This is true but what is our place in the food chain? We aren't exactly a mega brand like Stanford or Penn running a feeder system for investment banks. Unless the goal is wall street I don't see how rankings are that much of a factor. OU plays very well from a couple of angles. One angle is the Ohio University liberal arts college angle in which the school has a college town atmosphere that rivals the private liberal arts colleges in region. All of the advantages of those colleges but larger with more resources and programming. Another angle is in the sciences where OHIO is a major public school in the Midwest a region that has an excellent for the sciences. For example Big Ten schools have University of California type credibility. Then in California they have the Cal Poly system which has a lot of credibility in the sciences because its California. Likewise in the Midwest Illinois St, Michigan Tech or Ohio get a bump from their region. I don't know of another public school that because of characteristics gets a bump in both liberal arts and sciences like Ohio is able to do. Miami without the state name has less credibility in the sciences, particularly taking a national view. They've only had a comprehensive engineering school (if you can call it comprehensive) in place for 5 years and no medical school.
Do we really have that kind of reputation in the sciences? I looked at the National Research Council's ranking of doctoral programs, and I'm not seeing it. These are very thorough rankings that take multiple factors into account and are only done about once every decade.
Here's what I found for the physical sciences and engineering:
Chemistry
Ohio State 26
UC 106
Akron 113 (specific polymer science program)
Kent State 136
Akron (general chemistry) 146
Miami 153
Toledo 154
Cleveland State 168
Bowling Green 170
Ohio 177
Physics
OSU 25
Ohio 81 (Physics & Astrophysics)
UC 96
Toledo 125
Additional program at KSU wasn’t even evaluated and ranked
Astronomy & Astrophysics
OSU 9
Mathematics
OSU 27
KSU 64
UC 89
Bowling Green 90
UT 109
Ohio 122
Computer Science
OSU 36
UC 75
KSU 76
Wright State 92
Chemical Eng
OSU 26
UC 68
Akron 92
Toledo 96
Ohio 102
Electrical Eng
OSU 26
UC 55
Ohio 110
UT 118
Cleveland State 131
Akron 134
Materials Eng
OSU 14
Akron 37 (specific program in polymers)
UC 65
Mechanical Eng
OSU 40
UC 77
UT 79
Akron 116
I'll say it again. The state of Ohio has too many programs. It tries to spread the peanut butter to every corner of the state, which allows nobody other than OSU to excel, and it arguably holds them back too. In a field where they have no in-state competition like Astronomy, they're 9th in the country and tied with Chicago. And this mess can't be blamed on OSU. This was Vern Alden's doing when he teamed up with the Miami Presidents to try and cut OSU off at the knees rather than work towards something resembling a structured and rationale system like California was developing around the same time. OSU would have been open to discussing that kind of system. Instead, Alden and the rest of the Presidents felt if they could force OSU into open admissions while allowing academic empire building across the state that somehow it would benefit their campuses. It didn't. Millett ensured that only Miami would be selective for undergraduate admissions giving them their brief and long forgotten moment of "public ivy" glory. Everyone else was left fighting among themselves and adding on redundant and unnecessary doctoral programs that never had a chance at being anything more than mediocre.
Last Edited: 9/29/2018 8:54:27 AM by OUPride