Former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price watched college campuses grow their reach during her 10-year tenure.
Texas Christian University had an influx of students on the back of athletic and student success. Texas A&M bought Texas Wesleyan’s law school. Tarrant County College and the University of North Texas Health Science Center, now UNT Health Fort Worth, continued to grow.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic posed a new challenge for the city — threatening its economic growth. Price, alongside business leaders John Goff and Elaine Agather, knew Fort Worth needed a pivot.
Join us for the latest iteration of our Candid Conversations series.
The pressing question our panelists will address: How do we build a higher education hub and why?
Panelists include:
- John Goff – founder and chairman, Crescent Real Estate
- Kenneth Ross – director of communications and public affairs, Lockheed Martin
- Jennifer Cowley – president, University of Texas at Arlington
- Robert Ahdieh – chief operating officer, Texas A&M-Fort Worth
- James Hurley – president, Tarleton State University
Chris Cobler, CEO and publisher for the Fort Worth Report, will moderate the discussion.
When: Breakfast at 7:30 a.m., discussion begins at 8 a.m. Aug. 19. Tickets are available by clicking here.
Where: Tarleton State Fort Worth’s Grand Room, 10850 Texan Rider Drive
The discussion will be livestreamed to the Fort Worth Report’s YouTube page, where a recording will be published following the event.
“We were brainstorming one day and thought, maybe we can have a big announcement at a corporate office that we can land that will bring big jobs,” Price said. “John Goff said, ‘Corporations come and go, but universities come and grow.’”
Since that moment, Fort Worth has focused on not only continuing the excellence of schools that have nailed their colors to the mast but making the city a national powerhouse of higher education.
New players in town
Texas A&M’s newest development in Cowtown started with an hour-and-a-half meeting in 2021.
For years, Aggie leadership had been wanting a new building to house their downtown Fort Worth law school.
When Robert Ahdieh became the dean of the law school in 2018, he saw a city ripe with opportunity.
“A&M has historically owned the countryside and didn’t really have anything urban, aside from a sporadic presence in Houston,” Ahdieh said.
As Price, Goff and Agather worked under the Fort Worth Now task force — created to help the city stay economically competitive during the pandemic — expanding Texas A&M’s reach seemed a natural fit, officials said.
Ahdieh recounted that Goff once visited the A&M law school to get a feel for what expansion would look like.
“We went up to the roof, and then he said two things,” Ahdieh said. “He said, ‘This is a slam dunk. I’ve never seen a more obvious development than what’s going on here in the southeast corner of downtown.’ Then he said, ‘This will be a game changer for Fort Worth if we can pull it off.’”
Now, construction is underway on the Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus that will house the law school alongside other programs. The first building is slated to open in 2026.
For Ahdieh, who also serves as the chief operating officer for the new campus, Texas A&M-Fort Worth is one of the first steps in creating a “higher education hub” in the city.
In the spirit of creating a collaborative campus, the building that will house the law school will include three floors dedicated to Tarleton State University.
Tarleton State, which is a member of the Texas A&M University System, is growing its campus in southwest Fort Worth, to go along with its main campus in Stephenville.
Tarleton State University’s Fort Worth campus grand opening of Interprofessional Education Building on Oct. 22, 2024. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report)
Texas A&M has grabbed a lot of local headlines, but most Fort Worth universities have big plans.
In 2024, the University of Texas at Arlington announced that it would build a new campus in the Walsh Ranch development, near west Fort Worth.
The public and various UTA members enjoy the new UTA West storefront in Willow Park July 24, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
The university already has two buildings in Tarrant County, the University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute in the eastern part of Fort Worth and the UTA Fort Worth Center downtown.
UT-Arlington President Jennifer Cowley said plans for the campus began in 2023 after school officials identified a lack of higher education west of Dallas-Fort Worth’s urban center.
Meanwhile, population estimates show fast growth for the area.
“We felt like it was the perfect opportunity for us to make an investment and to be able to serve that growing part of our region,” Cowley said.
