NY Times article on CR effect on non-revenue sports

[specialisthusky]

Sorry double post...can't figure out how to delete on new app.

 

[B1GALUM]

No argument. Ohio State is a crapyy commuter school in Columbus, Ohio, and Maryland is a crappy commuter school in DC. Let's set the base.

As an alum and faculty member, I take issue with your view of Ohio State as a crappy commuter school. You need to spend more time researching universities before you make such pronouncements.
Here is a place to start:
http://www.osu.edu/highpoints/
http://www.osu.edu/visitors/aboutohiostate.php

 

[Pudge]

The USN&WR is a stupid index to keep promoting in University ranking. If you have some knowledge of how they get their numbers, you would seek some other clearer ranking indexes. The AAU is a solid group of research institutions ... but seems to have some flaws in its acceptance of members. In any event, Louisville is an obvious outlier in this grand discussion of solid academic institutions.

 

[btstimpy]

The USN&WR is a stupid index to keep promoting in University ranking. If you have some knowledge of how they get their numbers, you would seek some other clearer ranking indexes. The AAU is a solid group of research institutions ... but seems to have some flaws in its acceptance of members. In any event, Louisville is an obvious outlier in this grand discussion of solid academic institutions.

It's probably the first index any University uses on a website to promote their academic standing. I didn't create the index. If you don't like it, you can take it up with USN&WR. Others like the Wall Street Journal, Princeton, Forbes, etc. have tried to create other indexes. Everyone still goes back to the USN&WR one.

 

[btstimpy]

As an alum and faculty member, I take issue with your view of Ohio State as a crappy commuter school. You need to spend more time researching universities before you make such pronouncements.
Here is a place to start:
http://www.osu.edu/highpoints/
http://www.osu.edu/visitors/aboutohiostate.php

Yes. and Louisville probably took offense to E Gordon Gee calling them a crappy school too. They publish links about how wonderful their medical school is. You can rank this stuff down to the schools within a University or even down to a major. That gets too complicated. Louisville isn't a world beater academically. There is no argument there. But watching others that aren't world beaters themselves throw stones is a joke.

 

[CL82]

The Basketball Selection Committee bases who it picks for the NCAA tournament based on RPI don't they? I'd bet you don't consider a team with a RPI of 52 to be very good do you? They would be a bubble team. You can list Tulane and Texas as bubble schools. If you go onto the USNWR website, you can't even see schools past 50 on the first page. 50 is as high as it will sort on a page. What do you suggest? The top 100 is elite academically? The Top 100 basketball teams can't even make the NCAA tournament. I see academics no different.

.

 

[UPitt]

This whole acedemic argument is really stupid. I find it hard to believe that anyone will agree that Louisville is on par with Uconn, or anyone else within the ACC or B1G when you compare Universities as a whole. I agree Louisville is not a terrible school (160s out of 1000s of colleges) and is likely above average when compared to all forms of higher education, but Ville is not in the same tier as Uconn, B1G, or ACC. Louisville was chosen for athletics to enter an athletic sports league, and that is what it is. I don't think anyone should consider the decision to be anything but an athletic decision.

Stimpy, I also agree schools become very lumped in the rankings after you get past the ivy and near ivy schools, but I would make that cut off at about 15 - 25 schools. Those very top schools excel at everything and belong to be ranked as highly. I think you can group the schools from 25 to 75 ( or maybe even 100) in the same group, with the higher ranking schools having more departments higher ranked. For this group of schools, individual rankings of departments and graduate rankings are very important. Many students, including myself, choose a University based on rankings of the field of study they plan on entering. Speaking as a Pitt grad, I would take offence to not being compared or lumped with your own UVA. I think the STEM fields at Pitt, especially at the graduate level, can compete with most non-ivy type schools, including UVA.

Stimpy, would you consider the Medical School, Pharmacy School, or Bioengineering School at Pitt to be that inferior to UVA that I should be ashamed of my degree?

University rankings have there place, and if used appropriately they can provide important information to students applying for school. But no one should look at rankings and say that one school is clearly better than the next at all aspects, because ABC rankings says so. Each rankings group uses different criteria to rank Universities. The overall ranking of a school is far less important than the individual ranking of a department or major to an individual student looking to earn a degree and use this degree to apply for jobs. Having said this, to generalize and say that there is a clear cut off line (#50 as described by Stimpy) to define superior vs inferior schools is not a correct assumption. Many students graduating from schools ranked below #50 (including Pitt and Uconn and maybe even Ville) will be better educated and hold a more valuable degree than students from schools ranked above #50.

