zip-O-matic

I'm sorry, but this has to be the stupidest thing this university has ever done. UA already has a legit ROTC. Why on earth are they spending money (that they don't have) to create some TAMU style fake army. This is beyond ridiculous. http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/university_of_akron_to_create.html

Could be worse. It's not like The Simpsons are mocking us on national television. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2e7VNlr1lw

Well, that's not just Ohio higher education. That's Ohio, and it's been that way for over a century. Individual constituencies are going to lobby for what they think is in their best interest and certain larger elements will lobby for what they think is in the best interest of their corner of the state. Again, the NEO schools don't operate in a vacuum. They are part of a system. Akron-Can't would conceivably be lobbying for this primarily because they think it's in their best interest, but I think the key would need to be that they present it in a way that shows it's in the best interests of the University System of Ohio, the state of Ohio and the taxpayers of Ohio. For at least twenty years now--under Republicans and Democrats--the state has been steadily moving away from a public higher education system where individual schools feel free to do whatever is in their best interests even if it's counterproductive to the overall system. because they might look less superior That sounds like you're talking about OSU and Miami and, to a lesser extent, UC. OSU (and the other two) could very conceivably support Akron-Can't under the right circumstances. What I think you meant was because they might be classified as inferior. That would most definitely be OU, BG and UT. And fuck them. As I stated above, I believe that only one school (or merger of schools) is going to make the jump to the right side of the napkin. Of course, they are going to lobby against Akron-Can't doing something that positions themselves to be that school, just as Akron and Can't would do the same with a hypothetical BG-UT merger. It's politics, and it's messy. And when it comes to Ohio politics, Akron-Can't needs to do whatever it can to make sure that OSU is supportive. To think OSU's political influence is based merely upon a bunch of obnoxious t-shirt alumni football fans, is to be suicidally stupid. You think it's all about them taking state reps on bowl trip junkets? For almost 150 years, OSU has been active in every county and every corner of the state with their agricultural institute and extension services. That's real economic impact and political clout built up over generations and absolutely explains why the state rep from that county who never went to Ohio State votes to support their agenda in the legislature ever single time. The economic impact to the state of the current level of research funding that they bring in is right around fifteen billion (that's with a "B"...the three comma club) dollars. They have hard, statistical evidence that in the 1990s they staunched the outflow of high ability students who were leaving the state for other public universities. They just devoted $100M of that unreserved cash that they're sitting on towards establishing a high tech business incubator for Ohio. Given the current Governor's emphasis on affordability for Ohio residents, they just committed $15M/year towards automatic $1000 or $1500 grants for 12,400 Ohio resident whose families make less than $100K/year. To put that into perspective, that $15M is roughly equal to the annual total disbursement of Akron's and Can't's entire endowments.........combined. They pulled it out of the couch cushions! Yes, Akron and Can't had better damned sure ensure that OSU is on board with the merger. Do you want to fight the 800lb gorilla, or do you want him on your side to swat aside the other chimpanzees trying to hold you back?

Talking about the politics of Akron potentially merging with Can't and attempting to position itself as the university that moves to the right hand column, I'd be interested in people's opinion on our likely allies and enemies in this. Some are easy. OU, BGSU and UT would clearly fight it, as would the Toledo Blade which has always taken the line that if Toledo can't have something, they'd rather see the state do without out. I think the Governor and Regents would support it as would most politicians in both parties that are interested in higher education. On the liberal left, you could appeal to those that are focused on higher quality colleges. Among conservatives, the focus would be on cutting costs and ending the over-saturation of campuses in Ohio. Among NEO politicians, the appeal would be keeping more high ability students from leaving the area and attracting more research funding to the region. Ohio State, I think is a bit of a wild card, and they have the ability to sway many of the politicians above. I think all the data that's been presented shows that OSU won't see the merger as inherently a threat or the creation of a competitor. It will be the larger context that the merger takes place in that will determine their reaction. I think if it could be presented as part of a rationale, structured university system and one that would be a catalyst for ending redundant doctoral programs (something they've been lobbying for for 30 years) and lessen inter-university competition and empire building, I think they could see it as aligned with their interests. If they view it as going back to the free-for-all institutional empire building of the 60s and 70s, they would undoubtedly bring their lobbying to bear against it and probably kill it. UC would probably oppose it, but I'm not 100% on this. It does creates a singular institution on their level that competes directly with it. OTOH, if it legitimizes the napkin and their place on it, they may see that competition as the lesser of two evils. Case/Cleveland Clinic???????

