zip-O-matic

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.

Let's not forget that Lou left every single program he coached either on probation or on the verge of probation.

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.

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.

Didn't Duke show up a few years ago and poach our best professors who took their doctoral students and research funding with them?

Found it. It was pretty buried. 13,356 total enrollment and 9263 undergraduate at Akron campus. https://www.uakron.edu/ir/student-enrollment

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.