 

[frankthetank]

No argument. Ohio State is a crapyy commuter school in Columbus, Ohio, and Maryland is a crappy commuter school in DC. Let's set the base.

Ohio State, what you call a "crappy commuter school" and keep intimating that their former president was some type of hypocrite on academics, is ranked #52 in the US News rankings that you deem being in the top 50 as the arbiter of whether a school is academically elite. Come on, now. I understand the football-driven impetus behind adding Louisville for the ACC and actually give credit to Swofford for the underrated move of significantly impairing the Big 12's future paths to expansion (which elevates the ACC by comparison long-term), but it's completely disingenuous to compare their academics to AAU schools like Ohio State and Maryland or flagship schools that have competitive undergrad admissions like UConn. Surely someone that went to an institution like UVA (assuming that you actually attended that school) would understand the difference.

I'm someone that has actually defended the ACC quite a bit over the past couple of years when the rest of the world thought it was going to get split apart. Even as a Big Ten guy, I emphasized many times on my blog that the ACC was stronger than what people gave it credit for (with a lot of my Big Ten readers vehemently disagreeing with me). However, ACC fans need to step back and not mistake the fact that they cheated death as a sign that they actually have strength on par with the Big Ten or SEC. I see way too many ACC fans falling into the same trap today that Big 12 fans fell into a year ago when they deluded themselves into thinking that they could poach the likes of Florida State. Survival does not equal strength. The ACC might be stronger than what fans outside of the ACC believe, but the conference is also significantly weaker (in terms of the factors driving conference realignment) than its fans within it want to believe.

 

[btstimpy]

Back on point, Stimpy - the ACC has zero, with a "Z", academic requirements for entry. Yes or no?

Further, I'm no Terp fan, but comparing UMD to Louisville really strains the limits of credulity. It's not close and doing so diminishes your credibility.
You know damn well that noses were firmly held in the administration offices in Charlottesville, Chapel Hill, Atlanta, Boston, Miami, Winston-Salem, Durham when the vote to add Louisville to the ACC was taken. If you don't admit that, then I've lost you.

Be real, Stimpmeister - the ACC has added school that admits 72% of its applicants and graduates only 50% in 6 years! It is less of an institution of higher learning than it is a crap shoot!

No conference has an academic requirement for entry other than perhaps the Ivy League. The ACC used to have higher academic standards than the NCAA for athletes. It's the reason South Carolina left in the 1970s. They wanted lower standards for football players. Since the 80s, the ACC has been operating at the same standards as the NCAA.

What the ACC has is the highest average rank academically of any major conference using the USN&WR rankings with Louisville included in the ACC's numbers and Maryland and Rutgers in the Big Ten's numbers. Someone ran these numbers on another site I was reading.

- ACC avg. = 54.9, median 47
- B1G avg. = 57.2, median 62
- PAC-12 avg. = 80.8, median 86
- SEC avg. = 96.9, median 97
- Big XII avg. = 112.0, median 101
- AAC avg. = 119.0, median 135.

But the answer to your question is NO. There is no "academic requirement". With that said, the ACC is the best. After seeing this all the Big Ten homers wanted to put the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins into their numbers. Uh. No. They aren't in the Big Ten. They might be in the CIC and playing as an associate lacrosse team, but they aren't in the Big Ten.

 

[SubbaBub]

Sagarin ranks college basketball teams every week. There are over 300 of them, and yes there is movement in these rankings past 50 every week. The teams ranked past 50 in the Sagarin rankings don't get a lot of attention as being quality basketball. The basketball snobs really only care about the top 25. It is not any different with the academic snobs. Most of those only care about the top 25, and they certainly stop looking past 50.

I had a guy on one of the Penn State boards from Purdue bashing Louisville a couple of months ago. Purdue. That's a mediocre school not even ranked in the top 65, and here he was acting like an academic snob. It's a joke. I was at the University of Arizona last year, and they have a big sign on the side of the main building reading USNWR ranks UA one of America's Top Universities. They aren't even in the top 100. Talk about marketing deception. When people from mediocre academic institutions start bashing others over academics, it's a joke.

