OSU mulls monetary moves

By Encarnacion Pyle

The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

Ohio State University has been considering monumental moves — such as privatizing parking, possibly selling Don Scott airport and issuing up to $500 million in 100-year, interest-only bonds to finance building projects.

But what’s the school’s motivation?

President E. Gordon Gee says the school needs to radically change the way it pays for its core mission — teaching students and doing research — because state and federal support will continue to shrink.

“Today, more than ever, the momentum we seek as a university must be our own making,” Gee said. “And it begins when we see past the financial problems directly in front of us and look forward to new solutions, a new model for sustaining a public university.”

To do that, Ohio State needs to examine every university service and asset to determine whether it advances the school’s essential mission, he said.

“We will be asking questions about many things heretofore considered sacrosanct. Do we need an airport? Do we need a golf course? Do we need so many ancillary properties, farms and fields, around the state?”

In flush times, the university could afford to act like a self-contained city and run all these ancillary services itself, Gee said, but the time for change has come. The school will consider privatizing only services that aren’t mission-critical, he said.

Ohio State’s support from the state as a share of the school’s $5 billion budget has dropped to 7 percent this fiscal year from 25 percent in 1990.