Earlier this month, the New Jersey Higher Education Task Force put together a substantial report recommending changes to New Jersey’s higher education system. According to The Star-Ledger, former Governor Tom Kean headed the task force and the group created a 133-page report with more than 70 recommendations to improve higher education in New Jersey.
One of the recommendations proposed is to merge two of University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey’s schools with Rutgers University. The proposal to merge the medical schools with Rutgers has been brought up twice before in the last ten years, but Governor Christie thinks that it could happen while he is governor.
According to The Star-Ledger, Governor Christie was U.S. attorney during the corruption investigation at UMDNJ’s Newark school and, because of this, he is more knowledgeable about the schools and understands both UMDNJ’s past problems and UMDNJ’s future potential.
The task force recommends merging both Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (which was founded as Rutgers Medical School in 1961, but merged a few years later into UMDNJ) and the School of Public Health with Rutgers. The task force believes that the move would make Rutgers a “first class” medical university.
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In task force report, UMDNJ faces third call to merge with Rutgers University in a decade (The Star-Ledger)