Leaderboard

The death nail to UA was struck around 2013. The U was already in a precarious financial position; but around that time the Ohio Legislature pushed out tougher commands on the 6-year retention rate. What made these changes especially difficult on The University of Akron was the "part-time" students and "Summit-College" students. As both counted against the 6-year retention rate at the time. Summit-College was performing the service of a Community College, where students were admitted to The University of Akron where they normally would not have been, and counted against the 6-year retention rate. Stark State seems to be moving in to cash in on the void left by UA's phase-out of Summit College as it was back then. Basically the State of Ohio forced UA to give up that vital part of revenue/service to the community that it had served as for decades and now others are moving in to siphon it off. I remember vividly one of my last years on campus when we played the University of Tennessee (where my cousin went to school) I looked up the enrollments of the two schools. UA had a total enrollment greater than that of the University of Tennessee (Ours was about 30,000 theirs was about 28,000). At UA you can clearly see the steepest reduction is in "Pre-Major" and "Associate Degree" programs which would have been mostly serviced by Summit College; followed up by Master's programs which is likely in the overall deduction of programs at UA. You can see the steepest drop in any category at any one time is "Associate Degree" from 2013-2014 which is a reduction of 1,200 in one year...which was most likely a good portion of your Summit College population. I would have gone to UA for my Master's, and given them my money...except they've cut all the programs I could possibly use in my career (for those who were trying to understand the outrage over cutting programs)...and now all of my graduate $ are going to other institutions when I would have preferred to go with my Alma Mater if the option were there. At any rate...it's obvious that there needs to be a steep reduction in the cost of athletics. UA's financial woes have been both self-inflicted, short-sidedness from past decadent leadership; and unrelenting pressure from the State not considering UA's unique position of being a Major University and a Community college at the same time.

Thank you! It was time for me to get to my old circa 2014 posts and not bitter mid-20s something posts.

when are they going to find and name a permanent president? and they are expecting increased revenues from the gridiron team? Akron sports like soccer and track and field continue to do well...despite the turmoil and budget issues for the university https://www.ohio.com/news/20190607/ua-sports-teams-could-face-cuts-over-next-3-years?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GHM_Daily_Newsletter&utm_content=GTOH_ABJ&utm_term=060819

So, I read the Troll of an Interim President's comments on the upcoming cuts to athletics, and I was surprised to NOT see any discussion on it on ZNO. I don't subscribe to the Beacon and only got to read the article as one of my X amount of free reads on line, but it sure sounds like some sports are gonna get whacked, or some of the staff that works "Game-Day experiences" are gonna be gone, or have to work for free. But I really was concerned with his comments regarding teams that don't need to have as a goal to work towards national titles., and comparing the new baseball arrangement as a be-all-end-all to the budget crunch. How can you realistically recruit college age kids and their parents or guardians, if you have hanging over your head that the University Administration doesn't give two hoots if you gain national prominence at your level? And I thought the baseball arrangement was temporary until they could fund some scholarships? And Green's comments that by not giving scholarships and bringing in local non-scholarship student-athletes, we would increase attendance at games because people would like to come see their kids and neighbor kids play was simplistic at best and just plain stupid at worst. I'd be hard-pressed to let my son or daughter come to U of A no matter what sport they played, as long as this attitude of funding only national caliber sports persisted. Except, of course, our national championship e-Sports team! I think Green thinks this is the way all sports should be played....

I think playing Dayton every other year is one of the dumber posts I've read. They don't have scholarship players, not gonna happen. YSU also has to agree to play at Akron every other year, also not gonna happen

If UA fired me, I’d put what’s best for me ahead of what’s best for UA too.

I doubt he would give up his paying job at Alabama as an offensive analyst, but who knows?

The food is pretty mediocre at best as well. I'm honestly surprised it's still in business.

The article clearly states he's not cutting sports or jobs in the near term. I'm guessing there's a ton of cost in the "game day experience" within the InfoCision tower, yet very few suites used. I am certain football, basketball and soccer will continue to get most of the bucks. I do think he's naive to believe increased football revenue will make up for half the difference each year. Akron has not shown it will support the Zips in adequate numbers and I'm not sure that will ever change. I find it particularly naive in the next year or two, which will be rebuilds in many respects. The killer in all of this is that the cut increases by $1 million every year for eight years. But who knows, maybe some other MAC programs will follow suit. They all subsidize their programs to a great extent. Only difference is Akron's debt level is a lot higher thanks to President Proenza and the board's decision making. If you've read Green's strategic plan, you may know that increasing the number of foreign students is a big part of closing the revenue gap over the next decade. Unfortunately, our country's leader has done everything he can to make U.S. schools less attractive. Student visas down.

My recollection is that when the Motor City Bowl was created it was to pit the MAC champion against a Big Ten team. Don't know if or when they gave up on that concept, but in the 16 Motor City/Little Caesars Pizza Bowl a team from the B1G participated three times, and I don' think they considered it much of an honor to participate.

... and if the school in Portage County would just add men's soccer we would be right back where we are now

Unless that's been the plan all along. Board of Trustees members of public universities are appointed by the governor and approved by the senate. Board of Trustees members are in charge of overseeing administrations and picking new administrations. Anyone following politics in the state of Ohio in regards to public education will have seen this strategy at work. I'm personally split because I love my Akron Zips; however I'm also a huge advocate of significant lowering in the cost of attendance at public Universities for all college students in the state of Ohio.

Wow-- this is so much like many of my posts of prior years (usually around this time of year when there's neither football nor BB). I have been a huge advocate for Kent and UA merging proactively before the state mandated it. It makes no sense for these 2 almost twin schools to exist 13 miles apart. None. UA and Kent should merge to create a NEO system, with almost 60K students, a handful of synergistic, world-class programs (liquid crystals and polymers), and a huge alumni base in NEO. And of course, one set of sports programs, administrations, etc, would immediately save more than Akron projected deficit. It's hard to make a comparison to the Cali system-- the UC schools are almost all 'better' than Ohio's best public school (though I think rankings are bunk in general). Ohio schools are more comparable to the Cal State schools. And "below" that is Cal Community College system, which is the largest post secondary ed system in the world by itself (over 2.6 million students on 113 campuses; Cal State, the largest 4 yr system in the US, has nearly 500K students across 31 locations, and UC with 240K students at 9 colleges making up the highest ranked public universities and system in the world). What's happened to UA is simply depressing. Hard to see how it's not in a downward spiral caused by incredibly poor leadership. Proenza was a fantastic president and gave UA a sense direction and movement. The 'Landscape for Learning' was a critical investment-- the campus was a total shithole eyesore and the investment in the campus at least made it passable. I can't even imagine where enrollment would be without that. UA spends over $30 million on athletics and saddles its students with over $1000 annually to support those programs. It's nuts. If the will to merge UA and Kent can't be found, they should at least become completely interconnected and federated, sharing programs and ideally fielding a single football program-- that alone would save nearly $10M a year.

Article in the Beacon this morning....that 12% of the professors....eligible to take an early retirement package took the package they were hoping for 15% to take the early retirement offer

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.