The UTA West campus is planned to open in 2028.
By 2031, experts estimate that nationally about 70% of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or some postsecondary education or training. For Texas, it is estimated that more than 60% of jobs will require such a degree.
Fort Worth, as a booming business city, will be no exception, Price said.
“One of the big needs here has always been that we didn’t have adequate training for the workforce that we were going to need to deliver for the growth we were having,” Price said. “The expansion of the universities gives businesses the chance to expand and gives us a chance to grow our workforce from within.”
Continued business expansion is one of the factors that brought the UTA West campus to life, Cowley said.
“We know over the coming decade there are going to be many new employers that are going to choose to move to this part of the region,” Cowley said.
UT-Arlington has already had conversations with the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership about how the university can maximize its impact with the new campus, Cowley said.
“Any time an employer is looking at moving into Fort Worth, the first question is: Are they going to have the talent they need?” Cowley said.
While other universities are beginning to expand, those that have already established their roots in the city are optimistic about the future.
Tarrant County College, one of the country’s largest community college districts with campuses across the county, just celebrated 60 years.
Tarrant County College Trinity River Campus on Aug. 21, 2023. (File photo | Fort Worth Report)
Since its inception, TCC has had a $2.3 billion impact, while alumni contributed $1.8 million in added income to the local economy, according to data from the college.
Elva LeBlanc, TCC chancellor, said the college focuses on building the area’s talent pipeline by ensuring offerings reflect industry needs.
“We do an excellent job of taking students where they are and creating stars because they do incredibly well when they go to a university or when they go into the workforce,” LeBlanc said. “That’s what it’s all about, and we stand ready.”
The hometown teams
Some schools aren’t expanding outward but building where they are.
TCU, a private university founded in 1873, is the flagship institution of the city with about 13,000 students.
In April, the university’s board of trustees approved a master plan for new student housing and renovations across the campus.
TCU Chancellor Dan Pullin said the university plans to have nearly 18,000 students by 2035 but stressed that the growth won’t change its identity.
“Growth for us is not about volume. It’s about increasing access and meeting the rising demand for a TCU education,” Pullin said.
TCU’s work has been lauded in recent years. This year, the school appeared in the Princeton Review’s 2026 top colleges list and is ranked 105th among universities nationally, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Texas Christian University campus Aug. 20, 2024. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report)
TCU isn’t the only local university to get such honors for its work.
Texas Wesleyan University recently joined the FirstGen Forward Network, an organization that recognizes schools that focus on helping students who are the first in their families to attend college.
The university, which is the oldest higher education institution founded in Fort Worth, is now one of only two schools in the city to have such a distinction.
A united front
While each school has a different background and culture, two sentiments are uniform across the board from area leaders: The growth of higher education in Fort Worth will bolster the city’s prospects, and each campus is ready to adapt to a growing population.
“Higher education institutions of Fort Worth have realized that not everything is a football game,” Ahdieh said. “In this context, all ships rise.”
Ahdieh’s ambitions for the area are high. His hope is that Fort Worth becomes an epicenter of higher education, much like Boston, which has 36 universities and colleges.
Here are the colleges in Tarrant County:
University of Texas at Arlington – Enrollment: 41,613
Tarrant County College District – Enrollment: 44,970
Texas Wesleyan University – Enrollment: 2,666
University of North Texas Health Fort Worth – Enrollment: 2,344
Tarleton State University Fort Worth – Enrollment: around 2,300
Texas Christian University – Enrollment: 12,938
Texas A&M University School of Law – Enrollment: 394
Each university will play a role in making this dream a reality, Ahdieh said.
“We can have the potential to make Fort Worth a higher education hub that will cause companies to say, ‘Why would we go to Austin or Houston or somewhere else in Texas or the country when we have everything we need here?’” Ahdieh said. “When we can pitch that, companies that are here will choose to grow here.”
Chris Moss is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at chris.moss@fortworthreport.org.
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