I think that this is great news for Ohio State. Great news. Would also have liked to see Joe Alutto have a go at it.
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ORD_Buckeye
Wrong glass, Sir.
tibor75;880480; said:
Sorry tibor, but I seperate fans and alumni. Virtually all of the alumni I know care about the university and its reputation. Some more than others, but very, very few have ever been dismissive of the university.
I will admit that I've never understood the hostility that a large portion of the non-alumni fanbase has towards the university. It's almost as if they're resentful that there's a university attached to their beloved football team. Maybe Ohio State's primary role as a university, because it does exist primarily for its students, alumni and faculty, just reminds some fans that they really aren't part of Ohio State no matter how hard they root for its football team or how many articles of Buckeye clothing they own.
It's a strking distance between Michigan's casual fanbase and ours. While the odd academic smack coming from a Western Michigan graduate is utterly ridiculous, I do respect the fact that most of their non-alumni fans take genuine pride in Michigan as an academic institution first.
Well, this is sure to piss a lot of people off, so let the arrows fly.:teeth:
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ORD_Buckeye
Wrong glass, Sir.
matcar;880474; said:
Here's the abridged version.
Prior to Ohio State's founding, I would hesitate to call OU or Miami true flagship universities for a couple of reasons. First, I don't think that the term had quite the same meaning prior to the Civil War as it would have in the 20th century. Most importantly, is that both universities were viewed by the political and business leadership of the day as having failed completely at giving Ohio a real "state university" similar to surrounding states which led directly to the decision to found Ohio State as the state's land-grant university. The two biggest complaints were that both universities were largely sectarian schools run by the Methodists and Presbyterians (forget which is which). The churches controlled their boards and had the power to remove faculty and even presidents for heresy. Secondly, each was viewed as unworthy for the role. OU was viewed as a somewhate mediocre institution that did anything necessary to catch the eye of the legislature while Miami was viewed as concerned primarily with educating wealthy out of staters (the more things change...the more they stay the same
For these reasons and others Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and the political and business leadership of the state decided to found a new university as recipient of the land grant funds. This made Ohio unique among Great Lakes states in founding a new university for this purpose rather than designating an existing university to serve the role. Most importantly, Hayes manipulated both the university's location and its board of trustees to ensure that the university would not come under undue influence from agricultural interests but would rather institute a broad based comprehensive curriculum. In essence, the state's leadership intended Ohio State to fulfill a role as the state's singular flagship university similar to the systems in Illinois or Wisconsin rather than Michigan or Indiana which had split the role between two institutions. Upon returning from the Presidency and to ensure that his vision for Ohio State was successful, Hayes joined Ohio State's board and, according to the scholarship on the issue, essentially acted as Ohio State's de-facto President until his death.
In 1906, Ohio passed the Eaglseson Bill which mandated that only Ohio State would be allowed to conduct basic research or offer doctoral programs. In 1916, Ohio State was elected into the Association of American Universities (still the only public Ohio university among the organization's 60 members). Up until the 1950s, Ohio State was largely regarded as a "top 10" public university. Then came Jim Rhodes
The bloated, redundant university system is the result of Jim Rhodes who served as Governor from 1962 to 1982. He was very populist and anti-intellectual with regards to higher education. On the one hand, he tried to put a four year public university within 50 miles of every Ohioan and to this end folded existing municipal universities (Toledo, Akron and UC) into the system and founded new schools (Cleveland State and Wright State). While too many universities are not necessarily a bad thing--however the bloated system has contributed to the inadequate funding of the last two decades and subsequent high undergraduate tuition--Rhodes' true crime lay in how the system that he instituted broke with history and the practice of almost all other states.
