
Today, that definition is no longer sufficient. A modern anchor institution carries a broader responsibility for the trajectory of the city and region it serves. Its role must now be measured by the outcomes it helps create, including greater educational attainment, expanded economic mobility, improved health, workforce and economic development, innovation and regional prosperity.
That distinction matters for the newly merged UT San Antonio, now the third-largest research university in Texas, with more than 43,000 students, 17,500 employees, a $2.8 billion annual budget, a new multispecialty research hospital and more than $525 million in annual research expenditures. On day one, we became something rare in American higher education: a comprehensive research university integrated with a major academic medical center, uniquely positioned to align education, research, healthcare and economic development.
San Antonio, now the sixth-largest city in the nation, is a city of momentum. Our region has outpaced national economic growth for over a decade and is positioned to expand across cybersecurity and information technology, life sciences and health, advanced manufacturing and logistics, and aerospace and defense.
Yet significant gaps remain in income, educational attainment, workforce readiness and access to economic opportunity and healthcare — a call to action that aligns with our university’s strengths and mission.
A call to action locally and nationally
These gaps and our call to action to address them are not part of an abstract debate; they are a national imperative. Across the country, colleges, universities and hospitals — what economists call “eds and meds” — rank among the largest employers in nearly every major city. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia estimates that, once their direct, indirect and induced effects are counted, these institutions support roughly 18 million American jobs. Unlike corporations that can relocate overnight, they stay put, rooted in the places that depend on them.
Yet the very institutions that anchor so much of the American economy are themselves under strain. Public confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, according to Gallup, which is down from 57% a decade ago. The familiar critique that the academy has become an ivory tower walled off from the community around it can ring true. The old model of an anchor institution has run its course, and public higher education must reinvent itself around benefits and impacts for the communities it serves. The new anchor model is where that reinvention begins.
With that reinvention comes a deeply important responsibility, not simply to grow, but to align our growth and investments with our region’s most pressing and evolving needs across five interconnected commitments: education, discovery, community investment, partnership and health.