That's why I thought you were being overly optimistic in thinking that a merger could create a university that would challenge OSU. The more thought I've given to it though I do think merging just UA, NEOMU and Can't could create a university that would have the critical mass to grow into a peer of UC over the following decade and provide NEO with that major research university that UC is beginning to provide Cincy with. That's also why I am growing in favor of a name change. If the universities merge, they will need a name that defines them as a statewide, rather than regional, institution. "Ohio Tech" is the only one left. While I think the napkin idea was brilliant in private and utterly stupid to be made public, I would refine it a bit. The schools on the left side of the napkin are not going to disappear. What I view as the strategic vision involved is which schools are going to be the University of California campuses and which are going to be the Cal State campuses. That's what the schools on the left hand of the napkin are struggling towards and competing for because there is only going to be one of them that makes the jump to the right hand column. What's the line from The Incredibles: If everyone is special, then no one is. Ohio tried that philosophy in the 60s and 70s, and it failed. The impetus for at least the last twenty years has been how to put the toothpaste back into the tube. One of the key aspects to me would be--if politically allowable--to trim the combined enrollment down to around 45K undergraduates. If the merged schools phased that in over a five or six year period, they would have an undergraduate student body that would lose the open admissions stigma and compete with UC. I would foresee 45K undergrads at the main campus around 11K graduate ad professional students, plus another 12-15 thousand at the branch campuses. Here's some numbers from last year Freshman Class Can't State 4142 UA 3462 TOTAL 7604 30+ Freshman Can't State 205 UA 250 TOTAL 455 (OSU about 2900 out of 600 fewer total freshman to put things in perspective) Top 10% Freshman Can't State 621 UA 554 TOTAL 1175 Now suppose the merged universities shrunk those freshman classes by 2500 students a year. If we had the same number of high quality students (and if anything that number would rise as Ohio Tech gained a reputation for not being open admission) all of a sudden the percentages, for the merged universities, jump up to. 30+ ACT students: 9% Top 10% students 23% More importantly, the bottom of the class profile changes radically since that's where the culling would be. We're no longer taking anyone in the 12-17 range (currently about a fifth of the total freshman, mostly at Akron) and knocking off another 1000 students in the 18-23 range. By my calculations, we end up between OU and UC at the 75th percentile with 27 and pass OU and equal UC at the 25th percentile with 23. Same thing with high school class rank. What I would be very curious about (and something that I don't have access to the data to quantify it) is how much of the meat of OU's class (say graduating between top half and top quarter of HS class and 24-27 on the ACT) are kids from the Cleveland suburbs that are ending up at OU because they don't get into OSU (and maybe Miami)? I'd bet it's substantial, and I'd bet a significant number of them would come into play for the merged university that I just described. Now, the two limiting factors would be the economics of losing tuition dollars and the messy politics of the move. 2500 a year might be a little ambitious. It might be 750 in year one 1500 in year two and then 2500 in year three. Then keep the freshman classes at 5000 from there on out unless driven upward by an increase in quality of applicants. In everything except the endowment, the merged campuses would establish themselves as a distinct number three behind OSU and UC in graduate/research (I'm leaving Miami out of this since they kind of just follow their own path) and a peer of UC on the undergraduate level.

These things are not all they're cracked up to be. In fact, there are huge issues of politicization and academic freedom involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_Confucius_Institutes http://www.aaup.org/article/confucius-institutes-threaten-academic-freedom#.VXxlUPlViko The U of Chicago and several other schools have severed their ties and shut the centers down. What are truly prestigious in academic circles are DoE National Resource Centers in Area Studies.

This is a great point. One of the things that I think a merger (and I only see it between UA and Can't State) could accomplish is for the two institutions to take a lead role in eliminating redundant doctoral programs. Ohio has a ridiculous number of Ph.D programs spread across the state. I'll dig up the numbers on some pretty standard areas in humanities, social sciences, sciences and engineering. In some areas, Ohio literally has more than California despite that state having three times the number of four-year public universities and three and a half times the population. If Akron and Can't could really make an impact here, I think it would go a long way towards winning over a lot of support from the legislature.

Not surprising. Buffalo is AAU. Syracuse just voluntarily left the AAU to avoid being kicked out. Nebraska was kicked out.

Yep. Even if OU has reversed that and now they're #169 and Akron is #185 it doesn't negate the underlying reality that both are peer institutions essentially operating at the same level. The inability of OU to accept that is a real liability. They think they're better than they are--hell, think that they are something fundamentally different than what they are--and that leads to complacency. UC has not been complacent and self-satisfied, which is why they are improving as a university and are a much better model for Akron, Can't or Ken-Kron to follow.

