Uncle Wes brings up the point about gentrification and the allure of urban living for young people with regard to their college experience. However popular that idea may be now, it doesn't mean that future generations will feel the same way. We are being told that Generation Z (those who are entering college now and will be for some time) are quite different than their older millennial brothers and sisters. They have different views concerning college options and debt, politics and perhaps life in general. This is not new. Each generation and the one after that is always different that previous ones.

The other day a fellow co-worker and I commented on the building boom via the many construction cranes visible in downtown Columbus. I mused aloud what would happen if future young--single people became enamored with country or suburban living?

Athens has unique character and certainly charm. It may not be for everyone, especially if urban living is your preference. Ohio State or Cincinnati may be for those who want that in a state school. However, are there really a lot of prospective students who think Wright State, Toledo, Akron or Bowling Green has more charm than Athens?

I think there is an opportunity for the university and Athens to promote the city as "urban-lite." As someone who lives in one of the largest cities in the US and very much fits the bill of "millennial enamored with urban living" I can tell you that it's not the sheer size of the city that is attractive to our generation. It's the scale, walkability, and convenience. Athens has those things. You can live there without a car. You can go see a musical, a comedy show, or live music. You can spend a night on the town and walk home safely. The Court Street area has the same feel as many big city neighborhoods. It's all the better that you can quickly get out of town and into nature (another thing that millennials love). To me, UC and OSU don't provide the "big city" campus feel. When I think of that I think of Columbia, NYU, Penn, etc. Columbus may be technically a big city with almost a million residents but it is a very spread out city and feels very suburban. It's definitely gotten better and will continue to do so but it's not there yet in my opinion. Cincinnati feels more urban with its dense urban core and Downtown/OTR are getting better everyday, but the area around UC is not the desirable part of the city. McMillan and Calhoun Streets have really become more urban and walkable over the past decade or so and Short Vine continues to get better too but the neighborhood as a whole isn't really that walkable or convenient. In contrast, I pretty much lived the same urban lifestyle in Athens as I do in Center City Philadelphia.

143K in Athens is 256K in LA and 382K in Berkeley.

I think Del Bobcat made some good points about Athens being "Urban Lite." Hopefully there are a few administrators of our beloved university checking out these posts. There is some good information to be gleaned here. The intricate process that has evolved into the selection of a higher education institute by high school students involving a boat load of info, data analytics, and college selection firms charging healthy amounts of money, just boggles the mind.

I don't know if anyone else had the same experience but I graduated from high school in the early 80s. I believe I was accepted by our beloved alma mater, Dayton and Ohio State in November or December without these three schools having seen my ACT scores. I wasn't scheduled to take the ACT until the spring, and I am not sure I ever did. I was a good student but was not in the Top 10% of my class. I went to a small rural Catholic high school that was well regarded, but it certainly didn't have the notoriety of a St. Ignatius or St. Charles.

Yet, after I qualified as a regional finalist for the State History Exam given by the History Department of our beloved university, I was asked to come down again to meet with the Chairs of the Political Science and History Department and that impressed me. If I remember right, tuition back then was $5,000 room and board. Most of my high school friends went to Dayton and I liked that school a lot, but Ohio gave me a $1,000 scholarship and that helped because my parents could only pay for $2,000, so with me paying $2,000 it all seemed manageable. It seemed easy to understand and a lot more personal than what I hear is happening now. I will be facing it soon enough with my kids, but it all seemed so much simpler back then.

For those prospective students who have a connection to Athens (parents who may know someone here), the experience can be equally rewarding. I've called professors and deans to set up tours and interviews for prospective students and answered lots of phone calls from parents whose children have enrolled here asking for help and advice. For those who know who to ask, when to ask and what to ask, the outcomes are very positive. But because college is such a new experience for many families, it's a bit of a crap shoot hence the whole college selection industry that cbus cat fan has alluded to.

coastal elites

I tried to pull up a comparable 300k house in Berkeley...

There aren't any...

Cheapest on Zillow? A 400k condo.

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Berkeley-CA/16992_r... /

Coastal. Elites.

