The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Some new changes are coming to TU with a reorganization planned to get the university's finances in order and better position it for future growth.  I searched and couldn't find a thread dedicated to TU developments so this can be the place to discuss current and future projects.

Some excerpts from the TW article:


I thought this was really interesting, why the decline in international students?  Tougher visa policies or better/cheaper opportunities closer to home?


https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/university-of-tulsa-proposes-professional-super-college-reduction-of-degree/article_6c6489e7-0de7-5433-a6b8-a88ccfb8c9d9.html?fbclid=IwAR0n_UENt2Xm57BuOLsaiO6THdaRfQr3wMcQSP7TQNXuUqkEPQoNV2ohgI0 (https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/university-of-tulsa-proposes-professional-super-college-reduction-of-degree/article_6c6489e7-0de7-5433-a6b8-a88ccfb8c9d9.html?fbclid=IwAR0n_UENt2Xm57BuOLsaiO6THdaRfQr3wMcQSP7TQNXuUqkEPQoNV2ohgI0)

As goes Tulsa's population and the nation, so must TU apparently.  Lots of rich and growing universities in other parts of the world (Arab & Asian) less reason to come here.  Then of course the Trump effect of the US not seeming to be as desirable or welcoming a place.  Plus our city population in decline, the aging demographics of Tulsa and the nation.  The changing demographics and growth projections for the nation as a whole, more older people than children in about 10-15 years, immigration slowing and aging. etc.

Seems odd at a time when we can look at demographics and see where things are going that we as a nation are becoming more unwelcoming of immigrants when the past projections show that the only way our population will be growing is with immigration. Cutting immigration will just mean cutting growth. I am like, "bring us your tired and huddled masses" lets integrate and educate them cause I want my business to grow and I need more customers not less to do that!

I found the part about the massive decline in international students especially shocking. I looked into it and it is a nation-wide trend. It is going to hit TU harder than most universities because of how 20% of the student body was international while it will be down to less than 10% by the fall.


Overall world-wide, the number of international students are rising. Most western countries are seeing increases in international students (places like Germany, UK, France and Canada). The #1 reason is almost certainly tuition cost. The tuition prices in the US are so high, the cost of living increases in other places is cancelled out. If you get to choose between studying in some random place in the middle of the US vs Germany or France, which one sounds more alluring to a young person?

Trump is having an effect both with the view of how welcoming the country is and as far as visas being much more restrictive to try to make it where students cannot stick around after graduating. Also, students can get a 10 year ban for paperwork being messed up to no fault of their own. This is not good as we want the best and brightest from other countries moving and staying here to make our society better and more competitive.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/11/16/the-real-reason-international-students-are-fleeing-u-s-colleges-its-not-trump/#6881a23c7c1c (https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/11/16/the-real-reason-international-students-are-fleeing-u-s-colleges-its-not-trump/#6881a23c7c1c)

Universities were a $40 billion export, but that is dropping fast. The tuition rates were astronomical for foreign students and kept rising over the last decade (they pay on average triple what the average American student pays). It was a matter of time before the international education market caught up and foreign students just stopped paying those prices. Also, Saudi Arabia cut its scholarships significantly which is probably a big part of TU's drop. The value of the US education is the connection to the US job market and access to American companies and their high paying job opportunities. Without that option, international students are flocking to other countries that will allow them those options.  

TU needs to do whatever it can to remain the well-respected university it is while also growing and becoming a bigger part of the Tulsa economy.  I look at similar private universities like DU in Denver, TCU in Fort Worth and Vanderbilt in Nashville that are double the size and as a result are huge economic engines for their respective cities.  Without a large public university Tulsa relies heavily on TU to supply companies with college graduates, in addition to OU, OSU and Arkansas.

The only thing I disagree with is our nation being less welcoming to immigrants.  I believe we are still just as welcoming, but we actually have a CIC who is intent on enforcing immigration laws already on the books and ensuring orderly migration by stemming illegal border crossings.  Granted, there's plenty of hyperbole floating around to give the image we are less welcoming.

That Forbes article I linked to argued that. Sure politics have a part to play, but the economic factors are far more significant. Universities had been growing their budgets without restraint, depending on an unsustainable model and international students paying full price. When the tuition is so expensive, it makes cost of living in Germany and France seem cheap, that is when you know you've gone to far. Then the jobs are a huge portion as well as almost all international students I talked to planned to stick around and work in the US for a while. Without that option, going through all of those hoops and paying those prices isn't worth it.

It is a shame to see such a massive part of our economy deteriorate so quickly by all of these various factors. This could play a huge role on how the US does in the coming decades. Lose influence over the young people of the world, and put more money and influence in the hands of Europe.

Paper will not make you feel more welcome.  Rhetoric will, or will not.

