Kent State University President Slams Vivek Ramaswamy’s Plan to Shut Down Ohio Colleges & Universities

Kent State University President Slams Vivek Ramaswamy's Plan to Shut Down Ohio Colleges & Universities

April 29, 2026

Columbus, Ohio- Yesterday, in a rare move for a university president, Kent State University's President joined a growing group of Ohioans slamming Vivek Ramaswamy's plan to close colleges and universities across Ohio.

"Vivek Ramaswamy's plan to shut down colleges and universities, including Kent State, is so dangerous for our state that even university presidents are speaking out," said Ohio Democratic Party spokeswoman Katie Seewer. "Ramaswamy's only experience with the communities he wants to destroy is from the window of his private jet while he plots to rip away opportunities, jobs, and healthcare from countless Ohioans."

Read the full piece about how Ramaswamy's plan would harm Kent State here:

• The public university system in Ohio wasn't assembled carelessly. It was built by elected leaders responding to real public demand. Republican Gov. James Rhodes came to office in 1963 on a campaign promise to place a public university within 30 miles of every Ohio citizen. […] This was not a waste. This was Ohio investing in itself.

• The universities didn't drift into this moment. Even though public investment was quietly withdrawn over decades, our institutions have continued to deliver ever-improving results.

• There is also a community argument that deserves to be made. What happens to Salem without its Kent State campus? To Ashtabula, to Geauga, to Tuscarawas County and all the other communities in which Kent State maintains a vital presence?

• The campuses Gov. Rhodes envisioned aren't redundancies. They are lifelines - for the students, for local employers, for the civic identities of communities that have built themselves, in part, around the presence of a university in their midst. To abandon our regional campuses would be to abandon our state's small-town heartbeat.

• As Ohio's fourth-longest-serving public university president, I offer these words not to protect turf, but because the conversation Ohio deserves is grounded in facts. Indeed, my colleagues at the other public universities have equally powerful, distinctive stories of success to share, and together, Ohio's public universities advance the future of all Ohioans.

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