Ohio does seem to have a lot of unversities for its size and population if you include both universities and their branches. There are 14 public universities and 23 branch campuses. I didn’t count the community or technical colleges. Governors Rhodes in the 1960’s wanted every Ohio student to have a college within 30 miles of every student. I think the reality is something like 50 for every Ohio student.
Wright State University opened in the 1960s… would it be correct to assume that it was opened because non-black students in the area did not want to attend the historically black university that was right in front of them?
Putting universities where all or most in the state have a commutable option can help with affordability. Although looking from the map at https://www.ohiohighered.org/campuses/map , it looks like Akron and Dayton each have two state universities, while East Liberty and Marietta are places where the nearest state university is around 50 miles away instead of within 30 miles. Also, if some of the state universities have limited academic offerings, that may mean that some students in their areas cannot commute to one which offers their desired academic programs.
@ucbalumnus “Wright State University opened in the 1960s… would it be correct to assume that it was opened because non-black students in the area did not want to attend the historically black university that was right in front of them?”
I doubt that had much to do with it, Central State is in Wilberforce is around 20 miles from the downtown Dayton area. Wright State University is located very near to Wright Patterson Airforce Base and much closer to the majority of the Dayton MSA. I am guessing the growth in the area in the 50’s and 60’s made the creation of a university at the time a logical decision. The town of Wilberforce is small and not exactly easily accessible to most Dayton area residents (It requires driving a number of 2 lane roads and it’s a small campus with not a lot of dorms). Wright State is much more amenable to being a suburban commuter campus.
Dayton’s population grew by only 7.5% from the 1950 census to the 1960 census, but by 1970 it was back to the 1950 level. Not sure how much of that post-1960 shrinkage was due to suburbanization, though. More likely new campuses were built during this period to accommodate the first wave of post-WWII baby boomers who were not only more numerous than previous cohorts but also attended college at higher rates, spurred in part by newfound prosperity, a desire for upward mobility, and federal policies to support higher education through research grants and federal financial aid. Given changing demographics, some states like Ohio are probably overbuilt at this point.
“Dayton’s population grew by only 7.5% from the 1950 census to the 1960 census, but by 1970 it was back to the 1950 level.”
Much of that was do to the population moving to the suburbs. The metro are population doubled in size over the next couple of decades. Some of that was due to busing in the 70’s (Dayton is down by nearly 40% since the 1960 census) but most was people moving into the suburbs for manufacturing jobs that were coming into the area such as Delco, GM, as well as the WPAF base. Dayton took a big hit in the early 2000’s. As most of the Delco plants and the GM plant shut down, followed by NCR the only fortune 500 company at the time headquartered in Dayton left for a suburb of Atlanta. We lost around 12000 jobs in just a few years. We are recovering now but it always take longer for jobs to come back than to lose them.
I’m white and I’d feel like I was undercutting the purpose of Central State if I attended. Also, would whites be welcome there?
Yes, they could be. Colleges can create several visiting positions and use adjuncts to supplement their program. They don’t have to create tenured positions.
Yes, you would be undercutting the original purpose that caused its existence, which was to maintain a racially segregated public university system. As far as welcome, why wouldn’t a historically black university, like any university, welcome more student interest, particularly in a time when many universities are struggling to fill seats in their classrooms? Central State University probably does not want to be the next University of Akron in the news.
Whether the school’s administrators would be welcoming is one thing. I think the more interesting question is whether the school’s students would be welcoming, and the answer isn’t obvious to me. I would assume these days many students at HBCUs have other options but chose a HBCU in part because they value their own black identity and certain aspects of school’s distinctively black history and culture as well as certain aspects of black culture more more generally that might be more mainstream at a HBCU. I know a few white students do attend HBCUs, but I wonder whether there might be a tipping point at which some black students might think too many non-black students would undercut some aspects of the school’s identity and culture that they value. I really don’t know the answer to that.
Is it an analogous issue at historically white and still very predominantly white universities (e.g. forum favorite University of Alabama)? I.e. it seems like the standard answer to many “looking for big merit scholarships” questions is “University of Alabama”, but those doing the recommendation tend not to mention any such warnings about possible unwelcoming for non-white students. If it is not any issue in these analogous cases, is there a reason to think that it is an issue for a historically black university?
Is this by analogy to the apparent unspoken preference among many white students for white majority (or at least plurality) colleges as @Hanna once mentioned, which may be part of the reason that few white students are interested in historically black universities?
However, someone with a PhD in CS who could be hire-able as a CS faculty (including adjuncts) would likely be able to find industry jobs that are much more desirable than the typical adjunct pay-(not-very-much)-by-the-course model.
It depends on where they are and how entrenched their family is in that area. Visiting professors sometimes come from industry. They get tired of the grind and want to settle down, and they hope to get offered a tenured job with all its benefits (great pay, tuition benefits for their kids, etc). Or maybe they’re here on a visa and are hoping they’ll get sponsored so they can stay. Adjuncts tend to be people who already live in the area and who either have a full time job elsewhere or they’re retirees who are supplementing their income.
I don’t know about CS but in some fields like law and business most adjuncts are professionals with full-time jobs elsewhere who don’t need the work but enjoy teaching as a change of pace and a kind of public service they can feel good about. It can also give them a leg up in identifying and developing relationships with some of the best young talent about to enter the market which can help in subsequent recruiting.