"I'm not really sure what to make of this article, as I'm currently a 4th-year student at the main subject, Ohio State. Perhaps as an undergraduate, I am divorc

"I'm not really sure what to make of this article, as I'm currently a 4th-year student at the main subject, Ohio State. Perhaps as an undergraduate, I am divorced from the specific administrative and funding roadblocks plaguing research faculty, but in my day-to-day activities I see little in the way of a hurting OSU." If you were at my university, which is not so different from Ohio State, you would never meet me - save, perhaps, at the fast food places in the student union. I'm research faculty, and not only do I not teach undergrads, there isn't even an undergraduate program in my area - it's strictly graduate students. And forgive me for saying this, but most undergraduates I do encounter are amazingly ignorant of the scope of the university, what it is their professors do, etc. "The university this past year revamped the student living situation on north campus [1][2]. The university is expanding at a feverish pace because students want to come here; we are gaining recognition beyond being simply a football school and aspiring high school students are not considering OSU to be nearly the backup school it once was. Sure, it isn't as flashy to tell your relatives you go to OSU as opposed to MIT or Harvard, but it's not the disappointment most used to consider it to be." Students are one of the few ways a state university now has to reliably bring in money, and as such, they have to compete for them. You are, in essence, the subject of a marketing campaign. "This article exposes much that I've been ignorant to as an undergrad, but it feels to blow some issues out of proportion. Sure, we don't nearly have as much funding as private universities, but that's par for the course for a public university which offers cheap tuition for local students, and is generous with its scholarships." One of the reasons tuition is rising, and the schools that have low tuition are under pressure, is that state and federal funding has dried up, so student tuition and fees are the only lever they have left. Many of these universities, even if they have managed to hold the line so far, are at the breaking point. "Maybe I'm just a bit too thick to see the apocalypse the author is foretelling." Universities have benefits beyond "Did we teach undergrads"? It's those benefits that are under strain.