Not to get into Clintonesque parsing - as in define 'is' - but your use of "coastal elites" strikes me as painting with an overly broad brush. Let me relate a few anecdotes.
* I friend named Lad bought a house in Malibu in the 1960s. He paid about $30,000. He lived there for decades while working his career as a journalist. In the end he sold it for millions. Doesn't strike me as elite.
* One of my high school classmates - Larry - bought a home in San Jose. In the early 70s he bought it for $32,000. I've visited him a couple times. It's nice or what we might call a 3-bedroom starter ranch. Larry spent his career at Lockheed Martin. He's retired now and when selling he'll receive millions. But elite? Don't think so.
* My woman friend - the Newport Beach realtor - is 85. Still working. Her house was built in 1959. She bought it in 1976. Or before area home prices began soaring. She has decided to downsize and is moving to a nearby condo. She'll get millions for her house - and will pay millions for her condo. Elite? Not in my book.

Another consideration in increasing the quality and number of faculty is having the office space for them. OU investing into a new facility in Athens should help. A large and growing endowment helps support research.

https://www.ohio.edu/medicine/about/news-and-events/news-...

"Coastal Elite" is a media term. It's a media term I've happily adapted using after growing up in Northeast Ohio listening to people on TV talk about how the "Rust Belt" and the Midwest in general is such a terrible, dirty place filled with uneducated people. Going to school in Appalachia further reinforced just how negatively a good chunk of society looks at where I choose to call home.

I know a lot of smart people who have never touched opioids, who have busted ass in their careers and have made a life for themselves and their families. Funny story, they don't live on the coasts, they live in what you describe as "opiod land."
I know a lot of extremely successful people in Middle America who view speaking in "Clintonesque parsing" as a way for people to sound smart without actually having practical knowledge.

While not everyone from California looks down on Middle America, a very good percentage of the people on the coasts have bought up the media's narrative about how terrible this part of the country is.

...

I'm a hard working 27-year old who works for a tech company. No, I don't work in the Silicon Valley. I'm just a kid from Akron and I'm very happy with Ohio's current mix of hard-working kids from the Midwest with a smaller mix of national and internal students. I have ZERO interest in this University turning into an enclave for elites who are not capable of applying their education to the real world.

Yes, because all of those elites graduating from elite colleges never, ever manage to apply those educations in the real world, do they? It's so hard to find graduates of elite colleges in corporate boardrooms, blue chip law firms, research labs, and elite areas of the government like the State Department, CIA or NASA. They are literally never there.

Nobody is arguing that Ohio is going to turn into Princeton, nor should it.....nor could it. It should always work hard to maintain a large degree of socio-economic diversity in its student body. The question is what kind of public university it should be. Attracting the best qualified student body that it can and remaining competitive with UC and Miami, if not OSU, is not trying to turn Ohio into an elite enclave. It's about keeping it competitive and ensuring that the school maintains a good reputation in and outside of Ohio.

Throughout this thread, you've had an obsession with bashing McDavis because his policy didn't cater to "elite" students who would've raised class profiles. I could not disagree more with your view on the past decade or our current class profile. What you call the "lost decade" was actually an incredibly successful decade for this school.

The past 10 years have seen record applications year after year from people hoping to enroll at Ohio University. Our freshman class enrollment in Athens set records year after year as the largest in the history of the school. We didn't lower standards to achieve this growth; our entrance requirements remained fairly consistent with reasonable increases in test scores and GPAs. We also didn't allow our enrollment growth to surge to levels where sophomores were forced out of the dorms due to a lack of housing like has happened at so many other schools. A healthy growth rate and consistent "selectiveness" in admissions is exactly the approach every college should take during a "baby boom." Vast changes to the demographic makeup of your University when you can easily forecast national trends is reckless. From my view, Ohio's actions over the past decade were healthy, well-planned and sustainable moving forward.

...

I think the typical student at Ohio University today is very similar to what it was in prior decades well before McDavis. In addition to statistical and demographic data supporting this, I look at my own personal experience at Ohio University from 2008-2012 and compare it with my parents who attended in the early 70's and late 80's and see a lot of similarities.
We could devote entire threads to discussing the flaws of test scores and GPAs to define "elite" students. I could offer interesting personal insights on both of those issues along with the curriculum focus at both the grade school and college levels.
Without diving into those rabbit holes, I will say that Ohio University has done a very good job balancing growth and changing times without losing the character that makes Ohio University and Athens unique. Much of the value for Ohio University is the learning that happens outside the classroom. The current student body demographics contribute to that setting.

Touche'!

Pretty well done. Except now you reply to my reply against a broad brush term (coastal elites) with several broad brushes or your own and a mythical creature: elites who are not capable of applying their education to the real world.

Oh well. F**k it dude, lets go bowling.