OSU is stockpiling but they've also grown a big out of state enrollment that could be in jeopardy. When you're as high up there in the rankings as OSU it takes a critical mass of demand to sustain it because all of the pressure is downward.

What I traditionally heard was that in SW Ohio if you don't get into Miami you end up attending UC. If Miami needs more students that is going to chip into UC's pool or they'll be both losing more students to OSU. Miami has slipped out of the top 100 USWNR and they desperately need those rankings to justify their price point.

Regardless of endowment or research funding 90% of the USWNR ranking is the admissions (though both endowment and research drive perception) and it takes a huge demand for any public to sustain it at 3.75/27 ACT level. That OSU has used a historic football run to swell demand is a cause for concern when no football is being played.

Its tough to predict but the next 5 years are going to be interesting.

Its bizarre to be struggling compared to 20 years ago (at least relative to the other state schools) to bring the students in with all the improvements in around Athens. The university endowment is up to $730 million, seven times larger than what it was 20 years ago.

Ohio is completely dependent on students coming in from other cities to make the numbers work and it might be a reluctance to want to go too far from home. Those in it for the party culture might not see the point.

I found a site called niche. It rated Ohio #12 best school in the state, behind Miami at #8 and UC at #7. The net yearly price for attending Ohio is listed as higher than OSU and Miami. In fact it was almost the same price as attending Ohio Northern and Cedarville University ranked right around OU at #11 and #12. Muskingum University is $3000 a year cheaper.

https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges/s/ohio /

Ohio promise campaign out of steam? Four year tuition guarantee meaningless when housing is so high in cost?

I'm saying the combination of reliance on out of the area students and those who are coming into town for the party scene that doesn't exist with COVID-19 is a double whammy for enrollment.

If you are in it for a professional program there is more motivation to attend one of those offered at OU. For example there is not that many engineering schools in the state which limits your options.

But what are we using that endowment for? Education or to start and run more businesses? Maybe buy more hand sanitizer?

That's a good question, and I'd like to see and hear some concrete proposals from the current administration on how to move forward. I'd also like to hear them honestly address the problem and the reality of the state system rather than pump sunshine up our asses like McDavis did for so many years ("in three years, we're going to be more selective than Ohio State has ever dreamed of being"). Whatever good, bad or mediocre the current President and administration is or isn't doing, there's no denying that they were handed a terribly weak hand by McDavis and (to mix metaphors) are now having to try and come back from 5 runs down against a balls out closer.

OSU seems content with their position in the rankings (the average ACT is 30 not 27) and would rather pad their enrollment and cash so long as there's no drops in quality. Like a broken record, I think the rest of the system needs to accept the reality (we had our revolution against them in the 60s; we lost) and make some kind of deal in order to cap their freshman class size and free up hundreds of well qualified kids for the rest of the schools.

And their rise has nothing to do with their recent football run. They were in the 50s in USNWR before it began. It was simply the reemergence of the state's richest and only AAU school from a forced open admissions period in the 60s and 70s. It was pretty much inevitable the moment the state let them compete with Miami as a selective public that they would end up where they are. We then also waited half a decade before we asked the state to move to selective admissions, so Ping deserves more than a little bit of heat here and you can possibly argue that because of that perhaps Glidden and McDavis were also handed a difficult situation where they were playing catch up from the beginning.

A lot of that money has come into the engineering college and medical school which are in the process of adding new facilities. The full power of that money I don't believe has been realized yet.

Keep in mind most of the admissions for this year were locked prior to COVID so next year might see a deeper impact. OSU is down only 15% for this year in international students, a stat that is hard to believe in this environment. All the college seniors are going into this year thinking about the pandemic when deciding what to do for college. OSU said they were able to recruit more out-of-state students as an offset but I think the trend is stay closer to home.

For various reasons it didn't have the visibility as it does today. Ohio St was for a long time second fiddle in the Big Ten to Michigan and that is where the top HS students who liked football wanted to go.

I'd say that OSU was not nationally relevant and mediocre, at least by blueblood standards, from the early 80s to the early 90s. That coincides exactly with their shaking off the open admissions mandate, becoming a fundraising powerhouse (they completed what at the time was the largest ever campaign by a public when I worked at the statehouse in the early 90s) and separating themselves from the rest of the system academically. It wasn't being driven by some fever for bucknut football.

My point has always been that it's not football related, and dates back to state decisions 100 to a 150 years ago. They were in the AAU 20 years before they became a national football powerhouse. Merely hoping for them to hit a rough patch in football to slide back academically is the most wishful thinking imaginable. There is never going to be some restoration of the pre-1870 order (and that wishful thinking has been sold by Ohio Presidents from Alden to McDavis), and Ohio needs to think very creatively about what it is, what it's future is and how it moves forward.

You mean the same trustees who give $100k bonuses for 3 years service.