I think this footage that I've obtained from within the OU administration building and President McDavis' office proves my point quite succinctly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMTkedIUX8U

Partial credit because it wasn't even an OU student. He grifted his way into the mascot job despite not being enrolled. They lose half a point because they were too stupid to catch the guy.

Can you link that please. Here's the NSF numbers that I used. Use spreadsheet number six which is total research performed annually over an eight year period. In the final year listed (2011) Akron is at $65.5M for 177th in the country. OU is at $57.6M for 189th in the country, just ahead of the University of Wyoming and not much higher than Cleveland State at $55.5M (193rd). If you have something more recent, I'd be interested to look at it. And AGAIN, even if OU and UA have flipped places, it doesn't do a thing to change my underlying argument that OU is stll operating on the level of Akron, Can't, Toledo etc. You, time after time, either ignore this point or are too dense to comprehend it. The point isn't which school is doing an additional six or seven million dollars in research, which school has two National Academy members on faculty and which has none or which school's freshman are marginally better than the other. The underlying fact is that they are peer institutions! Simple question: Do you or do you not believe that OU should have been on the left side of the napkin? Again, let me take the names off the schools and Sesame Street this shit for you: University A does $50M in research funding. That is $7m less than University B. That is $800M less than University C. Which university is different than the rest? Which university is not like the others? A freshman at University A has an average ACT of 22. A freshman at University B has an average ACT of 24. A freshman at university C has an average ACT of 29. Which freshman is different from the rest? Which freshman is not like the others? Since you seem to think that the NSF isn't "a joke." I'll dig up their most recent evaluation and ranking of doctoral programs and how OU's rank relative to Akron, Toledo, BG and Can't on one hand and OSU, Case and Cincy on the other.

I would add the business and political leadership of NEO to that. It's important to show them that Akron is addressing its shortcomings and putting together a vision that serves not only its institutional interests but those of the region as a whole. That's why the rebranding can't be just about a name change and marketing/p.r. semantics. It has to merely be the front door of a much deeper self-examination and strategic plan to move forward. We have to show these people that--even if it's not going to supplant Case/Cleveland Clinic & OSU from the table, that Akron-Can't deserve to at least by in the conversation.

First of all, most schools have seen big jumps in applicants. It's a complex mix of demographics (the baby boom echo, which is now tailing off) and increased competitiveness for admission resulting in students applying to far more colleges than they did a generation ago. You keep throwing up this 22K application number which is great. It's clearly helped fuel your 10% rise in the size of your freshman classes between 2009 and 2014. It, however, is not indicative of any better quality students being interested in OU. If some more are applying, they are clearly using OU as a safety school and ending up elsewhere. What is key--and definitely shown in OU's own common data set--is that your freshman profile is NOT improving despite any jumps in applicants. It's stagnant and has even retrenched slightly at the very top (30+ACT and top tenth of HS class). That common data set also shows that the freshman class profile is much, much closer to UT, Can't State, BG and UA than it is to Miami or OSU. You're still competitive with UC, but the gap in UC's favor is widening. Retention and Graduation rates are important stats and ones that OU does well in. That being said, you're still closer to the rest of us in this regard also than to OSU/Miami. Again, even when OU has an advantage, it is still playing in our league, not that of OSU/Miami. And I freely admit that UA is at the bottom of this metric, but that has to do with the bottom of our class still being largely open admissions. That 25th percentile gap between UA (19) and OU (22) is significant in retention and eventual graduation rates. You've still never addressed the issue of how the school that you think you should be compared to has a higher 25th percentile score (27) than OU does a 75th percentile score (26). Now, that is significant too. Hugely significant. You bring up these OU advantages and think that somehow wipes away anything negative. Akron does more research than OU and has a couple of National Academy members on faculty. Despite being viewed as an open admission university (and that is far more significant than a rural location; we're not talking about the 1920s here) Akron enrolls a slightly higher proportion of 30+ and top tenth freshman than OU. This, however, is supposed to mean nothing whereas something so tangential and peripheral as licensing revenue is supposed to end any argument and move OU over to the right side of the napkin? And while my rhetoric may have been a little harsh, my entire point was that there was no basis for OU being on the right side of the napkin and by any metric (even endowment relative to the schools being looked at) OU was properly placed with its peer colleges on the left hand side. Is it the tallest midget? Perhaps, but it's still a midget. We finally agree on something regarding the ridiculous athletic subsidies. You do know, however, that OU under McDavis is as bad as anyone in the country in this regard! $18.5M (66.5% of budget) subsidy to its AD. Akron, admittedly and unfortunately, is even worse at $21M. As for your final shot at OSU, when or how is their reckoning at hand? I know that OU people have been telling themselves this for generations, but I just don't see it. In fact, by any metric, they are one of maybe 15 public universities in the country that have gained the critical mass to go private if they wanted to: $3.5B endowment (soon to be 4+), $400M/year in donations, $1B in unrestricted cash reserves separate from the endowment, closing in on a billion dollars a year in research funding, profitable athletic department that takes no subsidies from the university and highly selective freshman classes (average: 29 ACT and 93rd percentile of HS class) that are now third most selective in the Big Ten behind Northwestern and Michigan. Ohio State could spin off their branch campuses to the state community college system, lower their undergraduate enrollment by 15K (which would put their endowment $$/Student in the$100K range and raise their class profile equal to Michigan), use that cash reserve to get through the transition period and BOOM. Would that make them Harvard or Chicago? No, but I think you'd see something along the lines of USC come out the other side. Getting back to Akron, I think myself LA and others all agree that Akron has problems and by some (but not most) of these metrics is the shortest midget. LA has very clearly stated that by themselves neither Can't State nor Akron can seemingly find the critical mass to move forward and that together they very well might find that critical mass. That to me is the biggest thing separating Akron/Can't State from OU. Like UC a decade ago, they don't think they have the world by the balls. They don't smugly (and laughably blindly) think that they are operating in the realm of OSU/Miami. They do, however, think that they need to improve and possibly think differently and not keep doing what they always have been doing if they are going to thrive in the future. I clearly stated that for the merged universities to pass OU by and become a peer of UC, they would need some very visionary leadership and at least a decade. Will that happen? I don't know, but at least we seem to be putting it on the table. OU just thinks they're perfect as they are and that somehow Pied Piper Roddy will lead them to the magic land. That is why, if I were to bet on who is where in 20 years, my money would be on Can't State and Akron rather than OU. And one more question--and this is something that I often asked of Proenza's most vocal supporters--if McDavis is really doing such a bang up job (and didn't his own faculty give him a vote of no confidence) why is he still there? Why has this great, visionary gem of a university President not been tapped on the shoulder to move up the food chain? To my knowledge nobody--much less an AAU university--has ever shown any interest in hiring this guy away? That speaks volumes.

