Regional Campuses vs. Oxford

On Oct. 1, 2014, President Hodge asked for increased differentiation between Miami’s regional campuses and the Oxford campus.

What does this mean for students? Renaming the regional campuses and handing out new diplomas is what’s ahead in an attempt to distance the college’s main campus in Oxford from the regional campuses.

Exactly why did President Hodge request this?

The officials of the university are doing this because they want to make a series of distinctions. This is in the hopes that it will cause an increase of enrollment and will have four-year degree offerings at the regional campuses of Miami University.

In the past few years there have been some declining enrollment on the regional campuses. The regional campuses, Hamilton, Middletown, and West Chester, are universities that are meant for a two-year degree for students. What this means is that students would attend these regional campuses for two years then are able to switch over to the Miami University Oxford campus, or to any other state university that is meant for a four-year degree.

Carole Johnson, the assistant director of news and public information of Miami University, shared some of the issues about the regional campuses. The problem is that students who need to stay close to home because of jobs, family, or just can not afford other schools, need these regional campuses to be considered a four-year degree school to be able to receive the same education as other students. Because the regional campuses are currently not fulfilling their needs, the enrollment is declining.

The regional campuses are very convenient for the students who are still wanting to get an education, but again need to stay close to home for family reasons or just can’t afford other universities. Miami University, Hamilton campus, has a full tuition of $6,396. There are about 3,682 undergraduate and graduate students combined with 100 percent admitted. The Middletown campus has 2,272 students with tuition of $4,562 and also 100 percent admitted.

On the other side Miami University, Oxford campus has 17,472 students with 74 percent admitted. The tuition per year for instate students is $25, 122 and out of state students $41,229. You can see by just looking at the tuitions for each of these campuses why the regional campuses can be a great option for these students who need to be close to home and don’t have that kind of money.

A big part of this topic is brand confusion between the main campus in Oxford and the regional campuses. The Report from the Presidential Task Force on Differentiation of the Regional Campus, that was released Nov. 21, 2014, talks a lot about brand differentiation. What the committee would like to obtain is for there to be a creation of a differentiated brand coming from all the regional campuses that still identifies themselves as Miami, however, it is distinguishing them from Miami’s Oxford Campus.

The task force goes into explaining different steps they are going to consider that will move towards achieving a differentiated brand.

The task force suggests, “as with separate accreditation, the specification of the regional campus on a diploma…could read, ‘Miami University, awarded at Oxford Campus,’ and ‘Miami University awarded at [name] Campus.’”

Also, the task force committee proposed a similar idea for the transcripts stating which Miami University campus each student is located at. Both of these ideas are the committee’s first steps to reaching this differentiated brand.

After asking some students at Miami University Hamilton’s campus, it was pretty easy to see their opinion on this topic.

“I’m kind of upset about this,” said Michaela Durst a freshman at Hamilton. “We are supposed to be all Miami so the fact that we might be distancing ourselves from everyone is kind of sad to see that we are not going to be a whole I guess you can say. They should