I have to ask, why do you think a city of a million people with a college, is sending most of their gradutes, not to Columbus, but to cities with populations of 350k, 300k, 900k and 300k, respectively. Why are "Presumably" most of those grads going to either much, much smaller cities or to a comparably sized city in another state?
And you think a city with a metropolictan area of over 2 million people is going to struggle to absorb 11k people anually...why, exactly?
And no shit LA and Austin and to a degree Athens (atlanta) have advantages. But the origin of this post, which I'm guessing you don't remember, was another poster suggesting Ohio State falls below MICHIGAN and other schools becuase Columbus as a location was a demerit, as opposed to a positive. I'd argue Columbus is possibly the third most attractice location for a major university after Austin and LA. LA has major sports franchises and is full of transplants from all over the country splitting attention. Columbus and Austin, not so much.