OU's move to SEC wasn't just for sports: Here's how it could help with academics and enrollment

NORMAN — Much of the focus of the University of Oklahoma’s entry this month into the Southeastern Conference has been on how the move will affect the Sooners’ athletic teams, but OU and SEC officials both note there also will be academic — and potentially enrollment — benefits to the university from the change.

Membership in the SEC will enable OU faculty and staff to participate in programs that promote travel and collaboration among the league’s 16 campuses, including the study of how to use artificial intelligence in higher-education classrooms. Another SEC program, the Emerging Scholars Initiative, is designed to provide professional development and networking opportunities for current doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers who are considering careers in higher education.

And as colleges and universities in the U.S. brace for what’s colloquially known as the coming “demographic cliff” — census numbers indicate the number of high school graduates will peak in 2025, then drop off sharply in the years after that — anything that might help recruit students to an SEC campus is a priority, even for someone like SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, who’s considered among the most powerful people in collegiate athletics.

After OU President Joseph Harroz spoke about the university’s enrollment momentum July 1 at a news conference in OU’s Barry Switzer Center, Sankey riffed about the importance of seeing the big picture outside of athletics when it comes to conference expansion. The additions of OU and the University of Texas to the SEC fit well within that big picture, he said.

“When I thought strategically about expansion, what President Harroz commented on student enrollment and the changing demographic rules, that’s so important across all of our campuses,” Sankey said. “I felt that bringing in both Oklahoma and Texas helped build that level of interest across all of our campuses, as we all compete for student population.

“And as we sit here in an athletic building and think about athletic things, I don’t think it can be understated that the ability for us to position ourselves to be a national brand with a regional footprint that’s easily accessible has meaning. It is a platform for how to recruit students, how to recruit faculty, how we recruit people to our campuses.”

Although it’s impossible to quantify a direct connection with OU’s announcement in July 2021 that it was leaving the Big 12 Conference to join the SEC, the university’s last three freshman classes have set records for size, with 5,198 freshmen enrolled in fall 2023, up from 4,683 the previous fall. Harroz said another record freshman class is set to enroll this coming fall.

“We know being in the SEC will catalyze substantial investment in our academic and research endeavors, where we’ve already seen stunning progress,” Harroz said in an op-ed piece in The Oklahoman last month. “More students than ever are choosing OU, and the enhanced visibility we’ll enjoy in the SEC will provide even more avenues to attract top student and faculty talent.”

Harroz: OU's research status and funding could be bolstered by SEC move

OU has an “R1” classification from the American Council on Education, which awards that designation to institutions that annually spend at least $50 million on research and development and produce at least 70 research doctoral degrees, according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education website.

So do all of the other 15 SEC members. During the 2023-24 academic year, the SEC said its 16 members (including OU and Texas) produced more than 100,000 graduates and had more than 494,000 students enrolled. SEC members have combined to invest more than $8 billion into research and development and support more than 680,000 jobs.

Five SEC members — Texas, the University of Missouri, the University of Florida, Texas A&M University and Vanderbilt University — also are a part of the elite American Association of Universities. The AAU has 71 members, which it touts as “America’s Leading Research Universities.”

“We have aspirations of being an AAU university,” Harroz said of OU. “Over the last four years, we’ve had 16 percent annualized growth in research.”

Last July, OU announced it had received about $210.4 million in research funding during fiscal year 2023 for its Norman campus, an increase of almost 33% from the previous fiscal year. That came after a 9% increase the previous fiscal year. The final number for the just-completed fiscal year hasn’t yet been announced.

The SEC has developed platforms through which its member universities can collaborate academically. One is the SEC Faculty Travel Program, which began in 2012 and provides faculty with opportunities to conduct research, present lectures, exchange ideas and deliver artistic performances with colleagues at fellow member schools. Funds from the SEC are distributed to participating faculty by their universities to help with travel-related expenses.

The SEC began what it believes to be the first athletic conference collaboration to focus on artificial intelligence. The SEC Artificial Intelligence Consortium encourages faculty and staff from league schools to share education resources and ideas about how to use AI in the classroom and support workforce development training.

In May, OU became one of the first three higher-education institutions in Oklahoma to establish a degree program in AI.

The SEC also offers other academic-related initiatives — such as the Academic Leadership Development Program, Education Abroad Focus, MBA Pitch Competition and Student Pitch Competition — designed to encourage collaboration and competition amongst faculty, staff and students at its member schools.

“Joining the SEC, a conference populated with prestigious research institutions, will accelerate our trajectory and foster collaboration, opening doors for joint research initiatives and promising new breakthroughs,” Harroz said in his op-ed piece.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Academic, enrollment benefits possible at OU with move to SEC: President