Doug Buchanan
Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the Columbus Metropolitan Club. I am Doug Buchanan. I'm editor in chief of Columbus Business First, I'm also proud to serve as a member of CMCs' Board of Trustees and chair of its Programming Committee.
Today's forum is CMC's Joe and Carol Alutto Legacy and Civic Engagement Forum, focusing on higher education. We're grateful to the Aluttos and to today's forum sponsors The Ohio State University, Huntington, the United Way of Central Ohio, Columbus Business First, Moody Nolan and NBC 4.
We're also grateful to the presenting sponsor of our livestream, the Center for Human Kindness at the Columbus Foundation. Our livestream partner, The Columbus Dispatch, and our host, Vue Columbus.
Every CMC forum takes a village. Let's thank everyone for supporting today's program.
Okay, onto the forum. Walter Ted Carter Jr. was appointed as the 17th president of The Ohio State University last August. As president, he leads the state's premier public research university with six campuses in Ohio and a student body of more than 65,000 potential future leaders. He is a retired US Navy vice admiral with 38 years of service, who has logged more than 6,300 flying hours as a naval aviator, including 125 combat missions. Let's have a hand for that.
CMC is honored to welcome President Carter for this very special forum as we explore the future of the state's flagship university and the vision of its new leader. And now we are thrilled to welcome today's distinguished guest. First off, president of The Ohio State University, Ted Carter. And our host, returning once again to CMC before he leaves for Paris on Sunday, Matt Barnes, morning co-anchor of NBC 4 Today.
Matt, all yours.
Matt Barnes
All right. Thank you Doug, and thank you President Carter for being here. It's just such a great to be in and it's nice to always get the leader of the flagship University of Ohio to speak to all of us. And my first question is just fairly easy, just we all are still getting to know you. You've been here for seven months. How are you getting to know Columbus? Have any favorite neighborhoods or restaurants that you've come upon so far?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
Well, Matt, first of all, thank you for emceeing up here. Thank you for all being here. I mean, we really have a cross section of really the entire leadership of Columbus right here in this room. And I'm just honored to see so many familiar faces, some of you meeting for the first time. But yes, seven months in the job. And my wife and I moved here right before Christmas last year, got quickly moved in, started on January 1. And it's been fast paced. I mean, for a while there I was meeting really about a thousand people a day in the first hundred days. And I'm still into that. The summer is a little bit of a nice downtime, but we're already preparing for a big fall. But as you point out, you know, my career's taken me a lot of different places. I've been really, really fortunate. I left high school in 1977, a small town in Rhode Island, not too unlike some of the small towns right here in the great state of Ohio. Got to go to the Naval Academy, graduated in 1981 and then my naval career took off from there. I was married in 1982. My wife and I have two children, son Christopher and daughter Brittany. And we've lived all over the country, all four corners, literally all four corners. And in the middle. Now we're a little bit right of middle. And overseas twice. My son was actually born in Yokosuka, Japan. And you know, you just never know where life's going to take you. This was not in my life plan. I was the president of Nebraska after I retired. I'd been there for about four years and this opportunity came up, our board, our board of trustees, many of whom are here today, John Zieger, our board chair. I'm thankful to you for your wisdom in hiring me. And they really did convince me that this was an opportunity that neither Lynda and I could pass up and couldn't be more excited to be here. And what a great town Columbus is. I mean, I had been here before, obviously flying F-14 Tomcats and other fighter jets. I used to fly into Wright-Patt, so I knew what a landmark that was. But to be here in Columbus, it's one of the fastest growing, one of the best cities my wife and I have ever experienced. And it's a foodie town, so we're just scratching the surface. Obviously, we're here in the Brewery District and we're trying to get out as much as we can. And events like this just make it really great and fun.
Matt Barnes
So you mentioned this wasn't in your life plan. What about Ohio State attracted you to the job when it became open and you thought, you know what, this might be a place I'd consider?
Walter "Ted" Carter Jr.
You know, sometimes life has pieces of fate to it that you just, you never realize what it meant when a certain event happened. So, you know, I took over the US Naval Academy. I was a brand new minted three star. I knew that would be my last big job on active duty in the Navy. And the very first football game that I got to host as the superintendent, which is the president of the Naval Academy, was against The Ohio State University in Baltimore, Maryland. It was our home game. It was the reciprocal game of the one that we played in, almost won in 2011. Some of you might remember that. And I got to go to the Baltimore Convention Center and I was going to address 2000 Navy football fans. So I get there, we walk in, we come in through the back door, and as we get out on the stage, there's Gene Smith and 2000 Scarlet and Gray fans. And that's when I realized this is not your typical university. And so my first address as superintendent at a football game was to address the visiting crowd who traveled very well. And I still remember what I said to them. I said, you're a school that has 55,000 students on the Columbus campus. We're a campus of 4,400 students, 4,400, and yet we're going to give you one hell of a game today. And we were leading that game seven to six at halftime. Now the laws of physics eventually took over, and I think Ohio State won by about four touchdowns. But I reflect on that moment and that connection. And then of course I got to know Michael Drake when he was the NCAA board chair. I was still at Navy. So, I've had these connections to Ohio State. I've always known what a great university it is. And then as I was watching the landscape of higher ed go through these significant changes, and we'll probably talk some more about that, it was clear in my mind, even though I was leading four public universities with a flagship in Lincoln, Nebraska, that the future of higher ed is going to be through these large public land grant R1 universities. And Ohio State is already one of the best in the country and one of the best in the world. And if we're really going to change the future of higher education, and I care very passionately and very deeply about that, then this would be the place to do it. You know, I've got a microphone with all of you today, whether you like it or not, you're going to have to listen to me for a little bit. But it's bigger than that. It's going to require all of us, it's going to require this community, this entire state to really change how we think about higher education because it's important for our nation. And you know, we're at a really critical time in our nation's history. We'll talk more about that with an election coming up. And you know, we've probably never been more divisive as a nation and higher ed is, has also been under that, you know, under that umbrella of criticism. You know, the confidence of the American public in higher ed has eroded. And many people have been talking about why, and we've got to be able to change that conversation. So I came to Ohio State because I wanted to be in that conversation. I want to lead that change. I want to lead not only what it means for the state of Ohio in the entire Midwest and the central Ohio region. What is it going to mean for our nation?
