Five ways to make Tulsa special.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

A major college campus doesn't necessarily equate to thriving city.

For example, the list below is the largest cities without a single major university campus (in this case not larger than 15,000):

Phoenix - ASU-Downtown (6,595)
Dallas - SMU (10,938)
Fort Worth - TCU (9,142)
Nashville - Vanderbilt (12,714)
Oklahoma City - OSU-OKC (5,824)
Colorado Springs - UCCS (9,745)
Omaha - Nebraska-Omaha (14,665)
Tulsa - Tulsa (4,185)
Oakland - Holy Names (1,164)
Wichita - Wichita State (14,577)
New Orleans - New Orleans (11,276)

Look at OKC even. I would say by any measure they are doing pretty well as a city and the biggest they have is OSU-OKC. Tulsa by far has the most prestigious school of the two major cities. Dallas, Fort Worth, Nashville. It just seems that we are making the mistake of thinking a major university will bring all this goodness. I just don't think that it will. Unless of course you are considering putting a Cal-Berkely caliber school here, which obviously is not what we are talking about.

ASU Downtown Phoenix is one of four campuses in the Phoenix metro area aside from the main campus in Tempe. ASU needed to expand beyond the limits of the Tempe Campus so they purchased vacant buildings in downtown, as well as vacant land where a mall used to be in Scottsdale, unused facilities at Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport (formerly Williams Air Force Base) and in northwest Phoenix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_State_University_Downtown_Phoenix_campus

https://campus.asu.edu/

Cal State has 23 campuses across California and has ~430,000 students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_University

https://www.calstate.edu/datastore/campus_map.shtml

UCAL has 10 campuses.

https://secure.californiacolleges.edu/College_Planning/Explore_Schools/Higher_Education_Options/UC_Map.aspx

[Conan71]

A major college campus doesn't necessarily equate to thriving city.

For example, the list below is the largest cities without a single major university campus (in this case not larger than 15,000):

Phoenix - ASU-Downtown (6,595)
Dallas - SMU (10,938)
Fort Worth - TCU (9,142)
Nashville - Vanderbilt (12,714)
Oklahoma City - OSU-OKC (5,824)
Colorado Springs - UCCS (9,745)
Omaha - Nebraska-Omaha (14,665)
Tulsa - Tulsa (4,185)
Oakland - Holy Names (1,164)
Wichita - Wichita State (14,577)
New Orleans - New Orleans (11,276)

Look at OKC even. I would say by any measure they are doing pretty well as a city and the biggest they have is OSU-OKC. Tulsa by far has the most prestigious school of the two major cities. Dallas, Fort Worth, Nashville. It just seems that we are making the mistake of thinking a major university will bring all this goodness. I just don't think that it will. Unless of course you are considering putting a Cal-Berkely caliber school here, which obviously is not what we are talking about.

OKC also has OCU with about 3000 students, if we are counting public and private universities.

You may as well count UCO in Edmond as a part of OKC since the two cities sort of bleed into each other. OU, with it's proximity to the OKC metro is a fairly good contributor to the OKC economy.  If OSU's main campus were located in Owasso or Broken Arrow, I suspect the Tulsa economy would benefit greatly from it.

[davideinstein]

OKC has Edmond and Norman as suburbs. Oakland has Berkeley.

[swake]

A major college campus doesn't necessarily equate to thriving city.

For example, the list below is the largest cities without a single major university campus (in this case not larger than 15,000):

Phoenix - ASU-Downtown (6,595)
Dallas - SMU (10,938)
Fort Worth - TCU (9,142)
Nashville - Vanderbilt (12,714)
Oklahoma City - OSU-OKC (5,824)
Colorado Springs - UCCS (9,745)
Omaha - Nebraska-Omaha (14,665)
Tulsa - Tulsa (4,185)
Oakland - Holy Names (1,164)
Wichita - Wichita State (14,577)
New Orleans - New Orleans (11,276)

Look at OKC even. I would say by any measure they are doing pretty well as a city and the biggest they have is OSU-OKC. Tulsa by far has the most prestigious school of the two major cities. Dallas, Fort Worth, Nashville. It just seems that we are making the mistake of thinking a major university will bring all this goodness. I just don't think that it will. Unless of course you are considering putting a Cal-Berkely caliber school here, which obviously is not what we are talking about.

Cal-Berkeley, which might be the best public university in the nation, is just five miles north of downtown Oakland. You can't draw the lines at city limits, a comprehensive public university will impact the whole metro area. Tulsa is still the only city on this list where the metro area does not have any comprehensive four year public university.

Oklahoma City of course has OU and Central Oklahoma.

ASU's main campus in Tempe, which does have a downtown campus anyway, is only eight miles east of downtown Phoenix, ASU in Tempe being the single largest college campus in the nation.

The DFW area has 10 public universities including UT-Arlington with 37,000 students, North Texas State with 37,000 students and UT-Dallas with 25,000 students.

All these other cities have public universities, most of them in the city or very close by.

Tulsa's advantage is that our potential major public school is next to downtown. This needs to happen.

[SXSW]

Vanderbilt, with 12k students and its huge medical center, is a major economic engine for Nashville.  That should be what TU should hope to aspire to someday.

