Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
A candidate for Ohio’s next governor says he supports “reforming universities,” but the current governor says he doesn’t think consolidating them is a good idea.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running in the GOP primary in a bid to succeed Gov. Mike DeWine, has floated a proposal to consolidate universities in a video his campaign posted to Threads.
“You look at certain areas of excess spending where we can adjust cost and improve effectiveness,” Ramaswamy said. “Look at the number of universities in our state. I love universities in Ohio. I want to have the best universities. But we have too many of them. They need to be consolidated, and when you consolidate, they can actually be centers of excellence.”
He said this was “one example, among many” of excess spending.
In an opinion article published in the Columbus Dispatch, Ramaswamy doesn’t say he supports “consolidation” but instead advocates “reform for fragmented universities.”
“As governor, I intend to lead a pragmatic reform that guides certain state-funded universities that suffer from under-enrollment to instead become ‘centers of excellence’ — national leaders in a specific field — with the goal of offering a higher-quality education to students at a lower cost,” Ramaswamy wrote.