Matt Barnes
Well, I know one way to talk about the future of higher education is the affordability of it. It is a real problem for a lot of people that it's not accessible to them to even go to college or university because they can't simply afford it. I mean, it's $31,000 to attend Ohio State for most students that are going to come in this upcoming school year. What is Ohio State doing or what does Congress need to do? What needs to be done so that college can be affordable and accessible to those who may not have the means to pay for it?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
Well, the first thing I want to say is I acknowledge that higher education is expensive. And whether you're an in-state student coming to a public institution where the value is very good, I think NBC 4 just recently listed the best value schools in the state of Ohio. And Ohio State, believe it or not, is the second most affordable of all of the public universities in the entire state. So, think about that, 14 public four year graduate granting universities. And we are the second-best value of all of them. I'm also proud of the fact that, and again, some of this has happened before I got here, but I get to be the public spokesperson for the university. We are trending in a good direction. So, you mentioned the price tag. That is, if you are paying full fare even as an in-state student, I acknowledge, that's a lot. But I would also say that the return on that investment, even if you were to pay full fare, is still well worth it. To graduate from Ohio State with just an undergraduate degree in this era right now, means that you're going to earn about $1.6 million over your working lifetime than those that don't have an undergraduate degree. So that's just the average for return on investment. But what we have been doing for a number of years, and I'll go back all the way back to 2018. So again, this is that time in my life where I was nearing the end of my time at the Naval Academy, but Ohio State has really made significant moves. So today out of that $31,000 price tag, the average student, the average student at Ohio State is getting $10,000 in scholarship money. So that's the average. 62% of all Ohioans that come to us are getting significant scholarship money. 58% on last year's graduation numbers are leaving with zero debt at the undergraduate level, zero, 58%. And for the 42%, yeah, that has a little public math there, that are leaving with some debt. It's $24,000 average. And that's not the average for those, again, that are not leaving with any debt. So again, those are numbers. They don't mean anything unless you look at them in context. So, if you were to look at the 4,500, roughly, public and private universities across the United States today, that 58% is 20% better than the national average leaving with no debt. I think that's a big deal. And by the way, that $24,000 average debt is down about $2,000 from 2018 prices, but also 20% better than the rest of the national average. So, we are trying to get after that. And then it gets down to who's at Ohio State. You know, that's part of this affordability piece. I mean, let me just give you a little perspective here. We took 80,000 applications for the undergraduate freshman class this year, 80,000, 40,000 from the state of Ohio, 40,000 from international and outside the state of Ohio, 70% of the incoming freshman class are going to be from the state of Ohio. And I think a lot of Ohioans, as I'm getting around, forget that. They forget that our average, whether it be through transfers coming from our regional campuses or those that are coming in direct in our undergraduate class, come from the state of Ohio. And that's the lower price tag. And I think it's important as we are state aided, we get money from the taxpayers that we don't lose sight of that. We do have a land grant mission still. And the governor, when I sit with him, and I went to listen to him talk about, you know, the state of the state address, he challenged all the public education leaders to say, do you know where your graduates are going? Do you track how many of those that are from the state of Ohio stay in Ohio? And guess what? We do. We do at the professional, at the graduate and the undergraduate level. And we even track our out of state students and we're doing exceptionally well. I was tracking this in Nebraska and we were not good. And that was a problem there. And they called it brain drain. Kids were going to the flagship in Lincoln and leaving, less than 60% stayed in state after they got their degree at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. We're over 70%. Now you may think that's not maybe necessarily a great number, by the way, we're over 50% that come from out of state too. That means when people come here, they fall in love with Columbus. They fall in love with the opportunities. There's work here at the professional, there's jobs here. It's well paying. The cost of living here is very reasonable. And the housing, although I think it's getting more challenging because we are growing. I know there's people working on that and getting after that. And we've got major, major manufacturing coming here between Intel and Amgen and Honda. So, there's a lot of excitement here. And the affordability and who's going to be here speaks very highly about our bright future.
