The market is down, but our share of that seems a bit robust. Especially when you take the last three years, and the hit in applications this year.

I agree that it's a good thing from both a regional diversity standpoint and an economic standpoint. I think depending on the school and its mission somewhere between a fifth and a third out of state students is a good thing.

I can't speak for others, but my criticism of Miami is one of degree. They have gone so overboard on the oos student recruitment that I think it legitimately raises the question of their commitment to being an Ohio university and thus the accompanying question of whether the state and its taxpayers should continue to support it at the expense of the other schools whose commitment to the state is much more solid.

It's hard to find the most recent numbers, but it looks like based on our 2019 factbook 21% of OU students were out of state. At Miami, it looks like it was just under 40%.

But what's sort of buried in there is that Miami also has 3x the international students, which end up counted in those figures. Their international enrollment's almost 13% of the entire student body.

I think yours is certainly a fair question to ask. But at the same time, to what extent is Miami's greater out of state/international enrollment just a function of better execution? In other words, would OU enroll more out of state/international students if we were better at attracting them? Or are we really committed to the state in some different way?

Some midwest schools offer reciprocity for neighboring states, granting them in-state tuition costs. Does OHIO do that with West Virginia or Pennsylvania? Would that help our numbers? I know I'd love to send my children there (live in Illinois) and will be able to if the Legacy program remains where children of alumni can pay in-state tuition.

From OU's website today. I found this bullet point most interesting:

Shift our enrollment efforts from heavily in-state undergraduate to a more balanced demographic aiming, to increase the overall percentage of adult learners and
non-traditional students, transfer students, out-of-state and international students, and under-represented groups

https://www.ohio.edu/president/ohio-strategic-framework/s...

To your point here are UVA's enrollment numbers.

Class of 2019 Undergraduate Profile:

70% are Virginia residents
31.1% are minority students
5.3% are from outside of the United States
69.8% graduated from a public secondary school
24.0% graduated from a private secondary school
53.5% receive some form of financial aid
87.2% ranked in the highest tenth of their high school graduating class
Mean combined SAT score was 663 Verbal, 671 Math and 665 Writing
Admissions: Of 23,593 Fall 2015 applicants, 6,991 students were offered admission, and 2,852 enrolled

This article gives one of the reasons for more out of state students:

"The Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors, the union representing about 6,000 professors at both public and private institutions of higher education across the state, predicted just this possibility in a 2017 report. It cited a new funding formula passed under then-Gov. John Kasich, which rewarded Ohio universities for graduating students rather than enrolling them.

"This formula incentivizes institutions to be more selective with admissions," the report stated. "In seeking only students who are more certain to graduate, universities … are looking further afield, actively recruiting out-of-state and even foreign students who can pay full tuition but are less likely to remain in Ohio after they graduate."

https://www.coshoctontribune.com/story/news/2019/08/20/wh... /

It's a good question. As I said earlier, I think, depending on the university, that somewhere between a fifth and a third of out of state students makes sense. I think Ohio should push for a quarter. If OSU is true to their word and they're not going to actively try and push it past a third, then I'm OK with that. Throw in OSU's other initiatives on affordability for in-state students and recruiting an economically diverse student body, and I'm OK with them. Should they attempt to push OOS enrollment to half the student body, then yes, I'd lump them in the same boat as Miami.

Miami, on the other hand, will take their OOS enrollment to 50% and beyond if they can. It's just that they've never been able to replicate the Chicago pipeline anywhere else in the country, and that Chicago pipeline seems to have been maxed out. And I don't see any sincere efforts on their part to make the college more affordable for Ohioans or to recruit an economically diverse student body. They have the second lowest percentage of Pell Grant students of every public university in the country. They trumpeted some new in-state scholarship fund recently, but it had nothing to do with a student's economic background, so you damn well know that it will be used to try and lure some doctor's kid in Chagrin Falls away from OSU.

Getting back to Ohio, the best way to attract those out of state students is by being selective and highly ranked, which is why it's such a tragedy that we failed to capitalize on favorable demographic trends a decade ago to tighten up our admissions profile. Now we're trying to sail into the wind so to speak.

https://www.miamioh.edu/_files/documents/oir/fbook/18-19/...

Fall of 2019 - 19,934

We could go on and on about this for pages but the bottom line is that we are getting outsold and we better find out why and do something about it soon. Not only is this affecting the university but it is affecting Athens as a whole in terms of income tax receipts, property values, city school taxes, etc.

Here are the number of freshmen journalism majors by year starting in the fall of 2011:

2011 - 231
2012 - 243
2013 - 237
2014 - 209
2015 - 199
2016 - 162
2017 - 143
2018 - 133
2019 - 113

This chart shows similar numbers and the same precipitous decline.

https://www.ohio.edu/instres/student/FrProfileMajor.html

If you look at the bottom number in each college in this chart, you'll see that the college of communication has experienced a 24% drop in that time period - the steepest of any of the colleges. On the flip side, the college of business has seen a 20% increase. How do you business majors interpret that?

https://www.ohio.edu/instres/student/FrProfileMajor.html

If you look at the Miami data, they do exactly that. I guess I don't get your hatred of Miami.