Too many of our proud alums are sending their children, who want a college experience, to other Universities wheras we have to “settle” for the ones in categories above.
We start sending them TO the University of Houston and you start to see a shift.
The University can create the infrastructure for Traditional Students…but until we reach the point where those High ROI students actually ATTEND, we will be spinning our wheels.
My solution is to HEAVILY recruit students in markets outside of Texas.
UH has too much of a negative reputation INSIDE the state of Texas as a Regional Public…we can change that by accepting a large number of Out of State Applicants that WANT to go away to college and WANT to be active participants and thus start to change our culture of who we are
Then, over time, we change our reputation into a Traditional College but IT CAN HAPPEN.
Florida State started out as an ALL FEMALE teaching college…look at them today.
Texas A&M started out as an ALL MALE Agricultural and Mechanical college…look at them today.
Step 1- Recruit High ROI students OUTSIDE of Texas
Step 2- Let those students redefine OUR culture
Step 3- Start reintroducing In-State High ROI Students who had no idea UH “used” to be a commuter school.
Houston has never supported UH except maybe when we were going to final fours.
Even during our great days in football we rarely filled the Astrodome.
Hard to expect the city to support us when a majority of our alums could care less or they are busy going with their kids to their chosen college games.
You can’t just increase out-of-state enrollment without actual incentives.
Honestly, our best way of enrolling out-of-state kids is the honors college and offering full rides.
There aren’t any other incentives to get out of state kids because we don’t have any competitive programs that attract that kind of attention, and we aren’t like an Alabama where rich kids attend a university for the sake of a robust Greek Life.
They’ll attend because they want to “go away to college” and say, a kid from Pittsburgh…or Cleveland…or Detroit…or Chicago thinks it is a great opportunity to spend 4 years in warmer Texas to get a college degree, and in the 4th largest city in the US.
We really need to rebrand ourselves as a UT version 2.0 “type”.
A large P# University ion a large city ion Texas.
Keep improving all aspects (academics, social, campus layout, athletics) and we WILL stat to pop up on the radr of out of state applicants but yes Full Rides may help to get the ball rolling!
Yes, but who is going to fund those full rides lol
and the type of kids you arent hoping to attract aren’t motivated by full rides because the type of kids that go out of state to attend schools like Alabama have their parents pay for everything.
I’m not saying UH can’t get there one day, but it’s going to take a LONG time.
It’s going to take, as you say, continous improvements in Academic rankings, social life and success in sports. (Essentially what made Alabama, Alabama, without the school rankings.)
I think Houston as a city has all the components of a great college, metropolitan city, we just lack the on-campus incentives and academic rankings.
No matter what, improvement on our campus is going to have to start with Houstonians.
Yes. I attended UH. I was a legacy student that lived on campus and was involved during and after my days at UH. That’s the REASON i am promoting us to grow that core…
I think he’s using the standard of a typical SEC school atmosphere.
Truthfully, I don’t think we will ever get to that point. Even UT is not like a traditional SEC school because it roughly has the same racial demographic as UH.
Greek Life at UT is dying from what i’ve heard from fellow UT alum friends
A problem unique to Texas is the degree to which neighboring states are successfully incentivizing gifted Texans who might otherwise attend Houston, to their campuses with generous financial packages. Because these states don’t have the populations to grow their schools, they look to Texas kids to fill in the gap. They understand the allure of attending Ole Miss, OU, LSU and Arkansas because they can provide the prestige attached to attending the preeminent school in those states. Kids and their parents, much to the detriment of schools like UH and Tech, buy into that. UH and Tech are not well positioned to offer the scholarships these other schools can. The irony is they are just as good and in many cases, better than the schools our kids are leaving the state to attend.
Why do you hate the University of Houston so much and want to see us remain as an afterthought?
we ARE a Flagship University!
What is holding us back?
The answer is easy, it’s the attitude of people like norbert…and Mayor Whitmire…and the rest that CONTINUOUSLY tell us to “stay in our lane”
Screw that!
I’ve mentioned Florida State University as an example that COMPLETELY changed their reputation.
They were known as the Florida State College for Women (1905–1947) as late as 1947.
Nobody is proposing that extreme of a makeover…all we need to do is increase our “traditional student” enrollment by 25% and watch our culture/pride/tradition/attachment snowball.
and YES! we can model ourselves after the University of Texas. I find it EXTREMELY hard to believe that there are not High School students, in other states, that would NOT want to GO AWAY TO COLLEGE in Houston, Texas.
Our problem is that we’ve type-casted ourselves due to our reputation. So much so proud alums PREFER NOT to send their Legacy potential children here. Yes it is their choice, but that’s the whole point…Let’s CHANGE THAT!
And we are A BIGGER public school than ALL those schools and better, academically, than almost all.
Ole Miss- 24, 710 students Endowment $840 million
Oklahoma- 32, 700 students Endowment $1.67 Billion
LSU- 37,354 students Endowment $665 million
Arkansas- 32, 140 students Endowment $1.70 Billion