Matt Barnes
Actually, that leads right into my next question, which is it's easy to pay back loans when you have a job right out of college, right? And you can start paying back those loans. What is Ohio State doing to help with the job development part of that, which is they can leave school and they have a job ready to go. Is it partnering with companies like Intel and Honda so that certain of these students with the right majors can jump right into a new job?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
Well, I think that's part of what we're doing here today. I mean, we've got students here today. We've got a lot of my faculty, some of the deans, former faculty, former deans, head of research, and of course industry is spread throughout community leaders. I'm proud to say as I get around, how many business leaders are running major intern programs and they're filled. I mean, Huntington has, I think somewhere north of two to 300 interns. And I think Ohio State's got the number two or number three most number of interns working there. Internships I think are the key. It's a two-way interview. You know, the student gets to kind of take a look at the company, hey, is this someplace I want to go work? And the employer gets to say, is this student somebody I want to come work for me? So, I'm really bullish on internships. I think we can continue to do more. We have to find ways to incentivize small and medium sized companies that may not so easily afford paid internships because internships have to be paid otherwise, you know, you're just asking for free labor and that's not going to work in today's market. But then just getting our students exposed, many of our students, even at the undergraduate level are very involved in the research arm of the university, which is as strong as it has ever been. I mean, we are arguably closing in on being one of the top 10 research universities in the entire country. Last year we surpassed Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill as the number 11 research university in the country. That's pretty significant. But again, those are numbers and the numbers don't mean anything when we're talking about creating about $1.5 billion in research. It's what do you do with it and what are the opportunities they give to our researchers, our students to expose them, teach them about entrepreneurship, teach them about taking an idea that can not only be a good idea, but maybe be patented and then be put into the commercial market. So, these are things that we're already very, very good at, but we want to continue to get better.
Matt Barnes
I want to touch on a couple items regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. Because that’s in the news here, especially right here in Ohio, especially when you think about Senate Bill 83, has not passed, hasn't really moved in the Statehouse in about a year or so, but it's still there and still lingering. It was introduced last year. For those who don't know, it's had nearly a dozen revisions. But the crux of it, the bill would prohibit mandatory DEI training unless it's required to comply with state and federal law, professional licensure requirements, et cetera. Supporters have said it would protect free speech on campuses and prevent liberal indoctrination on campuses, foster more intellectual diversity, opponents say it would do the exact opposite. Where do you and Ohio State, and frankly, a lot of colleges and universities stand on this topic? Because it is one that has been debated in the Statehouse and outside of the Statehouse for more than a few years now.
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
So, from the very beginning when I became a twinkle in the eye here in Ohio, I was following this, and I dealt with a little bit in Nebraska too. There were a lot of legislators that thought that to get things done right on a university campus and in today's environment, you had to legislate actions to ensure that it got done. And I prevented those types of legislations happening there. So, I was following it. I'll note that our board, and I think very wisely opposed Senate Bill 83, about a year ago. And I read that with great interest. And of course, as you pointed out, there's been a lot of changes to it. So, from the day I got here, I mean some of my first engagements have been over at the Statehouse with members of the House, members of the Senate, some of those that actually helped write that bill. I testified in front of the Education Committee led by Senator Cirino on this topic. And I think some of it's a little bit misunderstood. I mean, I understand some of the intent, but as I've said to many of our legislators, let us do the work that we know is right. Most of what's in Senate Bill 83, if it had passed, I would argue we're already doing, I don't know that I need state legislation to tell me what DEI looks like. We want to be welcoming for everybody. We have wonderful diversity. And I would argue that the great state of Ohio is a true cross section of our entire United States, which is a wonderful thing. And we need to make sure that we continue to draw not only our amazing faculty and staff, but make students want to come here. And those students often want to see themselves in those that are teaching, those that are doing the research. And it's harder to change the needle in who is your diverse population. By the way, when I say the word diversity, a lot of people instantly go to color of skin. And that's not it. In fact, that's only just a small portion of it. Ultimately, when we talk about diversity, when you measure all of the things that go into geographic diversity, economic diversity, diversity of religion, diversity of background, yes, ethnic diversity, but ultimately we're looking for diversity of thought. And I can tell you, having worn the uniform for 38 years, when you go on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, which is one of the most dangerous places on the faces of the earth, and every one of those young 19 year olds are wearing all their equipment and their helmets and all that, you know what you see, they're all exactly the same. You can't tell any of those things. And yet we train them to do that job and be successful. To me, I would bring the CEOs of the biggest corporations in the country and walk them out on the flight deck and say, this is what it means to be equal amongst everybody in the exact same dangerous environment. Whether you're getting into the cockpit of the airplane or operating a caterpillar or resting gear. Now that doesn't necessarily apply to a campus, but if I was going to bring somebody from Los Angeles, California or Denver or Providence, Rhode Island, my home state to come to our campus, they're going to instantly judge what we do and who we are by just walking around and seeing who's there. And I'll tell you right now, I'm very proud of our campus. We are a diverse campus and this state and everybody should be proud that we have that. So that's just one element that I think was starting to drive that, diversity, equity and inclusion has been become a bit of an acronym and a catchphrase for affirmative action, for giving people jobs that it's not based on meritocracy. I'm here to tell you that we will not operate Ohio State that way. We're built on a meritocracy. We give diplomas based on meritocracy. We hire the talent for these big jobs for faculty, for staff based on meritocracy. So, I don't even need an affirmative action law. And by the way, I ran the Naval Academy the same way. So that's that part. The other piece is some of the things about, you know, review of tenured faculty. We do that also already. And in fact, if I were to follow the letter of SB 83 as it's drafted right now, it would require us to hire a whole bunch of administrative staff to do something that we're already doing. And I don't think that's what the Senate Bill 83 intent was, but that's the reality. And I had pointed that out to a number of legislators. We want to try to minimize our staff. We're a big staff already and some of that is just necessity of running a monster enterprise. But I'd like to be able to do the things that I know are required and do it with a minimum amount of people and get the job done. There's a number of other things. There's issues of academic freedom when you're told that you are not allowed to teach something but you are required to teach something else, potentially gets into accreditation issues. I'd like to see some of the things that are maybe required to be taught, may be taught at a different AP level in high school, that could still answer that now. So, there's lots of different ways, I don't know what the future of SB 83, there'll probably be some version of it and we'll be fine because like I said, most all of it that's in there we're currently already doing. And again, we'll continue to make sure that we're in direct dialogue with our legislators. You probably heard this from me and read this from me. I was apolitical for 38 years being in uniform, that's required, but in this senior administration role while I was in Nebraska and here I'll continue to be apolitical in how I approach the business. And I think that's really important. It's important for fairness in how we get our business done.