No misstating of doctoral degrees. I clearly stated that figure was for 2012. Again, nothing you're posting changes a thing. Is OU arguably first among equals on the left hand side of the napkin? Yes, I would concede that. That, however, is akin to being the better Cal State campus. Whatever marginal advantages you have, you still have a lot more in common with the rest of the Cal State system than you do with any of the UC campuses. I've also conceded that the OU endowment is the only truly substantive area where OU differentiates itself from the rest of the "left column" schools but is still nowhere close to Miami on the more meaningful endowment/student metric and UC by either absolute or per student measurements. We probably don't want to see how it stacks up to OSU, which I believe is far ahead of schedule on a $2.5B fundraising campaign, so I'd guess that $3.5B will be well over $4B in the next couple of years. Even in the one area where you truly do have a substantive advantage, you're still closer to us than you are to them.

Sorry if that turned into too much a pumping up of OSU and Miami, but I wanted to clearly outline that OU is not their peer but a peer of the rest of us and that the napkin was essentially correct in its analysis of the Ohio public university food chain. I wanted to make it very clear that for all of Akron's challenges OU is not a superior institution to it. Half of that meant pointing out how similar OU is to Akron, Can't, Toledo and BG across the board and the other half meant pointing out how far removed OU is from OSU and Miami. When the personal insults were the result, I couldn't help but twist that knife in a bit deeper. My last thought on the subject.

