A video posted on social media by the leading Republican candidate for governor on his ideas to deal with college costs has raised fears that he’d want to shut down some Ohio universities that are struggling with financial issues and lower enrollment. But the Republican who Vivek Ramaswamy is hoping to succeed said that’s a scenario he doesn’t want to see.
Ramaswamy wrote an op-ed that was published to his website and in Ohio's Gannett newspapers on Friday, in which he restated the position from the video shared on Threads. In that video from March 13, he said Ohio has too many universities and "they need to be consolidated." That idea has brought a blast of criticism from his likely Democratic opponent Dr. Amy Acton, as well as officials in communities where those universities are located.
"He has a lot of good ideas in there," said Gov. Mike DeWine of Ramaswamy's op-ed. But he’s cautious.
“I'm not in favor of consolidating our colleges or doing away with any of our 14 public universities," DeWine said to reporters Monday. "It's important to have them all over the state so frankly, people who can't afford to live at the college and pay room and board, they can commute. We still have commuters.”
DeWine said he’d like to see stronger ties between institutions so students can easily move from community colleges to four-year universities. Ramaswamy wrote in his op-ed he’d want universities with lower enrollment to become so-called “specialized centers of excellence” to cut down on, in his words, bloated bureaucracies and administrative duplication.
DeWine said what he'd like to see—and what Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel has been working on—is a "closer working relationship" between Ohio's four-year institutions and its 22 community colleges.
"We've made progress in that area. But it should be very easy for someone to go to the two-year college, and then move right on to the four-year," DeWine said. "We may want to create a system where every one of our community colleges is, in fact, formally paired with one of our 14 four-year colleges."
In his op-ed, Ramaswamy wrote some state-funded universities with lower enrollment could instead become “centers of excellence” and specialize in certain fields, which would draw students interested in those fields. He said in his first budget he'd give the Chancellor of Higher Education the authority to review publicly-funded higher ed institutions based on “clear statutory criteria, not backroom favoritism”.
"It will identify where missions overlap, where enrollment collapse has made independence untenable, and where administrative functions can be unified without harming students. The chancellor will then return to the General Assembly with a concrete plan on a fixed timeline," Ramaswamy said. "My plan will ensure that the dollars saved from administrative duplication go back to benefit students."
Ramaswamy specifically mentions issues at Cleveland State, the University of Akron, Kent State and Central State, which has raised concerns among some that they could be targeted for closure.
The video posted earlier this month from Ramaswamy's Threads account showed him talking to someone off-camera who asked him whether Ohio's income tax could be eliminated, as Ramaswamy has called for.
"Look at the number of universities in our state. I love universities in Ohio. I want us to have the best universities. But we have too many of them. They need to be consolidated," Ramaswamy said in the video. "And when you consolidate them, they can actually be centers of excellence who [are] actually the best in their respective domains instead of trying to create replicas and clones of one another throughout the state. Just one example among many."
The idea isn't new. Republican former Gov. John Kasich suggested a similar plan, and in 2015 commissioned a task force to study how to reduce costs through administrative consolidation. Some Kasich advisors are now working with Ramaswamy's campaign.
“Vivek Ramaswamy is more focused on running for President than fighting for working families in Ohio and has once again advocated for a proposal that would devastate Ohio,” said Amy Acton's campaign communications director Addie Bullock in an email. “This plan may have sounded great from up in his private jet, but Ohioans on the ground know they can’t afford Ramaswamy.”