Matt Barnes
The other DEI topic is affirmative action, as you mentioned. And the Supreme Court decision that came down last year effectively put an end to affirmative action in college admission especially. And then Attorney General Dave Yost sent a memo to the universities, I know you've seen it, the next day, warning them that that decision needed to be followed. Writing quote, race-based scholarships discriminate on the basis of race and awarding benefits. Therefore, it would follow that such programs are unconstitutional. Now I know my alma mater, Ohio University is doing a grand review of all of their scholarships. I know I personally, myself was a beneficiary of a scholarship that was designated for minority students. What is Ohio State doing in terms of trying to follow the Supreme Court law here, but also trying to maintain that diverse campus and still recruit minority students and folks of all creeds to come to Ohio State and feel like they're welcome there.
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
So first, you should know we're doing what's being required. We're following the law. So, you know, we're not going to ask somebody what the color of their skin is or what their ethnic background is on an application because that's the law and we're reviewing scholarships. That's still a work in progress. We've answered some of that mail. But here's what I would argue, our best recruiting mechanism to get anybody interested in coming to The Ohio State University is to just bring them here to Columbus. Let them see the city, let them see the proximity of our amazing university, our campus, the oval, everything that we have there, and just let them see our campus, it sells itself. And that's the most important thing, we've got to be able to attract, to get people to want to come here. And again, we'll still become a very diverse university and I know that we'll be able to maintain that. So, I'm excited about that. By the way, when I was at the Naval Academy, you know, the ability to get into an institution like that is very difficult. In fact, I would put it on a similar footing to what it means to get into Ohio State from an out of state position. So, I mentioned 40,000 applications to get in to be roughly about, let's just call it about 2,500 seats in that incoming freshman class at the undergraduate level. That's a really competitive number. I had the same numbers for the incoming freshman class at the Naval Academy, which was typically about 1200. And yet we had no quotas for any type of ethnic background. And yet we became, or more ethnically diverse every single year that I was there. But that wasn't even the point. The success that I want to have there and the things that I'm paying attention to here is how do we make all of those students, regardless of what cohort they might belong to, make them successful. And it isn't just retention rates, which is staying in from freshman to sophomore year. It isn't just the graduation rate. Obviously, I'd love to see everybody graduate in four years or less. And that's what most universities measure themselves on, by the way, on a six-year graduation rate. But to me the success is what did you do after? Did you continue your education? Did you go into a research job? Did you decide you want to go become an academic professional, maybe in another university? Or did you take a job and start a family here in Columbus or in the state of Ohio? To me, those are the measures of success. And some of those are hard to even get that data. We can get some of it. So those are the things that we're going to be paying attention to. Just to give you an idea how much I invested in this personally in my career as being a higher administration academic at the Naval Academy, the graduation rate for African Americans, the year I started in 2014, was less than 80%. Now most universities would be very proud of that number, but white males at the same place were graduating at 88 or 89%. I saw two full classes go all the way through from freshman to senior year. Two full classes, a class of 2018, a class of 2019. We invested in mentors, we invested in tutors, and we found out what the barriers were for every different cohort to get through the first two years. Those last two classes graduated at over 90%. African Americans graduated at 92%, the same level as our athletes that were playing division one sports, which traditionally are the highest graduation rate of any cohort at university to include at Ohio State, by the way. So, my point of telling you that is in less than five years we've moved the needle. Now I could talk about where our needle is here at Ohio State, but I guarantee you that we're going to put our shoulder into this and we will move the needle here too.
Matt Barnes
You're really good at segues here because my next question was about athletics.
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
I haven't seen the notes.
Matt Barnes
I know you haven't, I even covered it up when you were at the table. I didn't want to give him any chances. No, we are in Columbus. We love Ohio State, we love the Buckeyes. NIL is obviously a big topic in college sports and it's obviously big here in Columbus. I mean, just with a few years ago, athletes couldn't get paid a cent. And now athletes right here at Ohio State are getting more than a million dollars in a year, which is wild to think of. But that's where we are in this world. And as we talk about transfer portal and everything else that comes with it. As someone who's, you know, seen college sports for a lot of years and now at one of the finest universities when it comes to athletics, where do you see this going? Are you concerned with how fast it's grown or, I mean we're talking about maybe the university's now even paying the players right from the university? Where is this going? Because it's gone pretty quickly in three years here.
