Reply to What happened to Miami of Ohio?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "What happened to Miami of Ohio?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When I was a kid it was considered a fairly prestigious public university. Not on the level of Michigan or Berkeley, but certainly better than, for instance, Ohio State, which was practically open admission back then.

Now it has dropped out of the top 100 in USNWR (it used to hover on the bubble of the top 50), its acceptance rate has climbed to over 90 percent, and its incoming student stats are in steady decline.

I'm not quite sure what happened or why. The school has a ton to offer: a gorgeous, quintessential college town; a picturesque campus that borders a lively "uptown" district of restaurants and bars; a reputation for solid academics, particularly in the business program; and a robust social scene. Yet kids don't seem to want to go there anymore. Its yield last year was 15 percent - that's terrible for a fairly large state school.

Meanwhile, Ohio State has soared in the rankings and become more selective, as have several smaller schools in Ohio, most notably Kenyon and Denison. And then you have places like JMU which offer a similar vibe to M-OH. Those schools are also doing well. But Miami is floundering. Does anyone know why?
[/quote]

I graduated from Miami in 1993 and so I kind of understand what you're talking about. I think "floundering" is too strong a word, but there's no denying that back in the 1980s/1990s at the peak of the initial "Public Ivies" buzz.  Miami is still a very good school for undergraduate teaching and frequently ranks highly for that category, which is actually an important one.  The rise in Ohio State is really about it being a research institution -- most of the "Top 20" schools are research universities and their ranking is more about their graduate schools than their fit for undergraduates.

That said, Miami did make a number of strategic changes that I think affected its perceived exclusivity (or lack thereof). Chief among them was the convoluted tuition structure that a previous president put in place in the mid-to-late 1990s that tried to make Miami look and act more like a private school with basically a higher tuition rate but generous scholarship for in-state students (budget cuts by the legislature also had an effect). Then they got rid of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies (i.e. the Western College Program -- it's now just a program in Arts and Sciences instead of an academic division) which was a major driver in the the university's selection as a "Public Ivy" in Richard Moll's book. (I don't want to rehash that debate over Public Ivies, just suffice it to say back in the 1980s and 1990s, it was an effective label that had a major impact on rankings and perception).  Miami then started to do weird things with academic scholarships guaranteed for certain stats, which drew a lot of applications from qualified students but then reduced yield as those students got into more selective institutions and chose not to go.  Finally, there were some scandals about the student body that were Affluenza related -- several high profile incidents involving racism, rape, and alcohol abuse. That all hurt the university's image.

But it's still a fine school with a great emphasis on undergraduate teaching[/quote]

Class mate! I graduated in 1993 also. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics