zip-O-matic
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Posts posted by zip-O-matic
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On 12/6/2024 at 11:58 AM, ZZZips said:
Not disagreeing with your overall argument but Michigan is not land grant university.
Michigan and Indiana are unique in this part of the country in that the states split the traditional Arts & Sciences flagship from the Land Grant University with both schools becoming prominent, though there's a clear hierarchy in Michigan. Other states (Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota) combined the two roles into a single university. California did the same thing, and it surprises some people that Berkeley is a land grant university.
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On 12/12/2024 at 2:30 PM, UA1996MAENG said:
Oh, Lou..... The current era in CFB is undesirable and disappointing in many ways, but Holtz can't/shouldn't romanticize the past either. It was never clean and never about academics no matter how we choose to remember it. Teamwork and character? Booster payments, academic fraud, racking up hundreds of victories in a century against teams that were either helpless or underfunded. So what's really changed?
Let's not forget that Lou left every single program he coached either on probation or on the verge of probation.
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21 hours ago, akzipper said:
Seeing OSU gear everywhere is usually annoying. But on Saturday, the fact that all of those people were miserable makes me happy. Especially since 99% of them didn't attend that school and are just frontrunners.
People joke about the 99%, but it's not too far from the truth. I read a breakdown that referenced a study that showed they had the largest fanbase in the nation at 11.25M. They have 600K living alumni. Even if every single alum was a devoted football fan, they'd only be slightly over 5% of the fanbase. In reality, I'd bet that a third of their alums don't care about sports/football and another third take a passing, casual interest in it leaving only 200K that are active, passionate fans. That works out to 98.2% of their fanbase are non-alums.
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2 hours ago, zippy-claws said:
I concur with both of these posts. Being retired from the plastics and polymer business as a chemist in my "previous life" I have witnessed a steady decline in the original intent of this department and program. What was originally designed to train not only PhD candidates but undergrads and associate degree seekers to help populate a need for engineers, chemists and technicians slowly changed to a highly PhD driven program with most candidates from overseas. My company, as well as several other prominent Polymer companies donated cash and equipment, plus co-op opportunities and internships, hoping to see a return in employable, polymer science trained candidates for our industry. Even the American Chemical Society and it's Rubber Division, as well as the local Rubber Groups professional societies endorsed the programs and also provided financial support. But that supply dwindled as did support, as a lot of the rubber, plastics and polymer companies left the area. When we attended our daughter's graduation 5 years back the Polymer Science doctoral stoles were awarded, and reading the abstracts of their doctoral theses I was bemused at the subject matter and research, and thought how far away from the original intent they had strayed. And Hilltopper is right, it was a school top-heavy in Profs.
Don't know a lot of the internals and history of the program, but it seems like a program meant to support the region's businesses that ended up with dreams of turning itself into Berkeley and winning Nobels. My hunch would be that this was, to some degree, Proenza driven. All that seemed to happen is that we lavished attention on a group of faculty who managed to catch Duke's eye and then bail on UA.
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Didn't Duke show up a few years ago and poach our best professors who took their doctoral students and research funding with them?
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Found it. It was pretty buried.
13,356 total enrollment and 9263 undergraduate at Akron campus.
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4 hours ago, egregiousbob said:
OU graduates more primary care physicians than OSU by far. Also more than Cincy, Toledo, Wright State and NEOMed. There are some very high quality graduate programs outside of Columbus.
Good for them. Hell, OU might produce more primary care physicians than Johns Hopkins for all I know. Sounds like they provide a need, particularly as it relates to rural care physicians. They get to stay. That doesn't mean that all the rest need to exist.
There are some very high quality graduate programs outside of Columbus. I don't disagree with that. There are also a literal f**k ton of completely irrelevant, lowly ranked ones borne of arrogant, egotistical empire building that the state should rid itself of and refocus that money towards undergraduate education.
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As far as this relates to college enrollment, it goes back to my previous posts. Get Ohio State to cap their freshman classes at 7000. Give them what they want in exchange. Officially designate them the state's flagship--hell, that's what they were founded to be and it's the clear reality today. Give them a funding bill separate from the rest of the system--they always had one until the 60s, so it would be nothing more than a return to the historical norm.
And force a reckoning on the massive amount of redundant, lowly ranked doctoral and professional programs that have risen up around the state and refocus that money towards undergraduate education. There's no reason that Ohio needs to have as many public law and medical schools as California.
