Boathouse Row

[Pete]

I was working out on the orgs yesterday and saw some poles up east of the boathouse, have they already started the zipline?

Yes.

[LandRunOkie]

I would agree obviously that OU and OSU are a decent value. I would argue community colleges are a much better value. When you include housing, OU is about $18000/year. A community college class is about $75/hour. So a community college student can get 60 hours of fully transferable credit for $4500 for what OSU and OU charge ~$36,000 for. There needs to be a much greater awareness from high school seniors of what community colleges can do for you, as the larger institutions become more and more interested in spectacle. Its sad to see the levels of student loan debt skyrocketing as kids blindly enroll in Football U.

[OKCisOK4me]

Do I need to start a thread about in-state tuition at Tulsa, oSu and OU? Seriously LandRun... I come here for Boathouse Row news, not to read your constant gripes on the cost of quality education.

[Plutonic Panda]

Yes.

Is it permanent?

[Bellaboo]

I would agree obviously that OU and OSU are a decent value. I would argue community colleges are a much better value. When you include housing, OU is about $18000/year. A community college class is about $75/hour. So a community college student can get 60 hours of fully transferable credit for $4500 for what OSU and OU charge ~$36,000 for. There needs to be a much greater awareness from high school seniors of what community colleges can do for you, as the larger institutions become more and more interested in spectacle. Its sad to see the levels of student loan debt skyrocketing as kids blindly enroll in Football U.

Make the smart choice then and go to a Community College for 2 years. Or are you wanting someone to just give you something ?

[Plutonic Panda]

Can we please just get back to topic?

[OKCisOK4me]

Can we please just get back to topic?

I'm right with ya! Sorry to those of you that clicked on my post to see important information regarding b o a t h o u s e r o w

[bluedogok]

That is exactly what I'm looking for. 9.2 million over 8 years, or about 1.2 million per year. Meanwhile they make $10-30 million/year profit! What reason other than corruption and/or bureaucratic inefficiency would allow the AD to be separate from the university? If the university subsumed the AD, it would capture an order of magnitude more money from ITS athletic programs.

Most universities that have tight control on the AD have an AD that cost the school money. It isn't like they (schools like OU, UT, OSU) aren't doing things in the AD that don't have the oversight of the school President or the Board of Regents. On field success typically leads to donations in the academic side as well as the athletic side, someone that I know in the administration at UT has said they mirror each other. As the recognition for athletic achievement gets higher so do the the academic donations, people with money like their winners and most schools outside of the Ivy League (and similar) need another driver of recognition other than academics.

This has more to do with university presidents spending money like there is no tomorrow. Every college has seen a building boom over recent years and have had to pass the costs on down. Also doesnt help with states diminishing education funding during the great recession.

The "easy money" mentality has driven the meteoric rise in tuition because the decision makers at schools always used Pell grants and student loans as why they could have such dramatic increases. I know that a few years ago the tuition at UT was going up every semester at a rate much higher than what my entire tuition and fees were at OU in the early 80's. That easy money also has fueled the for-profit private schools building schools in every major metro area.

[ljbab728]

I'm not pissed about my tuition. Its angering to me that alumni will bend over backwards to help the football team win, but are disinterested in keeping college affordable for in state students and improving the quality of education. The reason this is an appropriate place for those concerns is because alumni money would be better spent elsewhere than "boathouse row".

Alumni also seem to be disinterested in engaging the crucial question "How does the university benefit from having a seperate, financially independent AD?"

You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. As someone who is involved in both the OU Club of OKC and the OU Alumni Association, the main thrust of involvement is scholarships and I don't mean athletic. Interest in athletics is a major way to accomplish that. Come back to us when you know what you're talking about.

[LandRunOkie]

There seems to be a lot of confusion.

Make the smart choice then and go to a Community College for 2 years. Or are you wanting someone to just give you something ?

Community colleges are a great opportunity, so I didn't take your zinger as an insult. My point is that OCCC can give a student 60 hours of credit for $4500, OU shouldn't be charging $20,000. The business-ification of public universities has gone way too far imo.

Most universities that have tight control on the AD have an AD that cost the school money.

But that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It's just a money leak for these universities. I'm pointing it out for OU because that's the school I care about.

You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. As someone who is involved in both the OU Club of OKC and the OU Alumni Association, the main thrust of involvement is scholarships and I don't mean athletic. Interest in athletics is a major way to accomplish that. Come back to us when you know what you're talking about.

