Nah. Can't remember exactly how we figured it, but it was about $2 million a year that was needed. This was 8-10 years ago, so call it $3 million today. Doable on a $300 million jackpot.

Much smaller than 500 students. I graduated a few years ago now, but I don't think the size is dramatically different when I was there. Probably about 120-150 total enrollment is in the right ballpark.

The other aspect in which resources are limiting is the tutorial system, which requires significant buy-in from professors in the respective academic departments for those one-on-one tutorials (in my experience, professors were delighted to be involved in this, but it was still significant extra work on their part for what was in effect volunteer/uncompensated duty).

That's exactly what my wife was told in her freshman orientation at OHIO back in the fall of 1964. She loves to tell that story.

Thanks for posting this. I gave Rose Hulman serious consideration for my son who wanted to play college football but couldn't quite make the D1 level. He also wanted to study engineering, so Rose seemed like a good potential fit. In the end, he wanted to be an OU student so that's the direction he took.

In hindsight, it makes me wonder if we made the right choice. He's happy where he is, but I wonder about what seems like improved academic engagement from the smaller D3 schools. It looks very appealing.

On the other hand, my daughter is playing D1 soccer and it is a job. She is enjoying her experience but we still wonder about how she might have enjoyed a D3 experience. She did look at multiple D3 opportunities, but in the end was lured by the D1 mystique.

I looked at Rose-Hulman's stats. They have a phenomenal 94% retention rate. The 6 year graduation rate really isn't all that good at 72%, but I don't think that's a case of them failing but rather deciding in Sophomore year that engineering is not for them and transferring out. At more comprehensive universities, those kids would just transfer to another major within the school.

As for why Ohio should move away from accepting a lot of kids with low test scores, the reasons are several. First of all, quality attracts quality. A lot of high ability kids (and their parents) do not want to consider a school that's easy to get into. We can talk about what our scores were and how many people we knew had 30+, but the reality is that only 7% of last year's class was in that category as opposed to 49% at OSU and 33% at Miami. And Ohio doesn't have a big time AAU/Engineering/Science reputation to attract them regardless, as OSU did in its open admission period. Secondly, those low test score kids are a drag on retention rates and graduation rates, which negatively impact both the USNWR rankings (criticize it all you want, but it's the 1st impression of a university for millions of kids and parents every year). And now with the University System of Ohio, it negatively impacts funding as state money is now a combination of basic headcount and output factors of which freshman retention and graduation rates are primary.

Unfortunately, I think demographic trends make this goal immeasurably harder. Nellis seems to be saying as much when he says that he doesn't plan on increasing admission standards. The time to have done this was during the last decade when the number of graduating seniors in Ohio was steadily increasing, and McDavis utterly dropped the ball.

The sad thing is the amount of students over 30 was 11-12% twenty years ago so its moved backwards in perception. I remember when I was looking at engineering schools 20-25 years ago Ohio State offered a better package than Ohio which at the time was easier to get into. I never thought OSU would blow by us in reputation. At this point I would be happy with 25% 30+. Nellis is bragging about our ranking as the 74th best public school. When I was a fresh we were ranked 37th. I do like some of construction plans. Knocking out new south and building west green together was good. Clippenger is getting an overhaul and a new medical school building is on the way. I do not see the point of spending 100 milllion on another dorm so we can bring more students with a 23 ACT in and further crowd the library and dining halls.

And on what do you base this statement?

Smaller student to faculty ratios. Its a positive factor in the USNWR. Obviously the mindset has to be there for the faculty to serve the students. A lot of the students at OU that I knew picked OU over private universities because it had a liberal arts setting but being 4-5 times larger had more resources and better student organizations. They were not looking for a place that is over crowded. The whole move by OU to increase enrollment was originally a bulwark against having to take cuts in graduate programs. An attempt to paint a picture that Ohio is a flagship state university. With the University System of Ohio centers of excellence in place graduate cuts are no longer a threat. I do think maintaining at least 15,000 undergraduates is an important psychological level between a smaller and mid sized public university. 15,500 to 16,000 is a good range for OU.