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Cleveland never recognized this because they were too busy telling themselves that they weren't the mistake on the lake and were really just a smaller version of Chicago (I've heard that more than once), so there never seemed to be a sense of urgency. Cincinnati had the same attitude until the racial riots and lockdowns in the early 2000s forced them out of their sense of complacency. Columbus, on the other hand, always had that little brother sense of insecurity and subsequent drive to get better. They were gentrifying downtown neighborhoods as far back as the 80s.
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2 hours ago, ZipCat said:
Which is political decisions that should be solved through competent state legislation. Essentially the State institutions were thrown bootstraps and a Laissez-faire, Ayn Rand free market competition, instead of coherent planning strategy by competent management who gives a damn about it.
Yes. At the same time Ohio was undoing any regulation and structure to its system, California was instituting the exact opposite called "The Master Plan." Guess who ended up with the better and more affordable system. The problem is how do you put that toothpaste back into the tube. Get the colleges to just finally and formally accept that Ohio State is Ohio State and that they are not. And don't get me started on the tantrum that the Toledo Blade would throw.
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Ohio's system was broke in the 60s. Because of the empire building, we have the same number of public university law schools as California and only one fewer medical school. There are tons of redundant Ph.D programs that--outside of Ohio State--don't crack the top 100, even at Cincinnati. Because Ohio State had one, Miami felt the need to have a Russian Studies major, despite having only a single historian in the field and nobody in political science. They don't even have a Russian major, much less other Slavic languages. But Ohio State had one, so they needed one too.
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28 minutes ago, GP1 said:
There were hundreds of guys like him working at MAClike schools across the country back then.
Which is why a California type system is best. Institutional roles are legally defined. There's no wasteful empire building. And everyone knows to stay in their lane. Imagine a President of San Diego State or even UC-Davis going around calling for "multiple flagships." How long would he stay employed?
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It seems like only yesterday that Proenza was telling everyone that UA was on the cusp of replacing Ohio State as the state's flagship. We've had some bad Presidents since, but that guy was all talk, all spend and no accomplishment.
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15 hours ago, ZipCat said:
That doesn't mean they should get a free pass. Their incompetence (bred from their status of being politically appointed by equally incompetent clowns) is really why UA is in the state it's in. They're the ones who have greenlit every leadership decision, project, program, initiative and major hire at UA. And people want to blame the professors...it's unbelievably stupid.
My understanding is that the university leadership already has a fair amount of say into whom the Governor appoints. It's the reason that Miami's board is almost all alumni--which is really hurting them but if that's what they want. Again, having appointed trustees doesn't seem to hold back Ohio State or Cincinnati, so what's the difference in who's getting onto our board?
On a different note, has the administration released any enrollment numbers for this Fall or are they trying to bury the numbers?
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On 10/15/2024 at 11:31 AM, ZipCat said:
It's the fact that those were our two options that looks bad. That's a failure of the Politically Appointed Board of Trustees. I for the life of me will never understand while alumni of this institution so willingly give a free pass to those politically appointed hacks. It's been nothing but failure from the BoT clowns, and you want to blame the AAUP...speaks volumes.
No thank you to elected trustees. That would create infinitely more problems than it would solve. Plenty of other Ohio public schools do just fine with their appointed trustees.
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22 hours ago, UAZipster0305 said:
The difference between Kent, OU, and BGSU versus CSU, UA, and UT is that the latter are urban campuses. Conservative media's constant bashing of urban areas as unsafe and undesirable havens of criminals and minorities has likely taken its toll, especially in relatively conservative rustbelt states like Ohio that have many other suburban and rural options (Kent, OU, and BGSU). I'd be interested to know if analogous schools in similar states (e.g. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee) are seeing the same enrollment trends.
(I realize OSU and UC are both urban schools, but I believe their brand strength and cultures overcome the urban divide.)
It wasn't so long ago that UC was an open admission, commuter college. Today, they're more selective than OU and almost as selective as Miami. And unlike OSU, they aren't AAU or have a top 50 US News ranking or are a Big Ten school, so I wonder how they've managed to do it.
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1 hour ago, Hilltopper said:
Lower their acceptance rate and raise their fees. If so many students want in then they should pay more. Having fewer students would make it a better experience.
I disagree with that. Ohio schools are already unaffordable. Plus, I don't think OSU should aspire to be a country club like Miami. If Miami and OU are so foolish and arrogant as to try and charge more than OSU, then good luck with that.
I think the state and regents should work something out where they get a supplemental appropriation if their freshman class is under 7K to make up for lost tuition revenue and lose it if it's larger.