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
So, Ross Bjork is here, our athletic director. Ross, just give a quick wave so everybody can say hi to you. Now they're all going to come to you. So, Ross has the task of replacing an icon, Gene Smith, who had been here for nearly 20 years, Ross just started on July 1 as our athletic director. And as many of you in this room know, one of the first actions I had as your university president was to hire Ross and talk about a task to come in. And I said this publicly, and I'll reiterate it, there is no replacing Gene Smith. I mean Gene Smith really created this amazing athletics program here to make it arguably one of the best in the country, if not the best in the country. They were the most profitable by revenue last year, number one in the country. But even saying all that and as Ross is getting his feet underneath him and we talk almost daily about these issues, athletics in college is changing so quickly and so dramatically something has changed while I'm talking. And we've got to be willing to understand that, get our hands dirty in it and lead. I have been in the NCAA side of academia since the day I started at the Naval Academy. I served on the NCAA board with Michael Drake in 2016, 2017. And I learned a lot and we thought things were changing then, that's when we were first talking about NIL, and now we're talking about shared revenue, and NIL, and what does it mean for transfer portal, and are athletes going to be employees? Is student athlete even going to be a phrase anymore? Are they just going to be farm system professionals? These are all the questions that are on the table. So, I would tell you as you know, kind of whittle it down and I take a step back and try to keep the big picture, the most important thing that we can do in college athletics is we make sure that we don't ever give up on the student athlete concept. Whether they're getting paid some share of the box. And I would tell you the house versus NCAA settlement is likely to happen. It hasn't happened yet. So we don't know what that's going to exactly look like. And by the way, we supported the settlement, not because I necessarily believe athletes should be paid like professionals, but I believe the alternative outcomes would be so much worse. So, this is a settlement. I do believe NIL is conceptually correct, but the way it was coming into this settlement is it was a wild, wild west. There were not a lot of rules with it. Arguably, we're very fortunate here because we have tremendous fans, we have tremendous donors and we are leading in a lot of these areas. But you know, when you look at somebody getting more than $2 million as a five-star quarterback, you know, is that right? When an offensive lineman might be getting a hundred thousand dollars in NIL, if getting anything, let alone talk about a lacrosse player or a pistol shooter or a synchronized swimmer. You know, there's a fairness level to all this and some of it's going to be market driven, but some of it at the end of the day, and I played sports in college myself. In fact, I probably graduated from the Naval Academy because I made the ice hockey team as a freshman. I might not have stayed if I hadn't made hockey team because it gave me a sense of purpose and a belonging. Now I was on scholarship because it's a federal institution, but what I got out of that was I got to play hockey with my teammates. And we didn't play anywhere near the level of any of our 36 division one sports, didn't matter to us. I thought I was lacing my skates up to win the Stanley Cup every time I got on the ice. And the leadership lessons I got by playing in a sport served me throughout my military career. It served me very well in flying in combat, making hard decisions. So, I know the value of sport, I know the value of being in it as a student athlete, and whether we're offering full range of scholarships for a football program or just a handful for some other programs, because we've already said publicly 36 D-1 sports. We lead the nation, lead the nation. There's only a couple other schools that are even in our ballpark, Stanford. And believe it or not, Navy, and Navy has a different formula. And through the last at least 20 years, we've been self-sustaining. Meaning that our division one sports do not run on taxpayer or any revenue from the university itself. What's that model going to look like when Ross has to figure out how to apportion $21 million starting in 2026? That's a rough number. Don't hold me to that. And by the way, that's going to go up to probably closer to 31 million within just a couple of years. And yeah, we're going to get more revenue from Big Ten media. Yes, you know, we're going to do well because our fans come and support. But I guarantee you, at the end of the day, if we hold onto the idea of student athletes, we'll still be able to recruit for all 36 of our sports even if we don't have scholarships. Believe it or not, if you were to look at our roughly 1000 student athletes that are in our 36 division one sports, over 30% of them get no scholarship money at all. And yet they still want to play. And we want them to compete at that highest level. So, I think that's first and foremost. And together with that, the most important thing that we can offer every student athlete when they come here, and I know Ross and all of his coaches do this, you get to come here and you get a degree because only a very small percent, maybe less than 5%, 4%, are even going to have a chance to go be a pro athlete. So, it's really important that we hang onto that. So, we're in the conversation, we're in the Big Ten, which is soon going to 18 teams, and we are a big voice in this conversation. And I can tell you this, between the chancellors and the presidents that have the voting rights within the Big Ten, we are often very unified on these things that I'm describing to you. So yeah, it's gonna be an exciting time, it's going to be a time of change and we're going to have to be ready to lead in it.
