Sam Houston is a small time in Texas and bigger than us regardless of location they are a better option than McNeese which has been mentioned in some spots. Probably better than NMSU with the exception that they are already FBS.
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Sam Houston is a small time in Texas and bigger than us regardless of location they are a better option than McNeese which has been mentioned in some spots. Probably better than NMSU with the exception that they are already FBS.
From the Natchitoches Journal
https://natchitochesparishjournal.co...ence-shuffles/
Obviously Tech athletics aren't in a great position right now and it's easy to look in despair at our future but just remember that teams have succeeded after being in unfortunate circumstances. Look at where Temple is now after getting kicked out of the Big East and moving to the MAC. UCF has managed to go through every level of NCAA from Div III to playing on a far away island in the MAC to now being in a P5 conference. The Big 12 was arguably just as good as the SEC 15/20 years ago and Sun Belt was a glorified FCS conference. Now look at those conferences.
College football is volatile and there will be more changes to come. If I had to guess some shakeups in the future, I would say that the AAC loses Memphis and possibly USF or SMU in the future to the Big 12. The AAC could become unstable just like CUSA. The conference is extremely stretched out (from Philadelphia to San Antonio, same as Marshall-UTEP distance) and having almost half the conference earning less than the rest could lead to some unhappiness. The Big 12 could also take some MWC schools like Colorado St. and/or Boise St. That could cause the MWC to in turn go for Texas schools either in the AAC or Texas St. This isn't even considering that the Big 12 may be picked apart some more or ACC schools defecting to other P5 conferences causing even more ripples throughout conferences. Tech needs to keep looking forward and be ready for the next shift in college athletics.
Athletically, that means working on increasing the budget into the 30 million range or even higher as has been rumored. We need to improve some facilities, especially our football stadium (not just expanding I mean, in fact I'd argue about reducing capacity a bit). Finally and most importantly, we need to increase attendance. I remember 10 years ago we had some great football attendance increases and good atmospheres for games. Go back to what was working then and improve it even more. Our first goal should be getting attendance in football and basketball for every home game back to over 20,000 at minimum for football in the next two years and 3,000 for basketball. Then set more goals after that.
Academically, we need to make sure that Tech increases its profile. We should improve our Carnegie classification to R1 and try and work on expanding the footprint in North Louisiana either in Monroe or Shreveport or both. I would like to see Tech continue to work with Shreveport more and put more pressure to merge LSUS into Tech or expand Tech's presence in SBC. This should help with making Tech more appealing to conferences. University presidents want to associate with more prestigious institutions and we'd have more reach into "markets" hopefully. At least we'd be reachign more students and increasing enrollment. If we truly wanted to be bold, I wouldn't be against working with ULL to try and split up the University of Louisiana system or fight for both of our schools to achieve a LaTech medical school and ULL law school. Obviously the LSU powers would fight it with everything they've got, which is a lot but we have to keep improving Tech's academic brand in as many was as possible.
Very well written article. Do you know Doug Ireland? He is a very good writer.Originally Posted by dawg80
So LA Tech (11,197) now has a lower enrollment than NSU (11,447). WTH? Why? And don't give me the old "our standards are higher", stuff. It was only a couple of years ago that Tech had an enrollment of well over 12K. What's happened? The "business side" of things don't appear to be getting managed very well at Tech if everyone but us in the state is growing in enrollment.
I think NSU's growth is due to their virtual schooling, and they don't actually have those people physically on campus. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Have you considered those Dogs?
NSU does seem to be known for that on this board. I know others have talked about it. I just rewatched an interview with Cedric Glover talking about LSUS's only success is growing online students, otherwise LSUS seems to be worsening in all other types of students.
I am far removed from Tech, so this is just my opinion: F.J. Taylor has been the only true Tech admin with any forward vision in the last 60 years. His successors have been either too timid to rock the boat with the blue hairs around Ruston or just plain incompetent to lead. I hear of simple things like the opposition of those in charge to brand the football stadium with a corporate partner for a hefty fee.....not speaking of the local banks, etc. I hear of the administration being afraid to try different approaches to recruiting students. It is like we have a Gulf States Conference state of mind that we cannot break out away from. It's as if they live in a parallel universe of today's world......hanging on to the distant past and to antiquated methods.
There are a lot of caring Tech folks, but maybe they are sometimes too caring...to a fault. We need leaders with a business state of mind, not just an academic approach. The world has changed, and we need to embrace that fact and change with it.
OK...off my soap box now.
That is correct. I believe their "on campus" student population is very low.
Of the 11,081 students at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, 81.39% (9,019) took at least one class online. About 42.12% (4,667) took all of their courses online.
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/northwestern-state-university-of-louisiana/academic-life/distance-learning/
I dont know exactly but NSU does have a lot of virtual and dual enrolments (high school kids). Remember we have over 3,000 dual enrolments (high school kids not on campus) and that lowers our actual to around 8,000 less any virtual students.
We probably need to expand our online enrollment, but we have to get more students on campus. On and off campus housing development has been anticipating 13-14,000 students in the near future. Investors are going to lose their tails if we don’t grow. We may learn the lesson that when Tech promises something(15,000 by 2020)we don’t adjust to it until it happens.
....but it seems to be successful, not at just NSU, but all around the country. Virtual everything seems to be the future. We need to change with it.
As a manager of a manufacturing plant of a Fortune 500 company, I preached the "Seven P's". They are "Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance"
I added this to my post above:
Of the 11,081 students at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, 81.39% (9,019) took at least one class online. About 42.12% (4,667) took all of their courses online.
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/northwestern-state-university-of-louisiana/academic-life/distance-learning/
It is. More than 8,000 of NSU's students are in online degree programs. LSUS has more than 4,000 online MBA students and fewer than 2,000 students on campus. Even though we are unacceptably late to the online game, there's still market space in some of the disciplines we're noted for. We must take advantage of the opportunities out there. Our enrollment dropped this fall. Had it not been for dual enrollment - which is a loser financially - the drop would have been pronounced.
LSU Online created the system wide "LSU Online" entity three years ago. Enrollment is growing rapidly. They plsn to land 20,000 online students in just a few years.
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