I think you're be far, far too expansive in this. And there's no way that UC gets relegated. They have both the largest grad/research infrastructure after Ohio State and the most political/business community clout after Ohio State. Also, if you start letting all these schools in, you wake the beast in Columbus who is going to fear a return to the 60s and 70s. Somebody who works in Ohio higher ed put it this way, "Ohio State doesn't have enough power to get everything they want, but they do have enough power to kill anything they don't want."

As for BG and KSU's legacy as four corners universities, it means exactly nothing. They're regional commuter schools. That's what they were founded to be. That's what they've always been. And that's what they need to continue to be. Good luck trying to get special appropriations so that they can raise faculty salaries in a state with high tuition and was just ranked as the worst state in the nation for student loan debt. If schools want to attempt to compete with Ohio State on faculty salaries, they're going to have to try and find a way to do it within their budgets.

If you look at the ratio of UC to Cal State schools and compare the population of California to Ohio, at best you're looking at 3 or maybe 4 schools that make the cut for the top tier. Ohio State, Miami and Ohio and/or Cincinnati. Let BG, KSU, Toledo and Akron occupy a mid-tier of moderate admissions standards and limited graduate/professional programs. Cleveland State, Wright State and Shawnee would remain relatively open admission campuses.

OUPride I believe the rankings I was referring to came from Dr. Vedder's research group (Center for College Affordability and Productivity) in conjunction with Forbes magazine. I realize others will claim he was biased towards Ohio and away from other public schools. He claims the numbers can't be manipulated. Anyway, here's the link.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2016/0...

Speaking of the earlier discussion here on gpa versus test scores, I just saw this. 47% of American seniors are graduating with an A average at the same time SAT scores are declining.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/17/easy-a-nea... /

My point exactly. Related to that is the number of younger teachers who were used to getting an A. GPA really means nothing in an era when most high school graduates can't name the 50 states much less their capitals or give a practical use for the pythagorean theorem.

It depends on what portion of Ohio history you're looking at. Ohio people don't like to openly discuss it, but that is exactly what OSU was founded to be. It's why Hayes fought to keep the new university out of Springfield and away from the ag interests and then pushed through a vote on a classic curriculum as soon as it was open and changed the name a couple years later. Their role as the state's only grad/research school was written into law in 1906, and when the state instituted the first annual budget supporting higher education it was set up as two separate funding bills--one for OSU and one for the Four Corners. And that's the way things stayed until the 1960s.

Now if you look at the Rhodes era, then you're correct. All the universities were treated the same. The only exception being that he looked the other way when Millett allowed Miami to backdoor their way into selective admissions. But the Rhodes period never swept away the advantages that OSU had built up over the previous 80 years, which is why they were able to bounce back and swat Miami aside so quickly.

Post-Rhodes, is a bit of a grey area. OSU has never been reinstated as any kind of formal "flagship" by the state, yet it takes a bit of willful thinking to not accept that, on the ground, that's exactly what they are: AAU, nearly a billion dollars in annual research, $4B endowment, highest admission standards in the system and so on. One could dig into the National Research Council doctoral program rankings in everything from Astonomy to Philosophy and see how big the gap is between them and the rest of the system. It was just papered over for a couple of decades by the open admissions policy.

https://mup.asu.edu/sites/default/files/mup-2015-top-amer...

So bringing this back around to how you would reorganize the system. I still think you're being too broad about this. California funds 9 public 4-year research universities for a population of 39M. Ohio has a population of 11M or roughly 28%. That would be 2.52 public research universities. I think, at most, you put four in that top tier. OSU, UC, Ohio and Miami as the Santa Cruz type campus. I said in a different thread once that Ohio has been held back the last few decades not so much by Ohio State as by Akron, and UT and BG and KSU all running unnecessary and irrelevant doctoral programs and diluting funding. Your plan still tries to spread the peanut butter to every corner of the state. And I think OSU would view it as another go at teaming up to pull them down rather than working with them to bring some rational structure to the system, and that's they key to getting anything done politically.