So, you're saying that the reason that OU can't recruit more high ability students than Akron is because the city of Akron gives it such a huge advantage. Rrrrriiiggghht. Funny, I seem to remember you--just a page or two back--bragging about OU's beautiful campus and idyllic setting as a huge advantage and reason why it's "the hottest college in the state." Miami has no problem being in a rural area, nor do several other high quality publics in the region that aren't located in metropolitan areas such as Penn State, Illinois, Madison, Indiana and Purdue. Just face it, OU is simply playing in another league. As for branch campuses, every public university does the same thing as Ohio State. It's something that Akron needs to seriously consider. And BTW, you do know that it's OU that has the largest and most extensive branch campus network in the state. In fact ,OU has 13,000 undergrads at branch campuses relative to 23,000 in Athens. In other words, your branch campus students are fully 36% of your overall undergraduate enrollment. How does that compare to OSU and Miami? Miami has 4,000 relative to 14,800 at Oxford or 21%. Ohio State only has 6,300 relative to 44,000 at Columbus or only 12% of their total undergraduate enrollment. And you leave one other slight distinction out. Ohio State is parking kids with 23 and 24 ACT scores (and Miami 22-23) at their branch campuses who would be easy admits at OU. Out of curiosity, I dug up the common data sets for OSU's branch campuses. Mansfield 21-25 ACT middle range Newark 20-25 Marion 21-25 Lima 19-25 What were OU's numbers again? That's right 22-26. In other words, OU-Athens is taking in freshman classes that are only slightly better prepared than OSU's branch campuses. Would you like to remind me again how OU is the hottest college in the state and out from OSU's shadow. How it is such a better, more selective and more prestigious university than Akron or Can't or Toledo or Bowling Green? Again, you were in the left column of that napkin for very good reason. That's the biggest difference between OU and Akron. Akron knows that it belonged in the left column. Akron knows that it has big challenges and a lot of work ahead. Akron doesn't sit around smelling its own farts and pretending its something that it's not. This whole thing started because I made one comment (on an Akron board in a discussion about the future of Akron) stating that UC rather than OU is the university that Akron should be paying attention to and modeling itself after and that a big part of this is UC's focus on the future in contrast with OU's perennial infatuation with perceived past injustices. This brought on your deluge of personal insults ("didn't get accepted at OU" "didn't get tenure at OU" "Crawl back under your rock") all because I pointed out with facts, statistics and the criteria that academics judge most important when gauging the quality of a university that OU is a peer--by all of these standards except endowment--of UA and Can't more than it ever could be of Miami or OSU. And even your endowment pales on a per student basis compared to Miami and is nowhere remotely close to that of OSU. I'm sorry if that upset your fragile little OU psyche that so desperately needs to believe that the glorious day is just around the corner when OU throws off the oppressive shackles of 150 years of unfairness and claims its rightful place as Ohio's flagship university. Yes, it's only a matter of time before you burn down the Buckeye Plantation and proclaim "Flagship at last. Thank God Almighty, we are Flagship at last."

Not when we're still accepting 90+ percent of applicants, and the 25th percentile ACT score is 19. If we had, over a two or three year period, simply lopped off that bottom fifth of the class to bring our overall class profile in line with OU's, then I think there'd be some link between the two.

I had problems with Proenza. I actually thought that he was very similar to the OU Prez in that he talked a good game but the actual accomplishments were less than the rhetoric. Like the OU President, he also couldn't resist poking OSU in public speeches, and while that may have been fresh meat for the faithful, I think it did a lot of harm behind the scenes with influential politicians and business leaders. I also think that he spent money like a drunken sailor and got out of town before the bills came due. He was no savior. That being said, I also liked a lot of what he did. Much like the current UC President, he was great at getting people to think about what Akron could be not just what it had always been, and the campus did need to be made more residential if it was to compete. Why that hasn't translated into positive gains, I would throw these reasons out there as the two biggest factors. The lagging negative implication of being an open admission university. As the facts note, UA does every bit as well as OU in attracting top students, but around the middle of the class it has that severe drop-off. Akron should be rejecting more of them and sending them to branch campuses. Not only would it help our perception around the state, but it would be a huge boost in solving our problems meeting the state's funding metrics of grad rates, retention and so on. It's a tricky game though. In the short-term, that's only going to lower enrollment until those lost students get made up down the road by better ability students. After that process, however, the university as whole will be a lot more attractive.Is enough of UA's endowment devoted to undergraduate aid--merit and need based?As for Scarborough's missteps. While I absolutely agree with the sentiment expressed on that napkin, making that part of the public discussion was just too stupid to fathom.