Matt Barnes
Well, it is a longstanding tradition of the Columbus Metropolitan Club to open it up to questions at our forum. So, if you do have a question for the president, you start making your way toward the microphone. You see Doug Buchanan standing there right now. Please remember that the questions need to be fairly short and they need to end with a question mark so that way we can get as many in as possible. If you're watching online, please write it there in the chat and Doug will curate those questions and deliver those to us. Before we get to those, I do have one more. As we've mentioned, you've been here for seven months and every president at Ohio State or any university loves to leave their mark on the university before they leave. What is your strategic vision for the university that you have for Ohio State, and then, you know, what do you want to leave behind as the legacy of Ted Carter?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
Well, I don't necessarily believe in legacies. So, this isn't really about Ted Carter. I mean we have an amazing team. I mean, when I look at our Board of Trustees, I will be very honest with everybody in this room. One of the reasons I came to Ohio State was the Board of Trustees. They are that good. You should be very proud of what our governors have done, nine-year tenure. They don't get anything for doing these jobs. They're professionals in their career. They're an amazing group of leaders who care passionately about the university. I've met with all 15 of our deans. I've been to all of our regional campuses. I've met with our leaders and the faculty, our researchers. You should just know that we have a remarkable team. And Ohio State is already a great university. You know, depending on which US News & World rankings, Forbes, national, you can measure it in lots of different ways. And by the way, don't overinvest in any of those rankings, but whatever you look at, we're always in the top, whether it be top 20, top 10, top 50. Many of our programs are top five nationally. So, the first thing you should know is we're already really, really good. But anybody coming into a large, very complex organization such as this, the goal should be two things. First, do no harm. And second, when you do leave, whether it be five years, 10 years, 20 years, whatever that number's going to be, make sure it's better, way better than when you found it. So, this summer, we are now, as I've been in the listen and learn mode for most of my first six, seven months, we're now getting into the action mode. We're going to articulate a strategy for the next 10 years of this university. So, when I go to my investiture, which is usually some sort of celebration for being invested into the position, I'm not going to be treating that as a celebration. I'm going to be treating that as a communication opportunity to talk about the next 10 years for The Ohio State University. And that vision is to go from good to the best. Now we won't be the best at everything and that's okay. We're going to have to, you know, pick things that we really want to invest in and they won't be any big surprises to you. But at the end, if we do what I think we can do along with some of the other big land grant R1 universities, we'll redefine what the future of higher ed in this country will mean. And that's the goal.
Matt Barnes
All right, Doug, we'll take it to you for questions.
Doug Buchanan
Matt, thank you very much. And President Carter, thank you very much for being with us today. Matt did go over the ground rules, but if you have a question, please do come up here to the microphone. Great questions at CMC do have those two things in common. They take about 30 seconds or less to ask. And yes, they do end in the famous question mark. First question, college enrollment has been dropping nationally with many smaller schools closing. The number of high school graduates is expected to drop 15% in the next four years according to one source. How do you see this trend impacting Ohio State?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
So we're very fortunate, we are the state's flagship and that should mean something. And in fact, if you look across the Big Ten, all 18 schools, every one of them going into the fall is going to have an enrollment increase this year. Every one of them, to include University of Nebraska Lincoln, which hasn't had a population increase there in about five years. So they were the only flagship in the Big Ten that was not enrolling larger numbers. All those things you just heard in the question are factually true. High school graduations, it isn't the rate that's going down, it's the population. A population that happened during the recession in 2007, 08 and 09 created a smaller population of students that are now graduating high school. It's regional. Some areas are seeing as much as a 15% drop, some are seen closer to three to 5%. The state of Ohio is going to see some drop. We are not necessarily being affected by that. Now I say that knowing that if we increase, particularly with our incoming freshman class from the state of Ohio, it's a little bit of a zero-sum game. I could actually, as you know, the state's flagship be hurting some other school like a Kent State or Toledo or an Akron. And that's not our goal either. I have four regional campuses, they have not seen enrollment growth in years. And yet our prediction right now, and I don't have hard numbers, but when our student body shows up this fall, we think that we may be the largest incoming freshman class at our Columbus campus combined with our regional campuses that we've had since 1870, largest ever. So that is completely counter to this trend. So again, you have to ask yourself the question, if you've been selective in who you let in and really selective from out of state, what's up with that? How can you possibly be growing when everybody else has stated some of these smaller schools are struggling? And I would tell you it's the value. It's the value, it's the cost proposition. Some of it I think is people watching how we handle a challenging time in the spring with protests and how we kept our campus safe. We were the only school in the Big Ten that had encampments attempted that did not allow an overnight encampment. The only school in the Big Ten. And I can tell you, yeah, I can tell you and we can unpack that a little bit more if you like, but I can tell you that every one of my colleagues, every single one, whether they testified in front of Congress or not, regretted letting encampments happen, not because of the value of freedom of speech. And you've heard me talk about this, I care deeply about freedom speech. It's one of the reasons I wore the uniform for 38 years. I raised my right hand, take an oath to the Constitution for the First Amendment. It's about campus safety. I can't protect students overnight. I don't have the safety to do that. I don't have the resources to do that. And we saw that play out in a few campuses. And again, this is a weird time in our nation. You do not want students to be vulnerable at a time like this. So that's part of it I think as well. So, I'm excited that we are suddenly in a position where a lot more people want to come to Ohio State. And I do worry about some of our other public universities, particularly the smaller privates who are charging north of $30,000 for tuition and have historically had good enrollment because of either the legacy or just, you know, population around the regional areas. Those are the schools that I think are going to have some challenges.