I am all for enforcing the laws already on the books.  But thats not what the "rhetoric" and hyperbole floating about is screaming to the rest of the world.  

Even this statement (ensuring orderly migration by stemming illegal border crossings) is interesting.  Most people who are here illegally, got into the country legally. They got here legally through ports of entry, but became illegal by overstaying.  And many of those who do cross into the US illegally, come in through legal border crossings, not through some area that does not have a "Wall".  

Also, the immigration debate in the US while centered on illegal immigration from the south, is not the only rhetoric that is off-putting to the rest of the world. I think the current administration has bashed just about every foreign country at some time or another. (except for those with an autocratic bent) While "dog whistling" xenophobic and racist tropes, again off-putting to most of the free world.  

Unless you are from someplace truly bad. These days the US can appear to be a more chaotic, scary and frightening place than it used to be.

As giving as the United States is, we've been crapped on by just about every other nation, verbally, economically, and through physical force.  We've been bashed plenty.  Our kindness has been abused plenty.  I think that's what our current POTUS is reflecting.  We weren't attacked on 9/11/01 due to poor rhetoric about immigrants or a fight over illegal immigrants.  It was disrespect and a result of not really a fundamental understanding of how dangerous certain factions around the globe were.
 
While I agree with your statement about many illegals have over-stayed a legal visa, I'm no more privy to the data of illegal border crossings than anyone else is on here.  There must be a compelling reason to finish constructing our border wall aside from the assumed racism or xenophobia of POTUS Trump as interpreted by the MSM and talking heads like Rachel Madcow.

As much as I loathe Drumpf and most of his management style, he's been pretty damn bold where other Presidents relied on decorum and protocol and walking on egg shells.

Our own media lines up against leaders they don't like and the narrative the rest of the world hears is attacks via our own media which feed out his actions as all being bad.  But, that is our First Amendment at work.  

I have no idea if the media in Japan, Mexico, Canada, Sri Lanka, or Katmandu loves or hates Trump, nor what they say about him on a regular basis nor whether or not what they say is a result of their own conclusions or what they get from news feeds coming from our own media.

He's unconventional as all hell, he's a prick, and I'm not a fan of him personally.  But, he's making good on promises which is more than his Democrat and Republican predecessors can say.  The base which elected him seems to be quite pleased with him, I don't happen to be one of those people.  I don't care for much about his policies, but he may prove to be one of the more assertive Presidents since FDR when we look back on his administration 20 years down the road.  

As expected some are not happy about this change: https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/tu-officials-face-students-disgruntled-by-reorganization/article_927a04cc-5a96-58ba-9fe3-100e622416ae.html (https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/tu-officials-face-students-disgruntled-by-reorganization/article_927a04cc-5a96-58ba-9fe3-100e622416ae.html)

I’d be curious to know if other similarly-sized private universities are having make similar decisions, or is this just a result of mismanagement at TU?  I definitely think TU should have engineering, business and technology as its focus but hate to completely lose the liberal arts programs.  I remember going to arts classes there when I was a kid and see that as part of being a well-rounded university.  

It's a nation-wide college issue that is hitting smaller universities harder, especially ones that had so many international students like TU. See OU's recent struggles and the backlash against the new president who is there to cut away the fat.

There will still be arts and most all liberal arts programs will remain. TU is reducing degree offerings from around 200 programs down to close to 100 and yet it only affects 6% of students (many of whom would very well have chosen another program had the options been limited before).

It is either TU makes drastic cuts or they eventually have to make even bigger more drastic cuts, or even risk shutting down certain larger departments completely. It sucks, but the students voted with which programs they chose to major in and the decisions are based on that along with student and faculty feedback.

This will end TU's long effort to become an "elite" university.

How so? A lot of these changes are mimicing structural changes and cuts they've done at other universities.

Why does TU have a Theatre or Russian Studies programs, but not Civil, Aerospace or Industrial Engineering? Those produce pretty high paying jobs that are in demand. They are focusing on engineering/business a bit more as a university, but retaining almost all liberal arts offerings they had before (while cutting graduate studies of many significant departments like Electrical Engineering and Geoscience). If they were really cutting all arts to benefit STEM, maybe they'd add some of the higher demand engineering options they currently lack and really cut out the fat. 

I'm not sure anyone's career is going to be too hampered because they had to get a Music Degree rather than a Classical Musical Composition degree from TU.

^Exactly. The reason I don't have my masters in Civil is because I would have had to drive to Stillwater multiple times a week to take classes. Surprising that no university in the Tulsa metro offers any kind of civil engineering coursework. I know all the civil firms around here have been scrambling to find people for the last few years.