I suggest you try and up your reading comprehension skills. I specifically said that Akron has a lot of problems and any merger would NOT be one of Akron as the dominant partner. I also said a marriage of equals would be a "best case scenario." I think I was very clear, but perhaps your vaunted "first and finest" education does not allow you to pick up on even the most direct of statements. As for MUP, they pretty much aggregate hard, objective and measurable statistics on America's research universities. As noted above, that's why they are seen as a very valid source for quality evaluations. But that's probably the real problem. They do lay out their case and their numbers in stark detail, and once again OU ends up on the wrong side of the napkin. I'm sure it's oh so much more soothing to just shoot the messenger and listen to the feel good talk of McDavis however divorced from reality it may be. Want to run down the National Research Council's department rankings for OU and see how things shake out? They put them out about once a decade, and they're generally considered the gold standard in evaluating Ph.D programs. I'm sure that when what you see doesn't jibe with McDavis' kool-aid, you will undoubtedly attempt to also dismiss the National Research Council and the affiliated National Academies of Science and Engineering as a joke. I hate to say it but nobody outside of OU's most die-hard, kool-aid drinking proponents see it as anything more than an average, run of the mill, regional state university. That's all it is, all it ever will be and all it ever was. That institution loves to piss and moan and feel sorry for itself because of what was done to it in 1870, yet never bothers to ask why that was done. Why was Ohio the ONLY state in the region that created an entirely new university for the land-grant and flagship roles rather than giving it to an existing university? It's because OU was judged as a complete fuck up unfit to carry the burden. The Governor, legislature and business leadership of the state looked at OU and said, "Thanks but no thanks. We'd rather go to the trouble of starting an entirely new university than watch you screw it up." That is who and what you are: two centuries of being the state's afterthought because you never went out and gave it a reason to view you as anything but that. You bemoan the existence of Ohio State, yet the roots of its creation lie solely at the feet of your very own incompetence. That's got to be a heavy burden for an institution to deal with which is why I guess yours retreats into delusional fantasy about its place on the food chain rather than face its own sordid, mediocre history. And for what it's worth, I have never had any affiliation with OU. Never even applied there. I have degrees from two universities, both of which are completely out of OU's league.

So, you find one area where Ohio is closer to Ohio State than the rest of the schools (Fulbright Scholars), and that's supposed to wipe away everything else. As for your USNWR ranking, you are tied with UC. Just one nagging little thing. OU under McDavis has been on a steady downward trend. You're at 129 down from 106 a half dozen years ago. UC has been trending upwards, up to 129 from around 150 over the same period of time. Any guesses as to if the schools are tied next time around given recent momentum? Licensing Revenue? Really. I'm sure that OSU is just quaking in their boots and wondering how that $3.5B endowment plus another $1B in unrestricted cash reserves can possibly compete against OU's licensing revenue. And BTW, isn't that the result of pretty much one very lucrative invention in avionics whose licensing agreement is about to expire? Somehow, I don't think the restoration of OU is quite at hand. And here's what the Center has for OU's fundraising over the last several years. Here's the link. Click on Annual Giving in Current Dollars. Knowing what I know about the OU administration's ability to blow smoke up its alumni's ass, I'll rely on the figures of an independent research organization. (x1000) 2012 53,859 2011 14,404 2010 22,390 2009 105,320 2008 23,591 2007 19,214 2006 13,751 2005 17,228 2004 17,786 Now, I've never said that there aren't any areas where OU looks better than UA, Can't or a hypothetical merged school. but they're minor little points of pride other than the endowment. And even the endowment only looks good relative to schools that you consider beneath you. It's quite pathetic when compared to schools that you mistakenly believe are your peers. For every little point of pride that OU has, Akron or Toledo or Can't have one where they look better than OU. When you look at the overall picture including the most foundational benchmarks such as research funding, student quality, faculty quality and so on, OU is far, far more a peer institution to Akron or Toledo than it is (or frankly ever will be) to Ohio State and you'll never be what Cincy has accomplished on the graduate/research side or what Miami has on the undergrad side. OU should change its smug little slogan to "Ohio's First and Finest Safety School." The fact that OU so stubbornly refuses to accept that is why you are mired in mediocrity. It's why UC has passed you by, and it's why UA and Can't State with a little visionary leadership could very well do likewise a decade from now. Akron has some serious problems that it needs to address. It's why I don't think any merger would necessarily be Akron "absorbing" Can't State and getting to call the shots. At best, it would be a merger of equals. That being said, it would still be two institutions recognizing their shortcomings and addressing them while looking forward to the future. It would also be two institutions attempting to do what's best for the state and its citizens rather than childishly attempting to overturn a century and a half of public policy out of selfish, egotistical needs. What's OU have other than jumping up and down and crying, "we were first! we were first! It's all so unfair!" Well, take that up with the ghost of Rutherford B. Hayes because OU's fate was settled long before your grandfather was born.

