Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor of Ohio.
Stephen Dyer, former legislator, current budget watchdog, warns that Ramaswamy wants to close some of Ohio’s institutions of higher education and make the cost of college even higher for the families of Ohio.
Vivek’s proposal to close public colleges follows years of Republican disinvestment in higher education and public education. Rising costs cause enrollments to decline. Declining enrollments are then an excuse to close colleges.
Why does Ohio want a less-educated public?
Please open the link to his excellent article to read the footnotes.
Dyer writes:
They’re hoping you don’t notice.
Notice that for 30 years, Ohio Republicans have slowly starved higher education funding, which has made the $1 million promise of a college education less attainable for middle-class families.
They’re hoping you fall for the anti-college mythology — they waste money, are giving kids diplomas for basket weaving, are full of hippies. Whatever. They don’t care. Just buy it, already!
They want you to blame anyone but them, even though it’s all their fault.
A personal note. I’m a tuition-paying parent for a public university student.
It’s now more expensive to send my son to Ohio State as an in-state resident than it was for my parents to send me to Tufts University in the 1990s.
Yeah. That’s crazy.
But that cost hike wasn’t because Ohio State is so inefficient or concerned with basket weaving majors that I’m paying through the nose for my son’s education¹.
Nope.
Ohio Republicans made this happen. They’ve steadily made the unattainably expensive college degree a reality since they started dominating the statehouse and Governor’s mansion in 1994. In fact, it seems the two things they’ve consistently done from a public policy perspective is de-fund both public K-12 education and higher education.
The numbers don’t lie.
So, for example, in 1979, 11.6% of the state budget went to pay for the State Share of Instruction (SSI) — the direct funding portion of the state’s higher education budget that essentially subsidizes in-state tuition (it does more than that, but trying to keep it simple). That was the highest proportion on record.
Next year, it will be 4.7% — the lowest on record.
If the state committed as much of the state budget to SSI next year as it did in 1979, the state would be providing $3.2 billion more just to SSI.
How much is that, you ask?
In the 2024-2025 school year, the total tuition collected by all 2-year and 4-year public higher education institutions by all students, in-state and out-of-state, was $3.6 billion.
That’s right.
If Ohio had maintained the same commitment to its college students that it did in 1979, we could have tuition free — or essentially free — 2- and 4-year public universities for every Ohio resident … and then some.
But we don’t even have to go back to 1979. If you went back to the last time the percentage of SSI funding went up under Gov. Ted Strickland in the 2009-2010 school year, you’d have another $1.6 billion. Or if you went back to the first year Republicans had complete governmental control — 1994-1995, you’d have $1.8 billion.
Wanna bet whether Ohio’s public 4-year institutions would be facing an “enrollment crisis” if tuition were reduced this much, Vivek?
Yet for some reason, Ramaswamy seems to want to make closing University of Akron and Kent State University — and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs — a tentpole of his gubernatorial bid.
As a former stat legislator who used to represent parts of Summit and Portage counties — where those two universities reside — I’m gonna say that’s certainly a strategy.
A fucking stupid one.
But it’s a strategy.
This is not rocket science. As state commitment drops, the burden placed on college students and their families increases. The correlation is strong, as my buddy Claude pointed out here²:
Notice there’s a little blip in the percentage during the FY10 and FY11 years. Just as a reminder, those were the only two years of a politically divided legislature and Democratic Governor.
As an aside, you’ll recognize a similar blip on the state share of public K-12 education funding during this same period — the only year on record that more state than local property tax funding paid for Ohio’s public schools.
By the way, did I mention this all good stuff happened in a budget I helped negotiate during the height of the Great Recession? Please excuse my shameless public policy prowess plug (and alliteration).
Every other year on that chart, Ohio Republicans controlled every lever of power. And the pattern is clear:
- Defund the state funding stream that makes college affordable for working families
- Make that option far less affordable for those same families
- Then when fewer students attend the universities that rely on first-generation students (Kent State and University of Akron come to mind, don’t they Vivek?), blame the universities
- Count on everyone both not noticing the steady drain of resources while they get hooked by the “out-of-touch” higher education narrative
- Call on the schools to stop focusing on educating our students and instead become corporations’ training arms
- Or, in the case of the Ohio GOP’s billionaire gubernatorial candidate, shut them down
This is all Republicans’ fault. They didn’t have to do this. There wasn’t some crisis that forced them to divest from SSI since they took power.
In fact, according to the most recent Grapevine report, while student share of higher education cost has gone up since 1980, it’s been by 18 percentage points nationally.
In Ohio, that increase has jumped 24 points.
The average Ohio student has to come up with 57 percent of their higher education cost. The national average is 39 percent — still way too high for a country that has to rely on innovation to dominate the world economy.
But Ohio is 46 percent worse than that.
In only 10 states do families have to pay a higher share of the higher education freight than Ohioans.
Since 1980, Ohio has cut its appropriations for higher ed overall by 14.8 percent. The national average over that period was a 13 percent increase.
Look. I know Vivek wants to shutter two of the state’s main economic and intellectual engines because they struggle with enrollment. But that struggle isn’t because of what he says — inefficiency, lack of excellence (whatever that is), etc.
I think that spending 30 years dropping the share of the state budget going to subsidize tuition below 5 percent for the first time ever might explain why fewer kids go to college in Ohio than they used to and why enrollment at first-generation universities — whose students typically come from working-class backgrounds — has struggled to grow.
Yeah.
That sure as hell seems more likely than whatever the fuck Vivek is imagining under his Jimmy Neutron hair.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Right! When I attended Ohio State as an undergraduate in Columbus–1958-62, I never borrowed a cent–and I was the son of a railroad worker, without the GI Bill (ended by Eisenhower). I parked cars and did other “odd” jobs, earning just enough for fees, expenses, and a shared apartment. Nor did I have to take special tests to qualify for college in Ohio: All graduates of accredited Ohio high schools automatically qualified for admission to all of the numerous state colleges in Ohio. Gradually, over time, mostly led by Republican governors and legislators, the funds to higher education were cut, requiring student fee increases. My wife–high school valedictorian–graduated a few years later, owing a small amount of money for Ohio State. A few decades later, our high school honor student daughter graduated from Ohio State owning tens of thousands.
Most of the cutting of educational funding was led by Republicans. Today, we have a very wealthy Republican candidate for governor who wants to drastically cut back our efforts to educate the populace–I guess to give a further tax break to himself and his friends, and to weaken our Ohio democracy. His opponent–a brilliant woman who worked her way out of dire poverty to a position of leadership–offers a start contrast. Hopefully, the voters of Ohio will get enough information to make the wise, obvious choice in our fall election.
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Jack,
I join you in hoping for a Democratic sweep in Ohio. Sherrod Brown to the U.S. Senate, where he served with distinction. Ramaswamy back to wherever he came from. Amy Acton for Governor!
Billionaires and others in the 1% do not understand the struggles of people who are not rich. They use words like “affordability” but they don’t care about the price of gas or milk or eggs or child care because they have no personal experience of struggling to balance the budget.
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