A lot of the reaction to this announcement seems to be a battle of perspectives. People need to adjust their idea of what an "elite" university is for the modern age. The University of Wisconsin produces more top CEOs than any other university in the world for a reason. It doesn't take a person long to figure out that a lot of these fancy Ivy League graduates are full of hot air and their parent's money.

I don't know all the details about how well this is being implemented, but I'm glad they are taking steps now before they are forced to later.

Can you give us any examples?

Not offering 196 degrees at a university of 4,400 students. Rice University, for example, offers around 50 undergraduate programs and about as many post-graduate which lines up with TU's new total of 112. 196 is far more than other private institutions with the same number of students.

Also, consolidating departments is something quite a few have done to help standardize a lot of the admin stuff and save on costs. Rice has 6 main divisions vs the 25 department TU had previously (going down to 8 "divisions").

Rice is a good university to use as a model.  I would like to see TU eventually get closer to their total enrollment which is around 7,000 with ~4,000 undergraduates and ~3,000 grad students.

I haven’t reviewed TU’s plan sufficiently to comment on it substantively, but the reality is most universities are going to have to modify their operations to align their cost structure with their revenue streams.  Tenured faculty, department heads and administrators represent a lot of fixed costs.  The Tulsa World article mentioned this, but the number of graduating high school seniors is already dropping in some states and in a few years will be true in nearly every state.  It is simple demographic reality that colleges are and will be fighting over a shrinking pool of potential students.  That is why, as much as I would love to see TU grow, that will be an enormous challenge. In the next decade, for many colleges simply surviving will be an enormous challenge.

That man seems like he has a bone to pick with TU before this came out even. Like he had a rant ready to go and just added this one to it.

It's the National Review. They can copy and paste the same article subbing in the name of the next school that dares promote diversity and social justice.

If you can get some flexibility in local work schedule, BOB could help you with the commute to Stillwater.  Take all the classes on MWF or TW.  It's tough, but possible. (I did it for 4 semesters.  I bet it is even easier today given the efforts they are making in that direction.)

I know a local Civil and he has had fits trying to find something local.  Has been in OKC a lot lately.  Probably too old, 'too experienced', and too expensive.


Side note - there are only two* kinds of engineers.  Electrical.  Mechanical.  Everything else is a subset of those two and derives from parsing topics.  


*I do grudgingly admit upon occasion that Chemical Engineering could be considered a third type in certain circumstances.  Maybe.

All it would take for TU is to break loose a little more endowment money and get tuition down.  And build up STEM course offerings....

Did anyone read this that was referred to in the National Review article?  https://www.city-journal.org/university-of-tulsa

Wasn't sure what to make of it. Seemed the guy didn't lay out many real facts but packed it with lots of innuendo.

yikes, dem comments are toxic

Sad.  Very, very sad.  This is very much what an outside 'view' of things going on there has made me think was happening.

I got onto TU web site and looked around some (Electrical Engineering of course...) and it was a very sad place to be.  Doug and Ashenayi are great guys as is Andy, but the "critical mass" needed for a comprehensive Engineering program appears to be on shaky ground - too few resources!

https://engineering.utulsa.edu/tu-power-lab/

I have had interns from the EE dept several times in the last 15 years.  These kids are SCARY smart and are doing some very cool stuff after graduation!!   Outside of Oklahoma.  (Something just isn't happening here in this state that we want to happen very badly.)

New President for TU.

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/empowering-leader-and-public-servant-brad-carson-former-congressman-named-new-tu-president/article_9c12899a-9631-11eb-842a-8ff293e8eaa9.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

I think Brads a great choice for TU but I would prefer he run for mayor.

Hopefully he has a growth mindset and positions TU to be more of an economic generator.  A larger TU is a great anchor for midtown.

Given the way the mayor elections are set up, GT will be mayor until he decides he doesn't want to be mayor. I'd imagine once Inhofe ever retires or dies that GT will make a run at that seat. Supposedly Inhofe was supposed to retire this last go around and didn't. GT had been building out his staff to make a run whether he will openly admit to it or not.

My biggest hope for TU is that they will redevelop the southern portion of campus at some point along Route 66. Between them and Hillcrest they're two of the biggest frontage owners along Route 66 in this area. They could have a really outsized influence on the corridor. Those dorms I'm sure are getting aged and aren't exactly the 'it' kind of student housing they used to be. Redeveloping those into more mixed-use style housing with retail (like this: https://uscvillage.com/   or   https://uscvillage.com/maps-and-parking/ ) along with the parking lots around the arena at 11th & Harvard. If they want to be able to recruit talent to the university, that would be a great start by kick starting development around the campus so it feels more like a real community versus being walled off.

