The Strategic Merger Model Is Alive and Well
Brian Weinblatt, Ph.D., CFRE
Founder and Principal, Higher Ed Consolidation Solutions
Higher education mergers have a long and distinguished history of mission-driven success. Doug Lederman’s recent column tells a different story. But his own examples tell another.
Few people have done more to shine a light on higher education — its challenges, contradictions, and enduring importance — than Doug Lederman. He built Inside Higher Ed into the publication the field relies on. He has spent his career as a genuine friend to higher education, not merely a chronicler of it. I attended the Joining Forces conference he hosted in 2018—the same conference he references in his recent column — and left with enormous respect for what he was building around this topic.
Which is exactly why his March 30 piece, “No, Higher Ed Mergers Have Never Been Strategic,” gave me pause.
Not because it is careless. It isn’t. But because I believe it reaches a conclusion that the evidence — including his own examples — does not fully support. And at a moment when the stakes for institutions and the communities they serve have never been higher, that is worth examining.
What His Examples Actually Show
Doug catalogs the naming disputes, faculty integration friction, and alumni resentments that accompanied the formation of Case Western Reserve University and Carnegie Mellon University. From that, he concludes that mergers are “unequal, unpopular, and very hard to pull off.”
I would offer a different reading of those same institutions.
Carnegie Mellon is one of the most influential research universities in the world. Its leadership in computer science and artificial intelligence helped transform Pittsburgh from a declining steel city into a global technology hub. Case Western Reserve is a cornerstone institution for the Cleveland region, with top-tier medical and law schools and strong engineering programs. Doug himself acknowledges that both are institutions “most of us have always known as their merged selves” — so successful that we have largely forgotten there were ever two separate entities.
The identities fused. The missions aligned. The institutions thrived.
That is not a cautionary tale. It is a success story with a bumpy road.
And there are many more like it. The University of California, Berkeley, for instance, emerged from a merger in 1853.
Hard Is Not the Same as Wrong
I think about the life of a college or university the way we think about the life of a person. There is a beginning. There is growth. And sometimes, there is a decision to “get married.”
A merger is that moment.
It does not always happen. Not every institution is a good candidate. But when it is done thoughtfully—when there is genuine alignment rather than desperation — it can be one of the most important and enduring decisions an institution makes.
No one calls a marriage a failure because the first year was hard. We judge it by what it becomes over time. Carnegie Mellon and Case Western Reserve have had nearly sixty years to show us what they have become. The verdict speaks for itself.
It also helps to remember that we are stewards, not owners. Colleges and universities are living institutions that may exist for centuries. The people who lead them at any given moment are temporary custodians of something far larger than themselves.
Seen in that light, even a difficult merger integration is a brief moment in a much longer story.
The naming disputes at Carnegie Mellon lasted a few years. The institution has now existed in its merged form for decades — and will likely exist for centuries more. Future historians will not dwell on the faculty senate debates of 1967. They will focus on what Carnegie Mellon has become and what it has contributed to Pittsburgh and the world.
The transition does not endure. The institution does.
The measure of a merger is not how difficult it was to execute. Some are hard. Others are smoother than expected. What matters is what the merger made possible for the generations that followed.
A ‘Rarity’? Or a Recognizable Model?
Near the end of his piece, Doug points to the consolidation of UTSA with the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio as a rare and hopeful exception — a genuinely strategic merger.
He calls it a rarity.
I would call it a model.
In 2006, The University of Toledo merged with the Medical University of Ohio. A comprehensive university combined with a pure health sciences institution, with virtually no program duplication. The merger passed overwhelmingly in the Ohio legislature and created one of only a few universities in the country with that breadth of programs.
In 2004, the University of Colorado Denver consolidated with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. The campuses subsequently developed distinct identities, but the consolidation produced CU Anschutz — today the largest academic health center in the Rocky Mountain region, generating $890 million in annual research funding.
And right now, my firm is advising on the merger of Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and Russell Sage College, expected to finalize in fall 2027: minimal program overlap, $246 million in combined assets, both institutions financially healthy going in. Not a rescue. A strategy.
UTSA plus health sciences. Toledo plus health sciences. Colorado plus health sciences. Russell Sage plus health sciences.
This is not a rarity. It is a recognizable, repeatable model.
James Martin and James Samels described it in 1994. It is alive and well.
Mission First. Finance Second. Always.
Martin and Samels were also clear about sequencing. Financial considerations are present in every merger. It would be naïve to suggest otherwise.
But if financial distress is the primary driver, you are already starting from the wrong place.
The right questions come first:
Are our missions aligned?
Do our academic programs complement each other?
Can our cultures work together?
Financial pressure may open the door. But alignment determines whether a merger should move forward.
Too many mergers today happen late, after other options have been exhausted. Doug is right about that.
But that is not an argument against mergers. It is an argument for engaging earlier, while institutions still have the strength and flexibility to do it well.
The Stakes Are Too High for Fatalism
We are in a period of contraction. Closures are happening, and more will follow. Not every institution can or should be saved.
But higher education is not a pure market.
When a college closes, especially in a small community, the impact is not just administrative. It is the loss of jobs, identity, and opportunity. The effects are real and lasting.
Where thoughtful, mission-aligned consolidation offers a path forward, it is worth pursuing.
The mutual growth model is not about salvaging the unsalvageable. It is about two viable institutions choosing to become something stronger together—before desperation makes that decision for them.
The Right Question
At Doug’s 2018 conference, a provost covered her name badge to avoid being associated with merger discussions. That moment reflects a culture that treats merger as a last resort—as a failure.
That mindset has consequences. It delays conversations until options are limited.
Doug closes his column by encouraging leaders to think more creatively and collaboratively. I share that goal.
But we cannot say mergers have never been strategic while also calling for more strategic collaboration.
The history is there. The evidence is there. The model works.
The real question is not: “Are we desperate enough to consider this?”
It is: “Is there an institution that would make us stronger—and would we make them stronger in return?”
When the answer is yes, the right time to act is now.
Hard does not mean wrong. Strategic does not mean painless.
It means worth it.