Enrolling more than 65,400 students, Ohio State is one of the largest universities in the country.
And if new university president Walter “Ted” Carter’s plans come to fruition, those numbers will only grow.
“There are a lot of students, a lot of families here, whose dream is to send a student to Ohio State,” he said. “I want to make sure that anybody that wants to come to Ohio State can make that a reality.”
By 2035, he told a crowd at the City Club of Cleveland Friday, the university should be able to lay out “a pathway for every single student [and] adult learner here in the state of Ohio that wants to come to Ohio State.”
This speech comes just a few weeks before Carter is set to lay out his decade-long strategic plan for the university at his Nov. 8 investiture ceremony. He told Friday’s crowd the theme of that plan will be “education for citizenship.” It comes after a months-long listening tour, he said.
Ohio State boasts largest new freshman class
This fall, the university enrolled its largest new first-year class in Columbus. About 79,270 people applied. A little more than half of that group were admitted. Eventually, 9,530 students enrolled.
Carter, who has led the university since January, acknowledged that the Columbus campus is “selective.”
But, he noted, the public university also operates four regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, and Newark. Those schools can be a more affordable and accessible option for state residents.
Plus, students attending those regional branches can transfer automatically to the Columbus campus if they maintain a 2.0 grade point average over 30 credit hours.
“I, frankly, don’t think we talk about that enough,” Carter said about what the university refers to as the Campus Change Process.
The university “will be investing in those regional campuses,” he added.
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