The Kent State Flashes and the University of Idaho Vandals may share gold as one of their school colors, but how similar can two campuses more than 2,000 miles apart be?

When the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching redefined its collegiate categories, the only university that came up as completely comparable to Kent State was the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.

The Kent campus and Idaho are both four-year, public universities with high research activity, professional and arts and sciences undergraduate programs and a comprehensive doctoral program, according to the foundation’s Web site. Their mostly residential undergraduate populations typically have low transfer-in rates.

John Jameson, professor and chairman of the history department, worked within 10 miles of the University of Idaho at Washington State from 1979 to 1988 and came to Kent State directly after. He said both campuses are attractive and resemble one another physically. Idaho’s mostly red brick buildings are nestled amid its rolling hills.

“We just have yellow brick buildings,” Jameson said, laughing.

Idaho is more rural than Kent State, Jameson said, so Moscow has more of a college-town feel. Kent has more industry than Moscow and is closer to larger cities, so students at Kent State have more options, especially on the weekends.

“There is still a sense of a college town, but there’s so many places you can go,” he said.

Kent State’s enrollment this year was more than twice that of Idaho’s – 34,491 versus 12,476, according to the universities’ Web sites. Less faculty and staff are on campus at Idaho as well. Idaho has about 850 faculty members and a staff of about 1,500. Kent State has about 2,300 faculty members and about 3,400 on its staff.

The drain to student wallets at Idaho is less than that for Kent State students. Tuition for undergraduates at Idaho was $3,968 for in-state and $12,738 for out-of-state this year. Kent campus undergraduates paid $7,954 for in-state and $15,386 for out-of-state.

Contact administration reporter Rachel Abbey at [email protected].