Counterpoint:

    Rice has constantly expanded its intellectual scope by taking advantage of opportunities to establish  Shepherd School of Music, the Jones School of Business, the Baker Institute for Public Policy, thriving programs in emerging fields like computer science, nanotechnology, and bioengineering.

    However, none of these opportunities presented the challenges and the potential downside of a merger with BCM.  The proposed merger will truly “stretch” our financial and other resources at a time of economic crisis and financial exigency.

    More importantly, every single of the previous opportunities expanded the intellectual scope of Rice by balancing science and engineering with humanities and social sciences, technological innovations with business and policy studies, research in physical sciences with research in life sciences.

    The merger with BCM will actually narrow Rice’s intellectual scope by disproportionately strengthening a single important area to create one of the most unbalanced institutions in the US, where

1. •more than 75% of its faculty and almost 90% of its research output will be the life and medical sciences, while
   

2. •the majority of its undergraduate and graduate students will major and conduct research in other disciplines.

Point:

From the Rice-BCM site - Question 1

History:  Rice’s first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, envisioned that the university would someday have a medical school and law school. In fact, an early map of the campus showed a medical school. Rice has grown continuously over the past century and today includes schools of architecture, business, engineering, humanities, music, natural sciences, social sciences and continuing studies, along with a range of world-class institutes and centers — but no medical or law school. Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) presents a unique opportunity for Rice to acquire a top 20 medical school located close to its main campus.