Mindy Wright
My name's Mindy Wright. I'm a member of the program committee, like Matt, you made a good segue into my question. I wanted to refer to the protests. What resources on campus and elsewhere have you been reaching out to make stronger plans for addressing divisiveness and encouraging civil discourse? A lot of people who are here, the Glenn College, the Center for the Ethics and Humanities, there's just lots of resources there that could kind of develop a positive approach to those. What have you done so far?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
Well, first of all, we did a lot in the spring. In fact, my first two weeks in the job I met with all the different student groups. You know, the Jewish student group, the Students for Justice in Palestine. I met with them and I wanted to hear their concerns and I wanted to make sure they got to see me and listen to me. And I did most of the listening, that wasn't always as fruitful as I thought it would be. We already had programs assigned that allowed for civil discourse, again, and we're going to invest more in that going into the fall. But I can't make students go to those courses and they will sometimes want to listen to whatever they want to listen to. I've said this publicly, I'll say this in front of our students. You have a voice and you have the right to hear your voice heard. And we'll continue to do that. But we're also going to be, again, very communicative as we have been about what our space rules are, what it means to have a voice, what it means to disagree, but maybe disagree better. And I think that's something that we as a nation are struggling with as well. So, I know we'll continue to do this. You know, we had over 30 protests just in the time that I've been here. April 25 was a bad night for our university. We had over 350 protesters, even though from the moment it started, we let them know that they couldn't camp out there overnight. We let them know that every hour until we finally got to the 10 o'clock hour and we said, okay, it's time to go home. And yet there were still some that refused to go home. And don't anybody tell you they were surprised by that because that's not true. And we used a measured response. We have invested in resources. We have one of the strongest best security forces of any Big Ten campus in the country. And yet as we've invested in that and we'll continue invest in that, I still don't have the resource to handle a protest group of over 300. Just as when we have a home football game and we're bringing in a hundred thousand fans, we don't take care of that with our security. We use other resources. So that's what we did on that night and on other nights. We have great coordination with the Columbus City Police, with the State Highway Patrol. And even on that given night, we were coordinating with the State Highway Patrol. But what a lot of people don't know is we asked the State Highway Patrol to come in and work with us. They didn't come in and take control, which you saw happen on other campuses when they brought in state police, they just came in. They came in with billy clubs, rubber bullets and pepper spray. There was none of that. We said, we are not going to go in and make this a violent thing. If we have to arrest somebody, we're going to do it with the absolute minimum amount of effort that we have to do. And yes, we did arrest some numbers. And you know, the following week we had two more protest groups, one over 600 and another prayer event that had over 300 and we had no arrests, zero. So, we can do this and we will continue to work on it. It's delicate because as much as I want everybody to have their voice and have freedom of speech, it doesn't mean that you get to incite violence. And I will not tolerate violence or people thinking that they're going to take over our campus and own space because our campus is more than an academic institution. It's more than a research institution. We also do clinical care, clinical care. Our med center is the number two best med center in the entire state of Ohio. It's one of the top in the country. We take care of over 20% of Ohioans' clinical care. I need them to have access to get to that. So, when I start giving up space to somebody that thinks that they want to own it, even though I tell 'em I can't protect you there, certainly not overnight, that could impact our ability to do our mission. So, this is not only safety, it's also mission focused.
Doug Buchanan
President Carter, thank you very much, Nancy Nanny watching on the live stream audience asks several states now allow students, faculty, and staff to carry firearms on their campuses. Does this make you concerned?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
In a word. Yes. How's that? You know, this is part of that challenge, right? We live in an open society where state laws often offer many times registered gun owners to carry a weapon. Now we don't allow that in any of our buildings. So, you know, there's that part of it. So, I want people to understand that we don't have people carrying weapons unless they are law enforcement inside of our academic facilities. But yeah, that's also part of the challenge for a group of students, faculty or staff that think they want to own the oval and spend the night. I can't protect them. And we've seen events recently. If somebody is willing to die to brandish a weapon, it's really hard to defend against that anywhere. I don't care what level we're talking about, I don't want to get into that space. So, we're going to do everything we can. We've got amazing security. I've been into our headquarters. We have over 5,000 cameras that look out over the entire university. There isn't a single door that we don't have visibility on. We have license plate readers, we have facial recognition, we have things that have made our campus incredibly secure and should help deter some of these bad actors. But again, it's still a big challenge.
