zip-O-matic
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Posts posted by zip-O-matic
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One aspect of instituting such a system relative to many campuses' enrollment issues, is that you could negotiate with OSU to--in exchange for their recognized flagship role and separate funding model--to put a cap on enrollment. I looked at their numbers for last Fall, and they enrolled 7900! freshman with an average ACT score of 30. On top of that, they're stockpiling hundreds of kids in the 24-27 range at their branch campuses. If they capped that at 6500, that's 1400 very well qualified students who would be looking elsewhere. Some would go out of state, but most I think would end up at another Ohio public. OSU probably doesn't want to do it voluntarily because the 1400 kids at the bottom of their class profile are probably paying full tuition as well as taking up a dorm bed for two years. There'd need to be some kind of incentive to make it work on their end. So they get their clearly designated flagship status and funding model, they get to ramp their selectivity up to Michigan levels, and the rest of the system gets an infusion of over a thousand well qualified kids.
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28 minutes ago, kreed5120 said:I'm well aware that Akron would become the designated STEM school of NEO. That's fine with me personally.
I think what you'd be looking at is a merger of Kent, Akron and NEO to create a Cincinnati type school. I don't buy into this notion that you can create a "STEM school" that is taken seriously as a national or even regional university. Even MIT and CalTech have respected history and economics departments.
If you're truly talking about a California style system, then you're talking about OSU as the flagship of the system, then a tier below that of UC, Ohio U., UA/KSU/NEO and BGSU/UT with regulated grad/professional programs. These schools' role would not be to become OSU any more than it's UC Davis' role to challenge and compete with Berkeley. I'm not sure how you fit in Miami without more thought. The next tier down would be relatively easy admission, campuses with little or no grad programs (YSU, KSU, WSU) and beneath that the community college system. Schools would be funded differently based on their roles in the system.
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27 minutes ago, kreed5120 said:There are a lot of things to not like about California politics, but I think it's hard to deny that they're ahead of the game when it comes to operating a functional public university system. Below are a list of public universities they have that are in the top 100 best public universities based upon US News and World Reports annual rankings. Akron, Kent, YSU, and Cleveland State should be working together to offer NEO residents the highest level education possible at the lowest cost. They shouldn't be competing to see which one of them can build the largest rock climbing wall.
1) UCLA
2) UC - Berkeley
5) UC - Santa Barbara
7) UC - Irvine
10) UC - Davis
11) UC - San Diego
26) UC - Santa Cruz
35) UC - Riverside
60) San Diego State University
67) UC - Merced
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public
The one thing that you have to accept with implementing a California type system is that not everybody gets to be Berkeley or even a UC campus. Schools play a role in an overall system that doesn't allow them to change lanes and start empire building to seek prestige. I don't know whether Ohio is capable of that. They can't even take the simple step of calling OSU the "flagship" when it's as plain as day on the ground and historically. And of course the great irony of that is that OSU hums along above the fray while the schools that have most strongly advocated the spread the peanut butter evenly and let every school determine its own course model are the ones heading off the cliff.
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All the other state universities are being affected by this other than OSU, UC and Miami, and Miami is only holding on because they relentlessly recruit out of state students. It's hitting Akron the hardest because of years of Proenza's reckless spending binge followed by mediocre or worse leadership that only cared about getting to the next job. This is undoubtedly going to feed the element in state government that's long advocated consolidating programs and even campuses and instituting a much more rigid, structured system, and can you blame them? Proenza's building spree will be exhibit A in the argument to reign in "empire building" within the system. This is a system that funds more public law schools and the same number of public medical schools as California. It's been heading for this cliff for a long time.
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I don't understand…can you explain...
Those two schools are pretty much universally considered to have top 5 computer science departments globally. And then there's MIT at #30 behind Kaplan University of Davenport. Meanwhile, DePaul is #6--I live in Chicago,and Depaul is not #6 in anything . I don't know what kind of methodology could have come up with that ranking.
If one's going to look at individual department rankings, one needs to look at the once-per-decade evaluations by the National Research Council. Those are the gold standard.
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UA's Computer Science Program Ranked #54 in the country according to these folks, and #1 in Ohio.
Had my hopes up that it was legit, but Stanford and Illinois at #36 and #37 removed any credibility.
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Cincinnati had 39K at Nippert yesterday.
