Sam and SFA aren’t urban research schools.
BAD analogy.
See what happened to Northeastern when they worked to shake off the commuter school model.
We could be a public version of the same, and become the UCLA or Pitt of Houston.
New Mexico is an urban public research school that implemented an on-campus housing mandate right around the same time we considered one. How’s that gone for them? I assume the AAU is beating down their door, right?
New Mexico is also a state flagship. UH isn’t.
Also a much smaller state.
Another bad analogy.
UCLA and Pitt are the public models.
Northeastern as a private.
Study up!
So it works only if we’re NOT a state flagship, but it works whether or not we’re public or private, and also the other two schools you want to be like don’t have it, but that doesn’t matter.
What a logical, coherent argument.
Nope, look at Illinois.
Freshman housing mandate at a state flagship.
Guess what?
AAU and Public Ivy.
Only problem?
Not urban.
UCLA is the model of a nearly all residential freshman urban public non-flagship with P4 athletics and AAU.
Try to make UH more like that and less like Cleveland State.
Won’t happen without a freshman housing mandate.
Agreed
There are plenty of schools that have implemented Freshman housing mandates over the last couple decades and sworn that it would be be transformative and make them shoot up the rankings and revitalize their campus life, and I challenge you to name a single one that it worked out for. You can’t. It doesn’t exist.
Even Northeastern had already been in the USNEWS Top 100 for five years before they implemented their mandate.
UCLA doesn’t have one. Pitt doesn’t have one. Georgia Tech doesn’t have one. In fact, I can’t name a single urban public P4 school, flagship or not, that has one. But somehow this is THE thing that UH, specifically, is missing.
In short, this is basically the argument in favor of a mandate:
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The students are showing to the games, housing mandate or not. They are not the problem.
The problem continues to be the alumni, and the general Houston population disengaged from our football program.
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But they were NOT in the top 50 until they had one.
Case proven. Case closed.
As for UCLA, 98% offensive their true frosh live on campus.
Without a freshman housing mandate, we won’t come close to achieving a similar, and more desirable model.
We recruit students who didn’t give a s### about football or sports in general in high school. Why would we think they would suddenly like football or sports in college?
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And they fell OUT of the top 50 in 2024 and 2025, despite having one!
It did look good and they brought energy to the game. But then many left because it rained 15 minutes after a little lightning.
After that there was very little energy. I would guess half our crowd left.
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Wake me up when we show up as high without one.
I suspect I’ll sleep soundly.
I think that a housing mandate would result in our attracting students who are more interested in campus life, becoming sports fans, and ultimately donors.
The most fun I had in the Navy was the mandatory fun
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It’s a long drive from Sanford, NC… but my sister & her family had a good time in my seats until the weather hit…
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Again, for which public school has this worked out? There are plenty of urban public schools that have climbed the rankings in the recent past – UIC, Rutgers-Camden, UT-Dallas – and none of them have made freshmen live on-campus. “Oh!” you’ll surely protest, “none of those play P4 sports!” Of course, that doesn’t matter for Northeastern. But when we’re comparing ourselves to schools that look much more like us, on a fundamental level, than Northeastern ever will, suddenly that’s disqualifying.
Sam Houston and SFA and New Mexico and North Carolina Central all swore up and down that their freshman housing mandate would produce exactly the change you’re insisting it would here, and yet their campuses are deader than ours on weekends, their endowments are still empty, and their football teams are still playing in half-empty stadiums. If you want to effect positive change in campus life, do that directly. This is actually what the models you’re pointing to are telling you! Simply requiring students to pay for a room isn’t the change that needs to happen! You have to create an environment that they want to spend time in, otherwise it will be exactly like SFA and SHSU and UNM where students pay for a room on campus and then commute to and from their parents’ house on the weekend!
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T-Moar is correct.
Now… What UH really needs is a mandatory brainwashing class for freshman! That’s the real key…
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I don’t think that’s the issue
I think we have more on campus housing than most schools in Texas now and yet they don’t come
They are not the trad student
Many 1st gen students who would rather watch soccer than football
Also we will see next weekend
Night game is always better for our students
They have a real nightlife in htown
They are just waking up 11am on Saturday
How about the alums
They are the ones that need to get thier butts to the stadium
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