The Lantern sat down with university President Ted Carter Jr. Nov. 5 to discuss his upcoming investiture address, minority enrollment rates and affordability challenges. Credit: Emma Wozniak | Editor in Chief
Tuesday, The Lantern sat down with Ohio State President Ted Carter Jr. to discuss Friday’s investiture, the university’s record-high minority enrollment rate and issues regarding affordability at Ohio State.
Friday’s investiture
In a Jan. 24 sit-down with The Lantern, Carter said he intended to have a “three-to-five-to-10-” year plan ready by his 100th day in office.
Marking Carter’s 312th day in office, Friday’s investiture — a formal event at which he will publicly share his vision for Ohio State’s future — offers Carter an opportunity to shed some light on what he wants to accomplish in his presidency.
And yet, Carter said his address will not include any “bold, hard statements” about his intended initiatives for the university.
Carter spent the early stages of his presidency in “listen-and-learn mode,” per prior Lantern reporting. This involved conducting workshop sessions with roughly 1,000 people from different Ohio State constituencies and organizations, who shared opinions on what Carter’s administration should prioritize going forward.
Following these meetings, Carter received direct feedback from participating individuals via a Qualtrics survey, university spokesperson Ben Johnson said.
These responses helped inform a framework that will be outlined Friday; looking ahead, Carter said this foundation will be rebranded into a concrete 10-year plan by May and officially enacted July 1.
Though Carter said he cannot share specific details about Friday’s speech at the time of publication, he did emphasize the decade-long plan “will not be static.”
“The plan is aspirational, but it also has to be achievable,” Carter said.
Record-high minority student enrollment rates
According to Ohio State’s Autumn 2024 Enrollment Report, minority student enrollment among the first-year class increased from just over 17,800 in 2023 to nearly 19,000 this year, with specific record-high growth among both African American and Hispanic student populations.
In the context of the two June 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decisions that effectively struck down affirmative action in college admissions, The Lantern inquired how Ohio State was able to maintain similar levels of minority enrollment — and of first-generation student enrollment — while still abiding by the Supreme Court’s rulings.
In essence, Carter said the university doesn’t know.
“We’ve got to do a little more homework on why that happened because if you don’t understand why it happened, you’re not likely to repeat it,” Carter said.
To work toward maintaining and improving upon these rates, Carter said the university will not only consider affordability, but also diverse representation, so potential students from around the world can “see themselves here.”
“Success breeds success,” Carter said. “When you’ve created an environment here, a diverse population — where everybody’s welcome and everybody can be successful when they come and visit this campus — when they’ve got other choices, the choice becomes a little bit more leaning towards, ‘I want to go to Ohio State.’”
Carter said since there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all solution” with regard to minority enrollment rates, the university will conduct “more analytics” on the report’s findings.
Affordability
At a community forum in July, Carter said 58% of Ohio State students leave the university without student loan debt. As Carter has stated in previous conversations with The Lantern, though he thinks this is “a great position” to be in, he wants to improve upon it.
Today, Carter said former President Kristina M. Johnson’s Scarlet & Gray Advantage program was “a wonderful concept,” but “difficult to mechanize” at a large scale. The president didn’t share a debt-related plan of his own.
“The debt problem is not going away, and if we’re not creating programs that are going to help students with debt, I don’t know where else that relief is going to come,” Carter said.
In the meantime, Carter said the university will continue to build upon existing mechanisms to combat high tuition costs, such as freezing tuition each year and reducing fees.
“I do think at many campuses across the country, enrollment is down because of the cost,” Carter said. “And obviously, we’re not necessarily one of those programs, but I don’t want us to become one either. And I want families to say, ‘Wow, Ohio State really cares about the cost.’”