Completely agree.  When they originally built Mayo and Lorton Villages and the new green fronting 11th it was part of an effort to better connect the campus to 11th.  But the late 90's/early 00's apartments with surface parking and fences around them are now an outdated concept, especially at this location.  That is where TU should focus its redevelopment, similar to how TCU has been an instrumental in developing Berry St next to its campus which used to look a lot like 11th. 

I also like that TU is looking west where it has its Cyber District planned at 6th & Lewis.  Plans are still vague but hopefully that materializes which would tie into all of the other new developments along Lewis.  Eventually I'd like to see more of the older housing redeveloped south of 6th and replaced with higher density apartments and townhomes like what they have been doing along and north of 6th between Lewis and Delaware.

Way out there ---- what if TU merged with OU-Tulsa and somehow brought the Cancer Treatment Center and Hillcrest together with TU being the surviving entity.  TU Health.  Physically grow the campus to Hillcrest.  Or take over Promenade and meld with OU-Schusterman Center.  Something to kick-start things.  Up the enrollment by 5-8 thousand undergrads and 2-3 thousand grads while not sacrificing excellence.  At the minimum --- agree with redeveloping south all the way to Lewis... expanding west and maybe even east to Will Rogers High School --- take Rogers in as an Apprentice/Skills HS.  

Whatever --- break the mold.  Will universities as they are fully recover from COVID?  Anticipate the change and lead it.    

OU and TU are already linked together with the OU-TU School of Community Medicine https://www.ou.edu/tulsa/community_medicine/about-scm (https://www.ou.edu/tulsa/community_medicine/about-scm) and have agreements with Hillcrest (OU Physicians has an office building on the campus) - it makes sense to have Hillcrest be a part of OU Health as well as the Cancer Treatment Center.  More collaboration between OU, OSU and TU will be key moving forward

The TU-OU partnership has always baffled me... I don't get why TU didn't just create it's own medical school? I don't think I've seen any other schools do this either or maybe I just don't fully understand the internal structure of it.

I'd like to see TU eventually build its own medical center and research facilities. Having OSU and a TU medical center would be a good thing for the city. You might be able to get to a critical mass too where you could start bringing in and building some life science facilities for private companies. Something Oklahoma is not doing very well at the moment.

More likely OU would build the medical center (or better yet takeover Hillcrest on 11th) and expand its OU Health offerings in Tulsa.  TU with its joint venture partnership with OU would also have a place there.  Similar to how the different schools share facilities at Texas Medical Center in Houston.

I don't think Texas Medical Center is ran by a specific university though is it? I think it's a non-profit entity that just oversees the area and each school has it's own complex within the Texas Medical Center and are stand alone schools/programs. There's no Baylor-University of Texas school of medicine or A&M-Baylor, it's just Baylor, A&M, UT, etc. schools that just all happen to be in the Texas Medical Center. It's not odd to have medical schools clustered together but not sure if I've ever seen a partnership like OU-TU. Where one specific university seems to be the dominate school (for medicine that would be OU). Do people that graduate from the OU-TU school get degrees from both schools? When you pull up the website for the school you go directly to OU.edu, I don't think TU even has a website for the school of community medicine. The only part on TU's website is for Oxley College of Health Sciences (which is part of the OU-TU partnership I think). It would make more sense to me if say OU and TU bought Hillcrest together (as an example) and rebranded it 'Tulsa Medical Center' or something and were partners in ownership then each university had their own degree programs as a University of Tulsa or University of Oklahoma and just had shared access to facilities and offices versus having a co-branded school like now.

I mean if your degree says University of Oklahoma when you graduate the OU-TU school of community medicine, what's the point of having TU as a co-brand partner in name only? That's kind of the main point that is confusing to me about the partnership.

TU offers first and second year classes through its College of Health Sciences which is in the old BCBS building downtown.

From an article when the school was created:

I guess I didn't realize MD's took four years to complete - I was thinking it was 3 years plus a residency. I'm guessing then OU Tulsa doesn't offer the first two years of an MD program in Tulsa but only in Norman/OKC so TU then fills that void? Students at TU just automatically transfer into OU Tulsa after completing the first two years I'm guessing and your final degree comes from OU.

OU Health currently has its primary medical center, children's hospital and cancer center in OKC, along with a hospital in Edmond.  Of the Tulsa hospital systems Hillcrest would make the most sense to be either taken over or joint-ventured with OU Health.  Its location would benefit any future partnerships with TU as well.

Off topic but OSU is also doing a joint venture with the Cherokee Nation for a satellite medical school in Tahlequah.  https://www.oklahoman.com/story/special/2021/04/15/osu-cherokee-nation-open-first-medical-school-tribal-land/4674613001/ (https://www.oklahoman.com/story/special/2021/04/15/osu-cherokee-nation-open-first-medical-school-tribal-land/4674613001/)