Audience Questioner
Hi, President Carter. Thank you so much for being here. I am a graduate of The Ohio State University. O-H. One of the criticisms I think, particularly of the large universities, I'm sure that you've heard, is that they're like indoctrination camps in pushing certain communist, Marxists ideologies on the students, whether that comes from a department head, a particular professor, et cetera. I just wanted to know your thoughts on that as it pertains to Ohio State. Have you seen it there? Do you think it's a problem there? And if you did, what would you do about it?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
So, to answer your question, first of all, yes, I hear that, I get to sit on a couple of national boards. I am getting around the state of Ohio and I've been traveling, you know, many years in my leadership position. And yes, that is a common theme that you hear. I would tell you that it's misleading. You know, we don't tell any students at Ohio State, at the undergraduate, graduate or professional level what to think ever. We don't tell them what to think. That's not how it works. And in fact, we've got a number of students here, and I've met with many of them. They're really good students. If you think you're going to bring in some of these incredibly bright and brilliant young people in and tell them how to think or what to think, that's not going to work. What we want to teach them is a little bit more of how to think and how to hear different ideas and make up your own mind. So yes, that means you're going to get exposed to a broad range of ideas. And by the way, we do have safety checks on ourselves. We have 1-800 hotlines, we have teacher faculty reviews. If somebody is pushing an agenda and doing it in a manner that is overly prescriptive, we do have mechanisms to keep that in check. So, you should know that. I have not personally observed this type of behavior even in my time here. I have visited all 15 of our colleges. I've visited with many of our faculty and staff. Yeah, we've got people that represent all crosswalks of life. And that's wonderful. You want that, that's what a liberal education should be. And this is a critical time in a young person's life when somebody's coming here at 17 or 18 years old to get that undergraduate degree. This is the most emotional and social and academic growth that they will have maybe in their entire life. So, we want to cultivate that, not try to say, you know, you're coming here to get. No, we're not about that. So yeah, I'll push back on that comment. Now. it's always hard to prove a negative. So, you know, we've got to keep working on that narrative to make sure that we can articulate why we do our mission and why we do it so well.
Doug Buchanan
We have about five minutes left, so we'll try to get to two more questions.
Amanda Tonoli
I'm Amanda Tonoli with Columbus Business First. I know you said you're not quite in your action phase yet. And given what you call your bullish stance on internships, what plans do you have to engage with the business community to continue growing these public, private, you know, partnerships for research opportunities, internships, and future careers for your students?
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
Well, again, I'm only one person, but I do have a seat with Columbus Partnership. I am threaded throughout the business community here in Columbus and throughout the state. But so are our academic deans and so are a lot of our other academic and research leadership. So, I think it's important that we continue, and I think Ohio State's starting to do this, we've got to bring down our wall. It's kind of an imaginary thing. It would be easy to do to just make Ohio State kind of surrounded. It's its own little microcosm, its own little world. And whatever happens, happens, we've got to be more porous and we've got to be more blended in with the community. And when students come here, I want to make sure they know what the opportunities are in the business community right here, not only in Columbus, but in the state of Ohio. So again, internships. However, we can continue to support those. Whatever we can do with the state from a funding level, again, for those small and medium sized businesses, I think that's really important.
Doug Buchanan
About two minutes left for a final question.
Kenny McDonald
Good afternoon. Kenny McDonald with the Columbus Partnership. Could you maybe talk a little bit about your experience here in Ohio and maybe talk about the potential for Ohio and Ohio State's role in growing the economy and helping Ohio, all of Ohio reach its economic potential, its opportunity potential.
Walter “Ted” Carter Jr.
So again, thanks Kenny, by the way, Kenny leads the partnership. So, he's a great leader for that. You know, when one of the things that attracted me to want to come here was to see what's happening in central Ohio and the state of Ohio. You know, not many places in the country are growing, depending which ranking you read. Columbus is now growing maybe faster than just about any other city, right alongside Austin. Growth doesn't always mean great, so you know, it's what are you going to do with it? There's a reason Intel wants to come here and develop their programs. You know, they haven't got hardly any money from this Chips Act money, and yet they're still bringing $20 billion to build their plant, and eventually there's going to be growth of maybe four or five times more than that coming here. Amgen wants to move up their pharmaceutical programs here. There's a reason these companies want to come here. They see great potential here, and part of that is just the culture of the population that's here. My experience just in my short time here is Columbus is a can-do city. People here are very upbeat, they're positive, they know how to get things done, they're welcoming. People look you in the eye and say, welcome. You have a lot of people here that live, work and play here that didn't originally come from here. Yes, there's a lot that have, and I can tell you, having lived in all four corners of the country, whether you're in uniform or not, a lot of times people will know right away, hey, as soon as you open your mouth, you're not from here, are you? And it's a nice way to say that you really might not belong here. I have not experienced that here. And that's one of the really secret weapons that I think Columbus has. So, there's everything to be really on the positive side here. The city is growing. The airport's just going to continue to get better. I know there's a lot of work being done on public transportation, housing, all the things that go to making a great city infrastructure work. And oh, by the way, we're going to be really good in football this year.
Matt Barnes
All right. We will hold you to that one, especially come some big game in November. Ross, you too. We'll hold you to that one as well. We'll turn it over now to Doug Buchanan, the other Doug Buchanan, to close us out.
Doug Buchanan
All right, thank you very much and thank you to President Carter. We also want to thank the Joseph and Carol Newcomb Alutto Legacy and Civic Engagement Fund for supporting today's forum. And to today's sponsors, The Ohio State University, Huntington, the United Way of Central Ohio, Columbus Business First, Moody Nolan and NBC 4. Thank you to the Vue Columbus for hosting us today. The Center for Human Kindness at the Columbus Foundation and The Columbus Dispatch for supporting today's live stream. Have a round of applause for all of those people. Also, a very special appreciation to today's speakers: Ted Carter and our host Matt Barnes. Matt, safe travels to Paris for the Olympics. We look forward to seeing your coverage. And for everybody else, please make plans to join us next week. We'll be back at the Ellis in Italian Village for our July 24 forum, Ohio Mayors Address Challenges Together, featuring the mayors of Ohio's three largest cities together on one panel. Thank you, everyone. We couldn't do it without you. Have a great day.