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On 9/3/2024 at 7:33 AM, Hilltopper said:
OSU and Cincinnati lowered their enrollment standards in order to make up for lost revenue due to covid. Most of their losses were due to drops in out of state and overseas students. Between the 2 schools they have gobbled up 30,000 instate students who would have normally gone to the MAC schools and smaller private institutions. This probably cost UA at least 1000 freshman enrollments. What really needs to happen is for the state to insist that OSU increases their standards to a level even higher than before. This is how many other states are set up. Go to a school like Akron or Toledo for undergrad and then maybe OSU for an advanced degree. But what we have is pure greed by OSU. Hopefully this will change after students find out the horrible conditions they are subjected to in Columbus. Overcrowded dormitories, 500 person class sizes taught by grad assistants etc..
I don't know about UC, but OSU doesn't seem to have lowered their standards much to grow their class. I looked up their common data set for the last year and compared it to the last freshman class before the pandemic. It looks like a small drop on test scores, but class rank is better and acceptance rate has gone down. The one big change is that they're getting a ton more applications.
2019 Freshman Class
Applications/Acceptance Rate: 47,700/53.7%
Middle 50% ACT and SAT: 28-32/1300-1420 (55% between 30 and 36)
Percent in top 10%/top 25%: 60%/93%
2023 Freshman Class
Applications/Acceptance Rate: 70,028/50%
Middle 50% ACT and SAT: 27-32/1290-1440 (51% between 30 and 36)
Percent in top 10%/top 25%: 67%/95%
But yes, I agree with you. They should lower their acceptance rate to about 33%.
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On 9/1/2024 at 1:03 PM, ZipCat said:
Or...the radical idea...the state could properly fund higher education like they used to, thus increasing the educational opportunities as those other schools outside OSU. Also, the state doesn't control OSU's (or any other Public University's) enrollment criteria.
The fact that they don't currently mandate enrollment limits doesn't mean that the state--either through the Ohio Regents or the legislature--couldn't in the future. OSU is a public institution. Now, I think there would be some behind the doors wheeling and dealing, and they'd need to get something they want. Give them a separate funding bill and state acknowledged "flagship" status. Who cares. That's always been the de-facto reality, so it doesn't change the actual reality on the ground, and the other schools get something very tangible in return.
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Coaching staff completely dropped the ball on Finley. I get that he didn't want to come out because he's an effin' warrior. That's when the coaching staff should have stepped up and looked at the larger picture that Buckeye #33 was about to rupture his spleen and pulled him. Reason number one being his health and well being and a distant reason number two being the well being of the team for the rest of the season.
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4 hours ago, GP1 said:
Harvard College admits approximately 2,000 students a year going back to at least 2016. I would bet a number very close to that goes back a long time. Akron should be increasing the standards for admission and maintain at the current enrollment. Higher GPAs and standardized test scores would be good for the University. "More" being the only measurement for success is how the University landed in this position in the first place. I want more, just more good students. I also want fewer underperforming students.
It would be nice. Proenza certainly bragged that he could do it, but I just don't know how UA could make the jump to being a highly selective college. You have the 9K freshman class gorilla in the room that still has an average SAT score of around 1400. You have Miami with an average of 1280 soaking up a bunch more qualified kids. And then you have UC starting to get close to Miami in selectivity, though I've heard that they are going with a quantity over quality trend lately. Add in the kids going private or out of state, and Ohio's demographics simply don't allow for a many very selective public universities like California has with the UC system. It sucks, but it really is UA, KSU, OU, BGSU and Toledo cannibalizing each other for the leftovers. It doesn't mean that our group doesn't win the occasional battle, but it's never going to enough to truly move the needle.
And besides, not every public university in a state system should strive to be highly selective. Selective enough that the kids accepted are capable of doing the work, but not everyone gets to be Berkeley.
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On 8/24/2024 at 4:25 PM, Reslife4Life said:
Is that columbus and branch campuses or just columbus?
None of the reports that I googled specifically say. But since recent post-covid classes were 8K, I'd assume it's Columbus. Also, the reports that I read say that they're having a crunch for dorm space and have converted 2 person rooms into 4 person rooms. Also found out that they're getting 80K applications with half Ohioans and half out of state.
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Went to the Dispatch for game info and saw that OSU's freshman class is now over 9K. That's absurd. With the enrollment issues around the system, the state should think seriously about capping their class sizes to free up students for other schools. They would become even more selective, and the other schools would have a pool of very well qualified kids to attract.
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On 3/22/2019 at 10:17 AM, ZippyRulz said:
Or just let them expand further and take over one or more of the NEO universities since they have the brand and the bucks. If they ever wanted to solidify their hold on Cleveland/Akron, the opportunity is before them now.
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.
The World of College Football
in Akron Zips Football
Posted
Wait...what...we're not the more selective co-flagship now? I was told we'd become the more selective co-flagship if we spent all that money.