Three cheers for President Sherman! I think he's doing a very good job -- right man at the right time. I'm personally not surprised at this development.

A fairly highly placed insider told me that there is no way to adequately convey what a cluster#$*@ Nellis was. They said the university was in absolute freefall. Sherman was the right choice. I hope he stays beyond his current projected tenure.

Thank you for your insight and humor Ohio Cat Fan. I appreciate both. Rarely does this board agree on much, but apparently we can agree that President Sherman is needed and his stay needs to be longer in duration that what his initialy contract stated. My one interaction with him via an e-mail about an academic matter that I felt he should be made of was recieved very well by him. He personally got back to me and thanked me for relaying the info, which I wasn't expecting.

It never ceases to amaze me how people like President Nellis get hired. Then again, I have sat on hiring committes where some of looked at each other as to how did this person got the job they have, let alone seeking a promotion only to be told by some on the committe, "Wasn't he wonderful, let's hire him." You can't make this stuff up. Thankfully, it seems our ship has been righted and calmer seas appear to be on the horizon.

GroverBall: Let me point out that I was not one making dire predictions. Also, however, I do not give Nellie as much credit as you do. I had personal interactions with the man, and I don’t think that he was “presidential material.” I don’t think he provided good leadership. Though this can’t be proven, I personally think that we would have weathered this particular storm with less damage had we had a president like Bob Glidden or Charlie Ping at the helm rather than Nellis, whose decision making reminded me a lot of Claude Sowle, who I always characterized as making the worst out of a bad situation.

Collecting Millions in Covid monies did not hurt the recovery!

Have to disagree a little bit on Ping. He's the guy whose animosity towards Ohio State ran so deep that he chose not to join with them and try to move Ohio to selective admissions at the same time in the mid 80s along with fundamentally restructuring the system. (In fairness, there might have been a ton of lingering bad blood on the OSU side from the 60s that would have prevented that in any event, but he could have went it alone). At the end of the day, they had a half-decade head start on us, and that pretty much led to game over for Miami and Ohio matching them in selectivity ever again.

In my mind, the two huge strategic errors that hamstringed Ohio on a generational level were Alden not realizing that Miami and Millett were going to stab him in the back in the 60s, and Ping not moving Ohio to selective admissions the first moment that it became politically feasible to do so.

Now back to the original link, that's really great news. Aside from the enrollment numbers, the fundraising and endowment numbers are really strong. I think that puts our endowment about +200M on Miami and above them when considering it on a $$/student ratio.

Alden never moved Ohio to selective admissions. He planned to, but Millett (Board of Regents chair and former Miami President) wouldn't let him. In reality, no Ohio public was ever officially selective in the 60s. OSU had plans to tighten up admissions along with other B10 schools, but that was derailed by Rhodes and Millett. Miami wasn't forced to build enough dorm space to accommodate the baby boom application surge, so they Millett essentially let them backdoor their way into it. Everyone else was forced to build the dorms.

Ohio did not move to selective admissions until the early 90s. Trust me, I was working in the state Senate on higher ed issues at the time. A Miami trustee came to my boss on the quiet and tried to get him to both block Ohio's move and roll back OSU's. He said that Miami had been made the "Honors Campus" of the system. I had to spend an entire weekend researching that b.s. to find out that no Regent Chair, Governor or legislative act had ever designated Miami as any type of "honors campus," specifically selective college or anything distinct from the other "Four Corners" campus. The only actions by the state in that regard related to OSU.

As for OSU vs Miami. OSU had caught up with Miami by the mid to late 90s and definitively passed them by in the mid-00s. Sometimes common perception (and college catalogs) lags behind the changes in reality. I know that plenty in Ohio would still be shocked if told the admissions gap between OSU and Miami. I don't know what the stats are on OSU currently, but I've been told that among B10 schools they're among the group right behind Michigan (Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota) and harder to get into than some schools like Texas, Washington and a lot of the U of California campuses (not Berkeley or UCLA obviously).

The UC thing is pretty wild. I told a Miami alum that they better stop worrying about OSU and take a look in their rear view mirror at UC. He laughed, so I sent him the hard data, and he still refused to believe it.

OUPride, Et al:

I think all this depends on how you define "selective admissions." The quote from me that Club Hyatt is remembering, I think, was the statement I made is post once that when I was working on my MA at the Big Farm (aka OSU) in the 1968-69 academic year that one of my professors said that he was upset that OSU was saddled with having to accept every student that graduated from any Ohio high school and that Ohio and Miami didn't. I have never researched this issue as thoroughly as some on this board, so I didn't mean to suggest that that was a definitive statement, just that that was what I was told at the time. And, I had heard this kind of thing from other people as well, but the professor's statement was the one that stuck out because he seemed to be in a position to know. I also remember at that time when I reported that professor's statement to my father-in-law, who wrote a weekly newsletter dealing with state government, he said that if Ohio was having selective admissions that we were in violation of state law. So, the bottom line is the there was at least a wide-spread rumor at that point that Ohio was practicing more selective admissions than the junior institution in Cowtown.

The admission percentiles at a larger university more leeway has to be factored in. For example with 6,000 students in the freshman class it leaves you with 1,500 students which fall below the bottom 25%.

This is why I'm saying OSU passing Miami as tougher to get into on absolute terms is relatively recent though OSU has momentum since the 80's on sheer class size. The data I last read had Miami's freshman GPA at 3.84 compared to OSU's GPA of 3.76 and Cincinnati's GPA of 3.71. Granted GPA for most students moves beyond a 4 point scale these days and boards are a better indicator. OSU has always focused more on the boards than GPA.

In the 90's USWNR had Miami as a Top 25 public, OSU as a Top 40 public and OU in the top 45. OSU is now ranked #17, Miami #46, UC is #67 and OU is #88 which is a big change from where it was 30 years ago.

Agreed OCF. A few years ago my sister told me she would not allow herself to be treated by a DO (my guess is she probably had and didn't even know it). I sometimes think people get Osteopaths confused with chiropractors. In Ohio (and I assume in most other states) DOs face the exact same licensing requirements as MDs. At Dublin Methodist Hospial (a large Ohio Health operation) DOs and MDs work seamlessly side by side. I've experienced it first hand.

Direct quote from the president that OU plans to increase academic advising to support students in the upcoming year. Worth noting that he said the total enrollment while obviously not final is projecting 4,400 to 4,500 for next year for the class of 2023. The class of 2019 was the record at 4,423 and I consider anything over 4,000 to be a robust class with 3,600 to 4,000 solid.

https://www.thepostathens.com/article/2015/09/ohio-univer...