Grand reopening of Nippert after being renovated last year, so it's not surprising. We'll see what they do over the course of a year or two.
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I wonder if Scarborough and the Trustees have seen the video.
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350 fake soldiers at 2,000 a head would be $700,000. Remind me of how much was saved by cutting baseball.
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A&M has an enrollment of 60k. I think they are doing just fine despite that cadet corp they are known for "turning so many students off."
If anything, a lot of our students could work on their leadership and discipline considering the abysmal graduation rate.
They have decades of that identity and culture and multi-generational aggy families who don't even consider sending kids elsewhere. They also have a population 3x the size of Ohio with a very conservative military culture and retiree population. Even still, A&M has a very self-selecting applicant pool that alienates a significant portion of the potential students because of their narrow culture and general weirdness. To a huge portion of the Texas population, particularly transplants from the Great Lakes and West Coast, A&M is considered this very weird, bizarre university and if kids don't get into Texas they don't even think about A&M as the backup.
I just don't see how you attempt to transplant that aggyness and wrap the identity of UA in it without alienating a huge pool of kids who'll just look to K--SU, YSU or CSU instead. UA should be trying to broaden its appeal right now rather than narrowing it, but that's what SS is doing with Polytechnic (which I admittedly lukewarm support depending on how it's implemented) and now the fake army.
If you want to increase the graduation rate, have better academic counseling, send marginal kids to a branch campus or CC for a year or two and provide more need-based aid to get kids through with less financial pressure to quit. A fake army is no magic bullet.
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That's a great initiative and should go a long way towards making up for the pathetic amount of need-based institutional aid that UA gives out.
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I like to think a head of a military-like group that instills discipline and leadership in you would have much more of an impact on someone's life and resume than a sociology professor ever would.
Not if you're a student who doesn't care about playing fake army while at college. If UA is going to be recruiting students needing the impact of the leader of the school's fake army more than that of the faculty, I really feel sorry for where UA is headed.
If this turns out anything like Texas A&M, the fake army is going to turn off more potential students than it attracts.
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The University of Akron's commandant of the Corps of Cadets and director of the Leadership Academy will earn $100,000 a year.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/08/university_of_akrons_director.html#incart_river
I, for one, will welcome our new Golden Flash overlords when this is all done.
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Something had to be cut, and as it is, the AD got off easy: 1.7% of the cuts as opposed to 6.7% of the budget. People should consider it a godsend that the admin didn't make the AD bear an equal share of the cuts because the discussion wouldn't be what could have been cut instead of baseball but, rather, how much else was cut in addition to baseball.
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I don't mind negative press. It holds the university accountable. I think UA would be in a lot better shape had the ABJ taken this line during the Proenza regime rather than just parroting his grandiose vision. Had they been willing to dig into and publicize possible long term financial risks from all the debt he was loading up, it may have caused him to pause before green lighting some of these projects and UA wouldn't be trying dig itself out of the hole he dug with his golden shovel. Perhaps they realize their mistake, and this is a bit of overcompensating.
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Whatever good ideas and initiatives he has had or will have are also now less likely to be implemented. He's lost political capital in Columbus, alienated the other Presidents, pissed off the alumni, raised serious scrutiny with his privatization schemes and become something of a national poster boy for the Imperious 1% University President. The missteps and tone-deaf leadership have essentially put him into a hole that's going to require the next year or two to dig out of rather than focus on actively putting forth an agenda to move forward.
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3. How will the expenditure of well over $100,000 for a mother-in-law suite help in the solicitation of private funding.
Well, if it's Al Bundy's mother-in-law giving her a place where she won't wander into the cocktail party with the donors might be a good thing.
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"All of the money has come from donations made to the university for the specific purpose of housing the university president," said Pavloff. "So we've had previous homes that we've occupied and sold, fortunately for gains. We've put those funds in a separate endowment. In the most recent case of the renovations--even solicited some additional funds. But every one of those dollars has come from donations made specifically for the purpose of housing the university president. There have been no dollars from the general fund that have been used for that purpose."
Even if jupiteroo is wrong, and it was all private donations do the warped priorities not bother you one bit? Does the fact that your alma mater can hand out only 1/260th the amount of need based aid as K---ent not suggest in the slightest that maybe they should have been out raising money for more scholarships instead of $500 olive jars?
