The Peabody Library at Vanderbilt University.

The Wall Street Journal reports that while  in recent years universities’ “revenue from medical services {at their teaching hospitals} has served as a lifeline for some schools that have struggled with falling state aid and pressure to slow tuition increases…. the marriages between universities and their cash-cow clinical operations are starting to fray as changes stemming from the 2010 healthcare law threaten to make university hospitals less profitable”

One of the schools doing the distancing is Vanderbilt University, which has Vanderbilt University Medical Center as a teaching hospital for its medical school.

“’They’re totally different businesses,’ Vanderbilt Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos said of the healthcare and educational operations. ‘“We can really focus our energy, attention and resources more on that timeless [educational] mission.”’