we are NOT a community college anymore
We are building one of the best public Universities in the United States of America!
We already have multiple degree programs that rank very favorably
We weren’t a community college when I attended either. Not sure where that came from.
And other than the first strange statement, you didn’t say anything different than what I did.
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WTH? UH hadn’t been a communiity college since 1934? It was private for many years until the 1960’s.
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yet…there are people on here who want us to stay that way!
Primary commuter school
resists Khator’s attempts at developing a traditional campus
Free tuition
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Yeah, and even more nonsensical in response to my post.
Ah, yeah, only crappy commuter schools eliminate tuition for low-income students. Who wants to be more like Massachusetts Tech, or whatever it’s called? Sounds like a community college to me. We should try to be more like LSU and Arkansas, those are real flagship schools.
Great many of Universities ( those not started under the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 and privates), today like UH, UCLA and a few more started out as community colleges. Boise State started as such it’s climbing the ladder to becoming a good university in its own right
Hey guys, your UH degrees are equivalent to a commuter community college certificate!
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You’re too much…man! 
I assume you’re being sarcastic.
MIT costs $60,000 a year, to attend, for the vast majority of students
If they offer a few “free tuition” to a handful of gifted and talented low incone students, i have no problem with that mix.
The difference is MIT…and Harvard …and Princeton…and even a UCLA or Texas (as a Public School model) have already cemented their reputation as top flight Academic Institutions.
That’s the level I want the University of Houston to get to but you’re operating in the exact opposite if you come an open enrollment “free college” that caters to majority commuter/transfer students BEFORE you’ve established that reputation.
Again, there are MANY PEOPLE here who are in opposition of the vision of Dr. Kkator.
Do you guys even listen to her Annual State of the University addresses?
If you’re hating on me…you’re hating on her vision and her methodical 2 decade plus amount of work to shed our commuter school image (which it was when i attended in the later 90s/early 00s).
And.NO…i didn’t rule out UH because it wasn’t a Traditional school. Their academics, in my major, was top 3 in the state!
But i entered AS A LEGACY TRADITIONAL student and vowed to do whatever i could to get more to attend.
It’s your disdain for who we were and who we are. You’re going to get a negative reaction when you do that. That’s the school we attended and support today.
You can be excited about the future without doing that.
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Dude!
Do you even listen to the words that come out of Dr. Khator’s mouth or do you just project your own opinions?
I come from a UH family…my Dad attended in the mid 1970s and he told me what the campus was like by then.
He had lifelong friends from UH. Some were more “traditional” and some were more commuter type students, like my father.
I attended in two stints, 97-2002 & 10-13 and saw both types also.
The first stint was BEFORE Renu Khator ever arrived. She set foot on campus in 2008 but if you actually LISTEN to what she is saying, coupled with the efforts and investments…they are along these lines:
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We desperately needed more on-campus housing even going as far as attempting to implement a Freshman residency mandate to radically change who we are and who we accept
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acquire Tier 1 Reasearch status
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she rejected UTs advancements of building a Houston campus
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our 5 year graduation rates are horrid, we need to drastically reverse these trends even if it means we need to changethe type of student we accept
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Athletics is the “Front Door” of the University. We will make massive improvements in facilities. We will use Academic/ Endowment funds to “subsidize” Athletics
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we must do whatever it takes to earnnsn invitation into a Power Conference, regardless if the economics make sense or if we realize we are cimmitting to more expenses which may require further subsidies.
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continue to develop campus to be a more Traditional Campus. The Centennial Project is yet another example of her Traditional Campus visions
I also found it interesting that her 2023 State of the University presentations highlighted students that selected UH from other states. I also am aligned with her vision on that- we need to build our OUT OF STATE reputation.
I’d also go a step further and explore city/Univetsity/state incentives to develop the third ward to support focused development in the 3rd Ward to support a major 50k student public University.
Yes! It’s been done before.
Seems like a lot of people here are NOT aligned with Dr. Khator’s vision, nor do they eveb keep up with her agenda enough to know if they support her…or not.
Everything I’m saying is 100% aligned with her vision for transforming our University from what it was the day she set foot on campus but we still have a LONG WAY to go before we are in the class of a UCLA or UT Austin which are our two biggest models.
Ok, that had nothing to do with what I said.
Of course it didn’t…you are projecting without understanding what our own leader said…
She’s been consistent, since DAY ONE in saying:
Hey! We need to improve in A LOT of categories if we are going to be in the class of a UCLA or UT- Austin
Projecting? Some irony there. And people respond to what people say in a dialogue. You can choose not to. That’s fine.
I understand your point. But you don’t have to crap on the past or present to be excited about the future. That’s all I’m saying and has nothing to do with Renu’s vision. She doesn’t do what you do.
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To be clear, Dr. Khator has never said anything about being in the class of UCLA or UT. In fact, she’s been pretty unambiguous about what her academic goals are: Top 50 public in the USNWR rankings, with a stretch goal of AAU membership. There is a school that she previously worked at that recently achieved those metrics – USF. That’s almost certainly the same model we’re going to be following. Other schools on the better side of the Top 50 Public line include Temple, FIU, Rutgers-Camden, NJIT, and UIC. UT-Dallas is also close to that line, although on the wrong side of it.
I think there’s some delusion here about how wide the gap is between those schools and the UCLAs of the world. Our publicly-stated target is top-50; UCLA is the number one public school in the country, per USNWR. UT is also top-10. The academic experience at Auburn or USF isn’t horribly different from UH; the academic experience at UCLA, by contrast, might as well be on a different planet. USF/NJIT/UIC is achievable; UCLA/UT is, bluntly, not.
Yes…she’s trying to get us from where we were when she arrived… which was a lowly academically rated regional school that was majority commuter students with virtually no school tradition or connectivity with its alums. Our Athletics had even just woken up from a long nap
She set the first goal at R-1 status…CHECK
She set the next goal at top 50 public which IS Achievable.
Once we get that, id set the next goals at AAU status which MEANS we’d have to be 100% ALL IN on being a Traditional university and obtaining Traditional students which includes being better at creating a connection that produces Legacy Students.
And I DO believe we can be a top 10 -20 public University IN the United States of America…we are already ahead of all of thr SEC publics not named Florida, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee or Texas A&M.
Not going to happen overnight, but we DEFINITELY can build ourselves into the class of UT and UCLA.
Let me parallel that with the city of Houston. 100 years ago…when the city was a sleepy swamp…we’d laugh at Houston being an Alpha ranked World City.
Well, today, Houston is regarded as a Alpha - per the GAWC
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Why? USF isn’t full of legacies. Why are you so insistent that we’re not following the blueprint that was followed by the AAU, top-50 school that we hired our president from?
Not within your lifetime or mine. There are exactly two paths to getting there: either dramatically increasing our political power to the extent that the Texas Legislature is comfortable with UH passing A&M or hoping that the kind of guy that makes Tilman look poor decides that they want UH to be their legacy. Neither of those is within our control.
(Also, last I checked, Auburn was an SEC public not named Florida, Georgia, Texas, or Texas A&M.)
USF is the ONLY non traditional University on that AAU list and they only recently got in.
It’s that saying…act like you belong in the group you WANT to be a part of.
And i didn’t list Auburn, Alabama, LSU, Mississippi, Arkansas etc…because i feel UH is already BETTER than those public Universities.
They are NOT our models…UCLA, UT, PITT, Washington & Ohio State are OUR urban public models…and for slightly different reasons
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Have you flat out asked Khator what her plan is for UH? Then it’s just your BS interpretation you are claiming as fact.
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