Task Force Recommends Against New Mexico Veterinary School
Date: Oct. 27, 1997
Editor: D'Lyn Ford (505) 646-6528, dlford@nmsu.edu
LAS CRUCES -- New Mexico State University's Board of Regents accepted a task force report Oct. 24 that advised against creating a veterinary medical school in New Mexico.
Board members unanimously voted to accept the report. They also approved a recommendation to write state legislators in support of full funding for the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE). The program allows New Mexicans to attend veterinary medical schools in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts under a reciprocal agreement.
Establishing a veterinary medical school in New Mexico would cost millions and could actually lower the acceptance rate for New Mexicans, the report concluded.
"We're getting a bargain when all factors are considered," task force member Dean Hawkins, an NMSU associate professor of animal sciences, told the board.
Last year, state legislators passed Senate Joint Memorial 60, requesting that the board study the feasibility of establishing a college of veterinary medicine at NMSU. The task force investigated costs and requirements for a veterinary school.
In the 1996-97 school year, 71 New Mexicans supported by WICHE attended veterinary medical school at a cost of $1.4 million.
Buildings for a veterinary school would cost $43 million without equipment, Hawkins said. Maintaining the veterinary programs would cost a minimum of $14 million annually, he said.
For comparison, the task force looked at Mississippi State University, which is about the same size as NMSU and has the smallest accredited veterinary college in the United States.
Mississippi's program costs about $12 million to maintain each year.
"There was concern that New Mexico is currently paying out-of-state tuition for a relatively large number of students to go out of state to secure the doctor of veterinary medicine degree," Rodney Foil, task force member and vice president of MSU's division of agriculture, forestry and veterinary medicine, said in an interview before Friday's board meeting.
"Some legislators thought perhaps the same results could be obtained at less expense by having a college of veterinary medicine here."
Foil said the state is getting a good deal. "It's very much our opinion that New Mexico is securing the advanced veterinary training at about the least cost."
The task force found that under WICHE students at NMSU have a better chance at being admitted to veterinary colleges than those who have a veterinary school in their own state.
The report also concluded that potential demand is too low to support a veterinary medical school in New Mexico. Students attending four-year universities in the state historically have had one of the highest rates of acceptance -- 50 percent -- to colleges of veterinary medicine in the United States.