I agree with you about the UC campuses. It's just that Ohio doesn't need that many nor that many Cal State equivalents either. California has 3.5 times the population, so if Ohio had 4 UC campuses and 8 Cal State campuses, that breaks down to roughly the same both in terms of overall four year campuses per capita and roughly the same split that California has between UC schools (9) and Cal State schools (23). The Cal Poly schools are very good as is SDSU, but in the context of the California Master Plan, they are still merely the tallest midgets. I'll add one more bit about the history of Ohio State and how it relates to the ASU model. Not a lot of people are aware of this but Jim Rhodes and the Regents Chair (former Miami President named Millett) actually tried to push OSU into being a 100K campus. They were going to force it to build several more of the tower dorms along the river to house them all. OSU fought it tooth and nail and managed to defeat it along with later rallying the political and business support to undo the policies that they were able to force onto OSU. They took the university in a completely different direction than the ASU model that was trying to be forced upon them by the Governor and their own trustees, and I think the results speak for themselves today. I don't think OSU would be half the university it is--nor provide the same benefits to the taxpayers of Ohios--had it been forced to become a 100K university in the 70s.

Not to belabor the point. OK, to belabor it and drive it into the ground, let's put, once and for all, this myth to bed that OU is operating on a different level than the majority of Ohio public universities. We've addressed undergraduate student bodies, now let's see how they stack up in areas such as Doctoral degrees, fundraising, research funding and faculty quality. Here is some complete data for 2012 on a variety of quality indicators pulled from the statistical tables of the Center For Measuring University Performance. Research Funding (x $1000) OSU 794,023 (18th overall/9th among publics) UC 419,456 (46/28) UA 56,248 (188/139) Can't State 24,388 (255/188) CSU 55,044 (191/142) BG 8,834 (324/234) UT 70,164 (171/123) Miami 14,795 (285/209) OU 43,399 (206th/156th) National Academy Members on Faculty OSU 30 (36/18) UC 9 (73/37) UA 2 (136/81) Can't State 1 (163/99) CSU 0 BG 0 UT 0 Miami 0 OU 0 Annual Giving 2012 (Millions of Dollars) OSU 334.509 (13/3) UC 105.168 (58/36) UA 52.820 (120/77) Can't State 18.127 (228/121) CSU 5.265 (556/230) BG 11.630 (329/161) UT 15.257 (271/138 Miami 33.585 (154/92) OU 53.859 (117/75) *and this seems to something of a aberration since in the vast majority of years their take as been in the high teens or low twenties. Doctorate Degrees Awarded OSU 756 (7/6) UC 242 (79/56) UA 97 (159/109) Can't State 142 (126/90) CSU 35 (272/172) BG 86 (170/114) UT 103 (153/105) Miami 52 (229/149) OU 94 (161/111) Again, somebody show me how OU differentiates itself from Akron, Can't State, Toledo or Bowling Green.

I think you're absolutely right. Despite all the good things that LA has brought up, I differ with him on the notion of quality vs. quantity, and I don't think they need be mutually exclusive. Until the 1980s, all the public universities in Ohio were legally open admissions. Ohio State had planned to move to more stringent admissions in the late 50s and early 60s when most of the other Big Ten schools were doing likewise. They, however, were stymied by Jim Rhodes who had a very populist approach to higher ed and felt that every kid in the state should be able to attend any college in the state. Even Miami was technically open admissions, but they worked their way around it by not building enough dorm space to accommodate the baby boom enrollment bubble, and since their former President was Chairman of the Board of Regents in the 60s and 70s, they were allowed to get away with this. This story that they were somehow mandated to be the system's "honor campus" is an absolute myth that they attempt to instill in "History of Miami" classes in Oxford. It's complete b.s., and there's not a single record of either the state legislature, the Governor's office or the Board of Regents ever giving them such a designation. They simply had one of their own in a position of power for nearly twenty years, and he went out of his way to tilt the scales in their favor over the rest of the system. When Celeste came into office, Ohio State lobbied hard--and with everything they had--to change this. A couple of key things they presented were both the cost of remedial education for kids who should be going to branch campuses or community colleges. And they also showed that--despite Miami being able to present itself as selective--Ohio was still losing huge numbers of high ability students to public universities in other states. Another issue they showed was that the students they flunked out (upwards of 25% of their freshman classes in the 70s) were far less likely to ever graduate in comparison to similar students who went to non-research universities. In essence, you had thousands of unprepared kids who headed to Columbus because of "Buckeyes" that ended up flunking out and never getting any degree. They also argued that they had a hard time replacing retiring faculty with younger faculty of equal stature which was causing Ohio to lose out on research dollars--and that was a role Miami was never going to make up for. So, in the mid 80s, Ohio State ended Miami's monopoly on selective admissions that they had gained in the 60s and 70s and pretty much has left them in the dust. I know the Ohio State hate runs strong on this board, but anyone has to take a little guilty pleasure in watching smug Miami of Ohio being relegated to OSU's backup school. In any event, several other public universities followed OSU's lead in the 90s and began tightening up their admissions to varying degrees of success. Akron hasn't done so which is why, despite being OU's equal at the top third of the freshman class, there's still a big gap at the bottom. OU is clearly not doing a better job than UA at attracting high ability students; they just are allowed to not accept low achieving students. I brought up the California system because something similar is what I think would work well for Ohio. You'd have essentially a pyramid with (yes, I know) OSU at the top as the flagship AAU member school, then two major, selective research universities serving the other two major metropolitan areas (UC and NEOU), and finally a collection of moderately selective schools with limited graduate programs some residential and some commuter oriented (OU, UT, BG, YSU, Wright State). At the bottom, you'd have the community colleges and branch campuses (which is why getting Can't's branch campus network would be important to UA). Miami is kind of an outlier since they don't really fit into any structured role. They are not going to accept being put at the OU-BG level, but they have ZERO chance of ever turning themselves into a productive research university. I'd guess that they sit in Oxford and continue to do what they've always done. Accounting for population scale, it would relate something like this. University of California Equivalents Ohio State-->Berkeley UC & NEOU-->Cal Davis & Cal Irvine Miami-->Cal Santa Cruz (the most undergrad focused UC campus) Cal State Equivalents OU, BG, UT, Wright State, Shawnee State, YSU, Cleveland State, Central State Community College Equivalents Ohio CC's and branch campuses That would give Ohio a truly rational, structured and efficient university system.