State funding has been cut to OU by $125 million over the last three years. No matter how active you are with that, $125 mil is a lot of money. Healthcare costs are rising dramatically (higher university costs). Wages are stagnant (for work-study students). Students used to be able to work their way through school without debt but that goal is slipping away without massive private donations.

[hoya]

Grind that axe, son. Grind that axe.

[bluedogok]

State funding has been cut to OU by $125 million over the last three years. No matter how active you are with that, $125 mil is a lot of money. Healthcare costs are rising dramatically (higher university costs). Wages are stagnant (for work-study students). Students used to be able to work their way through school without debt but that goal is slipping away without massive private donations.

State funding is being cut everywhere, not just Oklahoma, the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems agreed to state funding cuts for release from legislative oversight of tuition rates. Money flowing into the athletic departments is not going to automatically be diverted to academics if athletics were to go away, in most cases that is money the schools were never going to get for academics.

When I was in school my parents paid for my housing and I paid tuition/books. The difference is my tuition/fees for my freshman year at OU in 1982-83 was $350, books were another $200. Now a single book costs that much and tuition jumps every semester by more than my tuition amount, in fact fees at UT now are more than my entire tuition/fees were. Again, the easy credit mentality of school finance has led to the extremely quick rise in tuition and fees increases in recent years, there is no logical reason why in-state tuition at UT should be $5-6,000 a semester when it was around $600 30 years ago. I don't think inflation has gone up at that rate.

[OKCisOK4me]

Jesus Christ...take this subject to another thread!!!

[catcherinthewry]

jesus christ...take this subject to another thread!!!

^this!

[PhiAlpha]

Stop feeding the trolls!!!

[Pete]

Any more posts on athletic departments or general college funding or anything off way off topic will be deleted.

Back to topic, please.

[Plutonic Panda]

THANK YOU!!!! lol

[PhiAlpha]

THANK YOU!!!! lol

I'll second that.

[bombermwc]

So anyway....blah blah landrun.........back to some boathouses.....

One thing i've always found a bit odd, is that the grandstands are on the south side of the river. It seems like they should also be on the north side, with everything else. I mean, if you put it on the south, you can keep things more compact i guess where they are on a shorter stretch of the river, but you lose some of the walkability from the boathouses to the stands.

[Bellaboo]

So anyway....blah blah landrun.........back to some boathouses.....

One thing i've always found a bit odd, is that the grandstands are on the south side of the river. It seems like they should also be on the north side, with everything else. I mean, if you put it on the south, you can keep things more compact i guess where they are on a shorter stretch of the river, but you lose some of the walkability from the boathouses to the stands.

The grandstand is linded up with the finish line though, if it was on the north side, it'd be in the way of the finish line tower.

[OKCisOK4me]

So my guess is that to get to the grandstands from the primary parking area people will have to walk across the Lincoln bridge and I assume the bridge will be closed off for all events. Also, what about south side access? They need to take that old industrial lot on the west side of Lincoln (south side of the river) and turn it into parking for more access to the grandstands and access for the trails system. Currently, there is parking there for boat trailers and that is it. The lot they need to build would be to the south of that.

[Snowman]

They already close the bridge off for events large enough that the grandstands would be useful, so that will probably continue. I think there already is a sidewalk with a concrete barricade between it an the road though if it was not closed. In the conceptual plans there are towers to connect to the bridge with stares and elevators to have access to the pedestrian trails on both sides, I do not think one for either bank is funded at this point unless it is a line item in the stadium, the one on the south bank would be more useful since it saves 2000 ft of walking verses the north side could save 200 ft of walking.

[OKCisOK4me]

Yeah, I knew that they closed the bridge off already, but you still need to have more parking on the south side of the bridge cause otherwise, people from SE 15th and on south are going to have to bob and weave all over the roads to the north side of the facility just to get decent parking. It'd just be nice for them to have more parking available on the south side of the river.

Do you have these conceptual renderings available of the stairs and elevators that are to be built on the side (I suppose east side) of Lincoln bridge? I just don't remember that detail and would love to see it. Thanks!

[Snowman]

I do not think this is the latest version, just the only one I was finding on the site (the latest one is probably in the Riverfront Redevelopment Authority public records), still the looks is similar. With the elevator shaft in a triangle-ish building and the stairs next to in either some sort of fenced, metal mesh or windows.

[OKCisOK4me]

Those river lights look like Oral-B tooth brushes in those renderings lol. Thanks!