zip-O-matic

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.