The problem with OU partisans is that they blindly listen to that cheap grifter that you hired as a President and take his word for everything. The man is an utter genius at telling his audience the things they desperately want to hear, but his actual performance is hollow and empty. I don't care how many kids are applying to OU as a backup school, they're not driving any quality improvements. Its freshman class quality has been completely stagnant. Now, I'm going to do something that McDavis doesn't and actually show you the facts. Here is your freshman class profile for last year and five years ago. And I'll compare it with some other schools around the state. OU Middle 50% on SAT 2009: 970-1200 2014: 980-1200 On the ACT 2009: 21-26 2014: 22-26 Percent Scoring 30+ 2009: 8% 2014: 7% Percent Scoring <24 2009: 52% 2014: 48% Percent in Top Tenth of HS Class 2009: 16% 2014: 15% Tell me, does that look like a university on the move? One that's "getting out from under the shadow" of OSU or Miami and closing the gap? Or does it look like a university that is completely stagnant. And how are you going to compete for top students when OU has an endowment per student half the size of Miami or UC and barely a quarter that of OSU? Here are some comparisons with UA and other schools in Ohio. At the top of the class, OU is NO better than UA despite the averages being dragged down by UA still being largely open admissions. How pathetic that OU with its 200 year history and delusions of grandeur can't even attract more 30+ ACT students than poor little open admissions Akron. UC has clearly passed you by at both the top and bottom of the freshman class profile, while OSU and Miami are playing an entirely different ballgame than OU. Think about this for a moment: OSU's 25th percentile ACT score is higher than OU's 75th percentile score. Would you care to tell me how OU is the hottest college in the state and is out of OSU's shadow again please. Middle 50% on SAT OU 980-1200 UA 900-1200 UC 1040-1290 Miami 1120-1330 OSU 1160-1390 Middle 50% on ACT OU 22-26 UA 19-26 UC 23-28 Miami 25-30 OSU 27-31 Percent Scoring 30+ on ACT OU 7% UA 7% UC 15% Miami 28% OSU 41% Percent Scoring <24 on ACT OU 48% UA 61% UC 31% Miami 8% OSU 5% Top Tenth of HS Class OU 15% UA 16% UC 20% Miami 34% OSU 61% Top Quarter of HS Class OU 43% UA 38% UC 48% Miami 68% OSU 94% Bottom Half of HS Class OU 18% UA 46% UC 19% Miami 7% OSU 1% Where else do you want to go with this? Research funding? National Academy members on faculty? Ranking of Departments/Doctoral Programs? I can do this all day. Everything points in one direction: that OU is no different than Akron or Can't or Toledo. I hate to break it to you, but OU absolutely deserved to be in the left column of that napkin. OSU and Miami don't view you as a competitor in any sense, and UC doesn't for anything but undergraduate students, which is rapidly changing as they pass you by. Quite frankly, I'd rather see UA admit that it has problems, challenges and areas where it has underperformed and attempt to do something about it than live in the deluded fantasy world that OU occupies inside its own head. BTW, don't look now but I think your Prez just gave his wife another raise. OU 2009 OU 2014 UA 2014 UC 2014 MU 2014 OSU 2014