Oracle Inc In OKC?

[Spartan]

What in the world does that mean, Spartan? Are you saying that the city has made choices to not attract those kinds of businesses and could if they wanted to? I understand Oklahoma City's shortcomings in those areas as well as you do but to say the city making choices which are contrary to attracting businesses is not an accurate statement at all.

Oklahoma City has a state legislature delegation that as you can see, clearly calls the shots at the state level. It's these guys like Glenn Coffee, etc., who set the agenda. The Chamber and City has luncheons and other events and does a great job of coordinating the legislative goals with these guys. OKC prefers to use up all of its state favors on cash incentives for economic development and throwing money at the Big Dig. Don't even pretend for a second that education is given a priority here.

Oklahoma ranks 49th in per pupil education spending.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n53801648/

Honestly, what would someone have to be smoking to want to hire hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in a state that ranks 49th in education? You should at the very least stay in the top 30.

[Larry OKC]

That is skewing it a bit, we don't rank 49th in Education, just in the amount per pupil spent (IIRC, we do rank about average, somewhere in the top 30 range). More money spent doesn't always equal better results. There are states that spend a lot more that have worse schools and some that spend on the lower end and have better schools. By the way, Oklahoma ranks down there when it comes to teacher pay too. But Oklahoma ranks near the bottom when it comes to salaries in nearly every field, at every level. They say that is justified by Oklahoma's lower cost of living (remember the transferring Sonics employees got a pay cut, just for that reason).

Notable exception is the Legislature that reportedly is the highest paid part-time Leg in the country, and until just recently, was in the top 10 pay for full- and part-time Legs.

Also, according to the Census Bureau, there has been a "missing" $1,000 to $1,200 PER STUDENT difference in what Oklahoma collects in revenue for education and what it spends. That missing $1,000+ would go along way towards raising out per pupil spending stats. The amount unaccounted for comes to more than the yearly half a billion that then Sen Henry said the Education Lottery was going to raise per year.

[cjohnson.405]

The issue with knowledge base is only in part about secondary education. The key is a lack of Tier 1 universities and perception of poor academic rigor. The state's flagship universities (OU/OSU) are underserving our market and making it tough to compete against Texas/California, etc.

And getting out in front of the argument, you can pull out individual portions of the schools that do well but ranking 111 & 132 respectively (US News & World Report) amongst US universities is not going to cut it. Focusing on sports while underserving education is doing Oklahoma more harm than good.

[Swake2]

Oracle is already in the process of slowly and quitely relocating everything to Salt Lake City.

Where do you get this stuff? Oracle is building a data center in SLC, that’s all. They aren’t moving the company to SLC, that’s just plain stupid. You want to know how I know? Because Oracle lists zero available jobs in Utah, zero. Not one in the whole state. But they have 787 open positions in Redwood City alone.

[Spartan]

I hear Google is "slowly and quitely [sic] relocating everything" to Pryor, Oklahoma.

[semisimple]

The issue with knowledge base is only in part about secondary education. The key is a lack of Tier 1 universities and perception of poor academic rigor. The state's flagship universities (OU/OSU) are underserving our market and making it tough to compete against Texas/California, etc.

And getting out in front of the argument, you can pull out individual portions of the schools that do well but ranking 111 & 132 respectively (US News & World Report) amongst US universities is not going to cut it. Focusing on sports while underserving education is doing Oklahoma more harm than good.

This. To take it a step further, the state's universities come up way short where it matters for tech jobs: science and engineering. For example, neither OU or OSU is ranked among the top 100 engineering or computer science schools by US News.

Don't bother comparing to Silicon Valley, which will always be in a league of its own--just look down here in Austin, probably the top mid-sized tech city, where football rival UT is ranked 8th for both engineering and computer science (alongside schools like Princeton and Caltech). Peer school A&M is just two hours away. It's not just that a university presence like that churns out lots of quality talent, but it also serves as a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity and is part of the reason Austin consistently ranks among the top cities in the country for VC investment. You can be sure that OKC will never emulate that level of success as long as OU and OSU sit so low on the totem pole.

[HOT ROD]

Spartan, it's not ego - its actually common courtesy. But if you chose to seek out my posts and respond with your negative and arrogant tone - be prepared to receive the same. You consistently seek out and partially read and statements against ME when it is clear you failed to read what I write.

You're clearly not the most knowledgeable on this board despite your numerous posts, and I have seen and participated inother cities that you admire develop into what you think is not possible in OKC. In fact, I have participated on the OKC development boards LONG BEFORE you were even out of high school. I think Calgary has gotten too much to your head, perhaps the Tulsa board would be best suited for you?

And I live in Seattle (well, China now), so you don't need to pretend to educate me on how a top tier city is run. ...

[ljbab728]

Oklahoma City has a state legislature delegation that as you can see, clearly calls the shots at the state level. It's these guys like Glenn Coffee, etc., who set the agenda. The Chamber and City has luncheons and other events and does a great job of coordinating the legislative goals with these guys. OKC prefers to use up all of its state favors on cash incentives for economic development and throwing money at the Big Dig. Don't even pretend for a second that education is given a priority here.

Oklahoma ranks 49th in per pupil education spending.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n53801648/

Honestly, what would someone have to be smoking to want to hire hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in a state that ranks 49th in education? You should at the very least stay in the top 30.

I am far from an apologist for the Oklahoma state legislature which I disagree with frequently but since you're an expert what would you suggest they do in an era of major budget shortfalls to increase funding for education? Do you think if the OKC area legislators push for that it will make money magically appear? Your contention that OKC officials aren't interested in or are maybe indifferent to education is laughable. I suspect they understand potential benefits of a better educational system as much as you do.

[cjohnson.405]

I am far from an apologist for the Oklahoma state legislature which I disagree with frequently but since you're an expert what would you suggest they do in an era of major budget shortfalls to increase funding for education? Do you think if the OKC area legislators push for that it will make money magically appear? Your contention that OKC officials aren't interested in or are maybe indifferent to education is laughable. I suspect they understand potential benefits of a better educational system as much as you do.

A ranking is a comparison with other entities. If Oklahoma ranks 49th in spending, it shows that the priority the legislature places on education falls below that of almost every other state. Obviously, the legislature (over decades) has not placed an emphasis on secondary or higher education and backed it up with real spending.

The lack of perceived education in the state means that we are fairly limited in the types of industries that would be attracted to be here. Our industry base is not very diverse.

The legislature may understand the benefit of education but they are not supporting it with funding and that's the real test of their priorities. Those are choices that the legislature has made over time.

[ljbab728]

Those are choices that the legislature has made over time.

As I said before, I frequently disagree with the state legislature and they have, of course, made bad decisions in the past concerning many matters. That doesn't change the fact of the current budget shortfall which limits what can be done to improve the situation in the current economic climate. The test will be what happens when the economy improves and funding can be increased.

[Larry OKC]

A ranking is a comparison with other entities. If Oklahoma ranks 49th in spending, it shows that the priority the legislature places on education falls below that of almost every other state. Obviously, the legislature (over decades) has not placed an emphasis on secondary or higher education and backed it up with real spending.

The lack of perceived education in the state means that we are fairly limited in the types of industries that would be attracted to be here. Our industry base is not very diverse.

The legislature may understand the benefit of education but they are not supporting it with funding and that's the real test of their priorities. Those are choices that the legislature has made over time.

Maybe a comparison of state spending on education by percentage of state budget? Oklahoma has for ages spent about half of the state budget for education, so any claim that education is not a state priority rings a bit hollow.