Petro said that right now, only Ohio State University and possibly Miami University and University of Cincinnati qualify for international enterprise status.
According to the Dayton Daily News, officials from Miami, Ohio State, Ohio, and Wright State universities said they need to know more details about what it would mean to become an enterprises institution before deciding to participate in the plan.
It is unclear whether enterprise universities will be subject to the current 3.5 percent tuition cap that lawmakers have set for the next two years. Petro speculates that the caps will remain in place because the General Assembly will be reluctant to give up its power to set tuition caps.
Petro acknowledged that lawmakers will continue to change the plan in the next year, but said he hopes the plan will pass in the Ohio General Assembly by May 1, 2012, and go in effect for fiscal year 2013.
Citing his experience with members of the General Assembly, Petro named state legislators Gerald Stebelton and Peggy Lehner as potential sponsors for the legislation.
Petro first pitched the plan in 2005. After being appointed as Board of Regents Chancellor by Governor John Kasich in February 2011, Petro put his framework into motion and the plan was included in Kasich’s budget proposal in March.
“The theory behind all of this is that as a university has the ability to be entrepreneurial and function more as an enterprise and less as a government-sponsored institute, then they will be in a position to control the costs more effectively, and they’ll have ways of generating revenue because of their own engagement in commerce,” Petro said.
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