Texas Tech takes a $17 million step toward new veterinary school

A Texas state legislative committee voted last month to include $17.4 million in the state budget to establish a new veterinary school at Texas Tech University. The amount is a significant increase from the roughly $4 million included in the first budget, according to a story from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Seven Texas senators and representatives announced the funding to help “address the shortage of large and mixed animal veterinarians in rural parts of the state” and “to secure the food supply.”

“The school will address the hundreds of students who are leaving the state of Texas for a more costly education, then coming back to practice in their home state with upwards of $250,000 in debt due to out-of-state tuition,” the release states.

Texas Tech first announced plans to develop the school in Amarillo, Texas, in 2015, forming a steering committee the next year. Two years later, plans for the school inspired a local economic development group to pledge up to $69 million to help with construction.

The new college of veterinary medicine (check out the website here)-if it's funded at the end of budget negotiations and eventually built-would join Texas A&M University as the second Texas school to educate veterinarians. The two schools squabbled back in 2016 about the need for the school, with Texas A&M against a new veterinary school at the time and arguing that their off-campus partnerships would take care of the state's needs for food animal and agricultural veterinarians.

At press time the budget bill was still being debated in a conference committee.