Opinion
 

Staff Editorial

                            Matt Dulin                             Tony Hernandez 
                Jim Parsons             Dusti Rhodes           Richard Whitrock

Staking claim

Pearland wants a UH campus in their neck of the woods. They want one so bad they're already willing to fork over 40 acres to the UH System on which to build the city's first institution of higher education. 

And it looks like they could get what they want, so long as the System does, too.

UH officials say they're interested in the idea and are eyeing a partnership with the city, local community colleges and UH-Clear Lake to create a multi-institution teaching center. The regents are interested because Pearland, which is situated about 15 miles from downtown, is showing encouraging signs of prosperous growth well into the next 10 years.

The city is still in talks with the UH System, and the plans are far from final, but the proposed campus would offer upper-level undergraduate coursework and graduate programs.

The System still needs to give due consideration to other areas of growth, such as expanding the System's Sugar Land campus or developing a satellite campus in the Willowbrook area.

The draw of Pearland is obvious: it would take the System into a new high-growth area. Like other areas in which UH has expanded, Pearland is a town dominated by sprawling suburbs and economic development in a near-town environment. 

One setback is its proximity to the UH main campus, which is about a dozen miles from Pearland. Other untapped areas of the city farther away from the current campuses may be more worthy of UH's next expansion. 

Either way, a Pearland campus and further developments beyond the current system help UH serve its most plentiful customers: commuter students. 

UH is certainly at a crossroads. If it wants to meet the state's growth expectations, it needs to stake a claim in places like Pearland, where most of UH's everyday students park their cars at the end of the day.