Ohio State University

The most consequential alumnus of The Ohio State University’s modern era graduated with highest honors in 2009, after arriving on campus via the United States Marine Corps. J.D. Vance — now the 50th vice president of the United States — earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from Ohio State before going on to Yale Law School, a path the university’s own 1870 land-grant charter would not obviously have predicted (Britannica). That charter began with the Morrill Act, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, and the Cannon Act of 1870, which together provided for the creation of the “Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College” as Ohio’s land-grant college (OSU Libraries).

The school opened for classes in 1873 with 25 students and seven faculty members, on what the university’s library describes as the northern edge of Columbus. From the start it was not content to stay a farm college: a vigorously debated decision to broaden the curriculum beyond agriculture and engineering led to the 1878 renaming as The Ohio State University (OSU Libraries). More than a century and a half later, that broadened university enrolled a record 68,183 students in autumn 2026 (OSU News).

A land-grant college on the northern edge of Columbus

Ohio State’s founding was an act of public policy: the Morrill Act set aside federal resources for states to build colleges teaching agriculture and the mechanical arts, and Ohio’s legislature answered with the Cannon Act in 1870, creating the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College (OSU Libraries). When classes opened in 1873, the campus was still essentially a country school on the northern edge of Columbus, with 25 students and a faculty of seven (OSU Libraries).

The tension that defines every land-grant university — practical training versus a full university education — surfaced almost immediately. The university’s own history describes a “vigorously debated” decision to broaden the curriculum beyond agriculture and engineering, and in 1878 the state made the broader mission official by changing the name to The Ohio State University (OSU Libraries). The name has stuck through the institution’s growth from that farming-community campus into one of the country’s largest universities.

The university in 2026: record enrollment, tuition-free regionals, and fewer international students

The autumn 2026 enrollment census put Ohio State at 68,183 students across its campuses, up 1.4 percent from the prior year and a record for the institution. The Columbus campus accounted for 62,010 students, with undergraduate enrollment there also at a record 47,308; regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark, and Wooster (Ohio State ATI) totaled 6,173 (OSU News).

Autumn 2026 was the first year of the Regional Campus Commitment, a program under which eligible new first-year students enrolling at the Lima, Mansfield, Marion, or Newark campuses or at Ohio State ATI in Wooster can attend without paying tuition or mandatory fees. It covers students whose family income is less than $100,000 and who have demonstrated financial need; new first-year regional enrollment rose 6.1 percent to 3,256 (OSU News). On the Columbus campus, 8,585 new first-year students enrolled — up 375 from the previous year — with about 70 percent of them Ohio residents, an average ACT score of 28.6, and a 93.9 percent first-year retention rate (OSU News).

The growth came with one conspicuous exception. International student enrollment fell nearly 13 percent in a single year, from 5,996 to 5,234 — the second consecutive year of double-digit declines — and new first-year international students dropped 30 percent, from 536 to 374, down from 850 in fall 2024 (The Columbus Dispatch). The Dispatch reported that the decline followed a year of student visa revocations, the mandated end of diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, a 19-country travel ban, a weeks-long pause in new student visa interviews, and a newly finalized rule limiting foreign students to four-year stays (The Columbus Dispatch). President Ravi V. Bellamkonda, who moved from India to the United States in the mid-1990s for a master’s program at MIT, told the paper the issue was personal: “My message to students here is that we will support your journey here. You belong here” (The Columbus Dispatch).

Bellamkonda used his State of the University address to stake out the university’s next bets: a new partnership with Google Public Sector that will bring student ambassadors into research with on-campus Google researchers; BuildX, a startup program pairing real-world experimentation with mentorship from founders and operators; and the continued expansion of AI Fluency, a program meant to make every undergraduate comfortable applying artificial intelligence in their own field (OSU News).

From the Marines to the vice presidency, via Columbus

The profile that ties this university most directly to the Trump-era record is that of J.D. Vance. Britannica records that after graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq during the Iraq War; he then attended Ohio State, where he received his bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009, and went on to earn a law degree from Yale Law School in 2013 (Britannica). He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio in 2022 and became the 50th vice president in the second Trump administration in 2025 (Britannica).

Vance’s Ohio roots ran through the university even after he left: in 2017, back in Ohio from California, he founded Our Ohio Renewal, a nonprofit aimed at helping disadvantaged children and addressing drug addiction and the opioid epidemic — though the organization folded within a few years (Britannica). His six years on campus, from a working-class Middletown upbringing to a degree with highest honors, are the closest thing to a founding myth the modern university has produced — a Marine who used his post-service education to climb from Ohio State to Yale to the vice presidency (Britannica).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not state an endowment figure, research-expenditure total, or AAU membership — none appeared in the sources read. It does not assert the exact founding day of March 22, 1870, which appears only in tertiary sources, or settle the 24-versus-25 discrepancy in opening-day enrollment beyond the university library’s own figure of 25. It makes no athletics claims. It does not claim Ohio State caused or substantially shaped Vance’s political rise; it documents only the degree he earned there, verified by Britannica. International enrollment figures and their policy context come from September 2026 reporting and reflect that moment; they may have moved since.