And a couple good comparisons for OSU-Tulsa are CU-Denver and UW-Milwaukee.  Both are urban satellites for their respective universities but offer a wide variety of undergrad and grad programs, and operate independently.  UAB in Birmingham is another one in a fellow southern state with low education funding.  OSU already has the health sciences center and hospital in Tulsa it just needs the 4 year university and research component.

[Conan71]

Vanderbilt, with 12k students and its huge medical center, is a major economic engine for Nashville.  That should be what TU should hope to aspire to someday.

And a couple good comparisons for OSU-Tulsa are CU-Denver and UW-Milwaukee.  Both are urban satellites for their respective universities but offer a wide variety of undergrad and grad programs, and operate independently.  UAB in Birmingham is another one in a fellow southern state with low education funding.  OSU already has the health sciences center and hospital in Tulsa it just needs the 4 year university and research component.

Yep.  I'm not sure how many are aware of the large research complex just to the west of the OU HSC in OKC.  The research center has about 700,000 sq. ft. of office and lab space.

[cannon_fodder]

For example, the list below is the largest cities without a single major university campus (in this case not larger than 15,000):

Phoenix - ASU-Downtown (6,595)
Dallas - SMU (10,938)
Fort Worth - TCU (9,142)
Nashville - Vanderbilt (12,714)
Oklahoma City - OSU-OKC (5,824)
Colorado Springs - UCCS (9,745)
Omaha - Nebraska-Omaha (14,665)
Tulsa - Tulsa (4,185)
Oakland - Holy Names (1,164)
Wichita - Wichita State (14,577)
New Orleans - New Orleans (11,276)

I closer look might show that your proving our point... concentrating on significant schools:


Phoenix  - Arizona State is directly across the river and has 83,000 kids enrolled.

Dallas - as you pointed out, there are several excellent medium sized Universities (TCU & SMU), there is also UT-Dallas with 23k, and U North Texas in Denton with 30+k. And Ft. Worth is metro Dallas.

Nashville - Vanderbilt (13k) as mention, also Tenn State (10k), Bellmont (7.5k), and in the metro area there is also Middle Tennessee State (go Hilltoppers!) with 20k+ kids. as well as U Nashville, Bellmont and Fisk being in town. So what, 60k college kids within 20 miles?

Oklahoma City - In the metro area you also have University of Central Oklahoma with 17k kids, University of Oklahoma with ~ 30k kids, in addition to OCU and other smaller colleges.

Colorado Springs - UCCS, you also have the Air Force Academy! As well as two military bases and the US Olympic training center (which takes a lot away from the need for a
medium city [metro about half of Tulsa metro] to have more than 2 sizable Universities)...but there are also several small (<4k) elite colleges including Colorado Tech.

Omaha - Nebraska-Omaha (14,665) as well as Creighton (8k), and the University of Nebraska is less than 20 miles away.

Oakland - It physically borders UC-Berekely with 39,000 kids, the border of the University is the City limits of Oakland. It is also in a metro area with Stanford, UC San Francisco, US Santa Barbara, City College of San Fran, Cal State, St. Mary's, UC Santa Clara, Cal State East Bay - more than 100k students just at the large state schools within 25 miles of Oakland.

Wichita - Wichita State (14,577), I count that as a major State University. Kansas has 2 flagships, on major, and four minor universities (Pittsburgh, Emporia, Washburm and Ft. Hayes being the minor schools). I'd consider Northern Iowa, Missouri State, etc. to be major universities even though they aren't a flagship school. The MSA is ~400k less than the Tulsa MSA and they have a major State University.

New Orleans - New Orleans (11,276), Tulane (11k), Layola (4.5), Xavier (3.5k)...

Tulsa - Tulsa (4,185), also has Rogers State (4K), NSU (1k), ORU (3.2k), OSU-Tulsa (2.8k), OU-Tulsa (1k)...


Notice a pattern - the cities you listed all have one or two colleges of significant size in their immediate metro as well as small colleges. Tulsa just has a mashup of minor players. If Tulsa had a major university in Sand Springs or Wagner...I don't think we'd be having this discussion. No one in St. Paul is saying they need a new State School because U Minnesota is in Minneapolis.  It is equally ridiculously to say OKC doesn't have University with UCO and OU on their borders.

[SXSW]

OSU has a unique structure with the two vo-tech schools, something you don't see at a lot of major universities.  It should look like this:
Stillwater - flagship campus with 25k+
Tulsa - urban campus with 10k+
Tulsa - health sciences center and hospital
Tulsa - research campus
OKC - technical school
Okmulgee - technical school

And for OU:
Norman - flagship campus with 25k+ / research campus
Tulsa - urban campus with 5k+
OKC - health sciences center and hospital
Tulsa - medical school and hospital (partnership with TU)
Edmond - hospital

OSU and OU absolutely can have two "independent" 4 year universities that complement and don't compete with each other.  CU-Boulder and CU-Denver.  UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee.  UT-Austin and UT -San Antonio.  Nebraska-Lincoln and Nebraska-Omaha.  There are literally dozens of examples of this being done across the country.