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" Last year, K---ent gave out $26.3M in need based financial aid. That's institutional aid and doesn't include any state or federal grants or things like hometown scholarships. Do you want to know what Akron gave out? One hundred and one thousand dollars! Despite having the larger endowment."
Eureka. I now know why Can't gets so many applications. They buy them at the expense of the taxpayers.
Take off the Zippy glasses for a moment. These are institutional (non-state) funds. They're coming from their endowment. Even though they have a smaller endowment, they apparently have prioritized raising funds for scholarships to a degree that UA hasn't. Proenza raised money for shiny new buildings. K--ent's enrollment is rising, while UA's is declining. Whose priorities seem to be paying off?
The reality is that Proenza talked a big game, built some shiny buildings on credit and never failed to take a jab at OSU in a public speech. He made everyone feel good about a bright, golden future. That's what con artists do, but he was ultimately a cheap grifter. And it's pretty clear from his extended sabbatical that he got the hell out of town with a satchel of money right before his grift was exposed.
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Wait, so the taxpayers receive millions in assets from private donations (Goodyear Polymer Center, Stile Field House, etc.) but they're up in arms about < $1M spent on the president's residence, again from private donations, which they also then own?
Yes, unless every cent came from private donations earmarked expressly for that renovation, they absolutely have a right to question $500 olive jars, $40K bathrooms and $100K "in-law" suites with remote control showers. And it's looking as though the contention that it was all private is b.s......that when the spending spree ran out of money they just tapped into the General Fund and kept on rolling. And even then privately raised funds can be very much swayed and directed by the institution. I doubt very many people approach the university and say, "hey I'd like to donate money to renovate the President's house." Those funds are solicited, often at the expense of other needs. Last year, K---ent gave out $26.3M in need based financial aid. That's institutional aid and doesn't include any state or federal grants or things like hometown scholarships. Do you want to know what Akron gave out? One hundred and one thousand dollars! Despite having the larger endowment.
This university spent almost as much on this lavish house renovation as it did on total, institutional need-based scholarships! If that is not indicative of a deeply dysfunctional management philosophy and the warped priorities of Proenza, the board and SS, I don't know what is. And "Dr P" gets the blame too. He was President for how long, and he left us with just 100K in need based aid to hand out? Like I said, warped priorities at the top for too long at UA are finally coming home to roost.
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Why do people think all money spent by the U. comes directly from taxpayers when the state actually provides relatively little (and dwindling) support?
True, but it is still a public university, and the the taxpayers contribute a substantial amount to it every year and do own the buildings. They have a right to question spending like this.
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Too bad it wasn't Obama stimulus dollars-- then there'd be no debt.
Dyer's column is devastating in the picture it paints of Scar's leadership so far. And Proenza's. The headline is deadly "UA's demise". wow. This whole thing has been a PR disaster. Why would anyone go to UA, play for UA, contribute to UA at this point? Just devastating...
One thing I think he should have noted is that UA's construction binge wasn't unusual or fantastically egregious-- our debt is large, but not unheard of. The reality is the campus desperately needed investment. He missed acknowledging this. He also didn't note that this was a huge investment in Akron, probably the single biggest investment in Akron in decades. Resources didn't leave the area-- they came in. Thousands of construction jobs and $600 billion of local investment. He should be saying "it's a fantastic and amazing thing to have that investment occur but now how does the community help justify the faith that Proenza showed by making this investment?"
I dunno-- something still seems really off to me. Did revenues plummet (because of enrollment declines) or expenses increase unexpectedly by tens of millions? Was there an accounting change of some sort? A sudden $60 million "hole" doesn't just appear out of nowhere.
Did Proenza cook the books until he could get out the door, and they're letting him off the hook because they don't want the legal battles and pr hit as well as it would directly call the trustees oversight into question? Not saying he did, but I wouldn't mind seeing some outside financial analysts brought in to dig up exactly WTF happened.
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34.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond. Le Creuset is a pretty high end brand too. Even comes with a wooden olive fork.
Big Buyouts at U of Akron
in General UA & Campus Discussion
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I doubt they want to take on management of any of the other schools. Why add that hassle when they don't need to. They're doing fine financially, enrollment-wise, in selectivity and fundraising. Why upset the apple cart? I'd guess that they'd try to influence any reforms to the system to their liking but not take any responsibility to actually step in and save any of the schools....in fact, maybe even try to gain some kind of autonomy from the state for themselves in the process.