Who ever would have thought that Shalala buying Cedars would by the puzzle piece that enabled all of the others.
Am I allowed to raise my hand? Because when there were a bunch of (politically-motivated) posters on other sites who enjoyed slamming Shalala for overpaying for Cedars, I knew that the healthcare industry in SoFla was a monster, if a slumbering monster.
Think about it another way...when I went to UM, the full-time undergrad population was less than 9,000, yet we had the 7th largest law school in the country. The med school was also a disproportionate money-maker for UM. And the MBA program too, including the Exec MBA side of things.
And then when you go up in a tall building and look around, you realize that you are in the middle of a massive 3-county/3-city megalopolis in the 3rd largest state in the US.
All UM needed to do was hitch itself to something that could be bigger than a "small private school" tends to offer, particularly when you focus on graduate-degree type industries, things where your MDs and JDs and MBAs can flourish.
Glad to see it finally happen. Great idea by Shalala and great execution by Shalala and Frenk and Echevarria after a slow start. I may not be a huge Frenk fan as a university president, but I'm glad he put the right guy in the right spot and unlocked all that value.