Rhodes' anti-intellectualism led to leveling policies which treated every university the same. While many Ohioans believe that Ohio does not have a "flagship university," they are mistaken--both historically and currently. I would, however, have to say that they would have been correct in the Rhodes period. Rhodes instituted a funding compact that treated all universities the same and was based on a simple head count, and he allowed state universities throughout the system to add doctoral programs that were unnecessary--for instance, Ohio has 9 public universities that offer a Ph.D in history, and six of these programs rank in the bottom third nationally. Rhodes also was maniacal about dumbing down Ohio State on the undergraduate level and forced them to maintain open admissions. Many believed that this was a psychological response to his having flunked out of Ohio State his freshman year. The problem is that Rhodes was in office for so long that many Ohioans came to view his policies as the historical norm rather than the historical aberration and break that they truly represented.
So by 1982, Ohio with a declining economic base found itself with a bloated, redundant, lowest common denominator university system and a flagship university that had been cut off at the knees (at least on the undergraduate level) for two decades. Since Rhodes left office, his policies have largely been repudiated. During Rhodes' last term, Ohio State essentially ignored state law and began rejecting 10-15 percent of their applicants (the rejection rate for 2007 was 48%). In 1987, when his appointees to Ohio State's board, a couple of whom were local car dealers with no college education, went into the minority, the Ohio State administration with the support of the new Celeste appointees to the board formally undid open admissions.
The current governor Ted Strickland appears to have made the final undoing of Rhodes' policies and the formalizing of a rational, hierarchical higher education system a legacy policy. He and his hand-picked higher education czar (Eric Fingherhut) with the support of the Republican assembly have proposed shutting down lowly ranked, redundant graduate programs, tearing up the funding compact of the 1960's and funding each university in accordance with its "unique mission" while giving Ohio State the support necessary to compete with the top 10 public universities in the country. They've even hinted strongly at forced mergers of Akron-Kent State and Toledo-Bowling Green. Many people assume that within 5 years, Ohio will have a system very similar to Virginia's with Ohio State assuming the UVA role both on the undergraduate and graduate level, Miami (Fredo of Ohio) assuming a William & Mary role as a selective undergraduate focused college and U. of Cincinnati (over OU because of the much stronger clout of the Cincy business/political infrastructure) assuming the role of Va Tech as the secondary/easier admission research university. The rest of the schools will serve regional roles as either moderate admission/limited grad program or open admission/undergrad focused schools.
If you want to read a very good book on Ohio State's history and formative years, try and find the following book. It was written by a professional historian with no ties to Ohio State and really spells out why Ohio founded a new university to be its flagship campus and land grant campus rather than designating one of the existing universities to fulfill that role, making Ohio unique among Great Lakes states to do so.
Kinnison, William A. (1970). Building Sullivant's Pyramid; An Administrative History of The Ohio State University, 1870-1907
There isn't a really a concise published history of Rhodes higher education policies, but if you want a good view of how the Ohio State administration felt about what they represented and what they were doing to Ohio State, read some of the interviews in Ohio State's oral history project. Ohio State was so frustrated with Rhodes that they publicly floated the idea of doing away with undergraduate education completely and solely being a graduate/research institution. While this was a ridiculous notion and a complete non-starter from a political perspective, it does illustrate the degree of disillusion and poor morale that Rhodes created at Ohio State.
https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/403
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Deety;880542; said:
Somebody get to Green Bay and cut Deety off from the orange creme margaritas.
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ORD_Buckeye
Wrong glass, Sir.
Deety;880542; said:
Now I didn't say all or even most, but I lived in Columbus long enough to notice this among a (too) large portion of our fanbase.
I also know that there are a lot of great non-alumni fans out there, so I'll apologize to them in advance for any perception that I've lumped all fans in with the 'tards.
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OSU_Buckguy
Head Coach
good point... because clearly the vast majority of those "getting drunk on football saturdays" are ohio state graduates. furthermore, your point is excellent because "most of the alumni" are in regular attendance for the football games. that's why there are over a million ohio state tailgaters at each game.tibor75;880480; said:
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matcar
Mostly banned
ORD_Buckeye;880537; said:
Wow, thank you for this response. I had no idea of the beginnings nor of the strange and difficult path followed in the 60s - 80s. But it explains a lot about how a university with so much support and so much masters and doctoral clout was struggling with the undergraduate portion. I grew up in the 80s in Ohio and this explains much of the sentiment I heard about Ohio State growing up then.
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