I'll take a STEM graduate from Purdue over one from UVA every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Another reason the USNews rankings are worth as much as a pre-season coaches poll.

 

[UPitt]

I'll take a STEM graduate from Purdue over one from UVA every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Another reason the USNews rankings are worth as much as a pre-season coaches poll.

As a STEM graduate, I completely agree. In fact, using the highly touted USNews rankings, Purdue graduate engineering trumps every ivy school.

 

[btstimpy]

This whole acedemic argument is really stupid. I find it hard to believe that anyone will agree that Louisville is on par with Uconn, or anyone else within the ACC or B1G when you compare Universities as a whole. I agree Louisville is not a terrible school (160s out of 1000s of colleges) and is likely above average when compared to all forms of higher education, but Ville is not in the same tier as Uconn, B1G, or ACC. Louisville was chosen for athletics to enter an athletic sports league, and that is what it is. I don't think anyone should consider the decision to be anything but an athletic decision.

Stimpy, I also agree schools become very lumped in the rankings after you get past the ivy and near ivy schools, but I would make that cut off at about 15 - 25 schools. Those very top schools excel at everything and belong to be ranked as highly. I think you can group the schools from 25 to 75 ( or maybe even 100) in the same group, with the higher ranking schools having more departments higher ranked. For this group of schools, individual rankings of departments and graduate rankings are very important. Many students, including myself, choose a University based on rankings of the field of study they plan on entering. Speaking as a Pitt grad, I would take offence to not being compared or lumped with your own UVA. I think the STEM fields at Pitt, especially at the graduate level, can compete with most non-ivy type schools, including UVA.

Stimpy, would you consider the Medical School, Pharmacy School, or Bioengineering School at Pitt to be that inferior to UVA that I should be ashamed of my degree?

University rankings have there place, and if used appropriately they can provide important information to students applying for school. But no one should look at rankings and say that one school is clearly better than the next at all aspects, because ABC rankings says so. Each rankings group uses different criteria to rank Universities. The overall ranking of a school is far less important than the individual ranking of a department or major to an individual student looking to earn a degree and use this degree to apply for jobs. Having said this, to generalize and say that there is a clear cut off line (#50 as described by Stimpy) to define superior vs inferior schools is not a correct assumption. Many students graduating from schools ranked below #50 (including Pitt and Uconn and maybe even Ville) will be better educated and hold a more valuable degree than students from schools ranked above #50.

It sounds like you want to put the line at 100. If you do that, then you include just about everyone in the ACC and everyone in the Big Ten other than a couple of outliers (Nebraska, NC State, and Louisville). Yes Louisville is a significant outlier then. But the academic elite in this country is the Ivy League and near Ivy League as you say. That crowd is does not look at schools past 50 as academic marvels. They just don't. The ACC is fortunate to have 2 in that top 20 group and 3 more just outside in the 20s. I go up to 50 to be generous.

Outside of that range harping on academics is pointless. It is an athletic conference. The ACC brought Louisville in to play football, basketball, and the rest of the sports that the ACC sponsors. And yes you can break this academic ranking stuff down to the individual school level and the individual major level within a University if you like. I'm sure Lousville can find some major that they are top 10 in. VCU here is Richmond boasts a top 10 music department. Pitt has a fine medical school. And I haven't seen Pitt fans throwing stones at Louisville either.

When you get into individual majors you're going to find something that every school ranked in the top 200 is good at including Louisville.

 

[uconnfan68]

It's probably the first index any University uses on a website to promote their academic standing. I didn't create the index. If you don't like it, you can take it up with USN&WR. Others like the Wall Street Journal, Princeton, Forbes, etc. have tried to create other indexes. Everyone still goes back to the USN&WR one.

Isn't USN&WR the one you submit your own answers for their questionnaire? No bogus info there...

 

[btstimpy]

As a STEM graduate, I completely agree. In fact, using the highly touted USNews rankings, Purdue graduate engineering trumps every ivy school.

I have my undergraduate engineering degree from UVA and my graduate engineering degree from Georgia Tech, whose ranking trumped Purdue at the time as well as UVA. I found UVA much harder to get through than Georgia Tech. It's relative. Georgia Tech is the more prestigious engineering school. UVA is the more prestigious university, but engineering at UVA is hard. The classes are smaller. Everyone in them is a genious certainly smarter than me. And the grading is on a curve.

If you want to get into that debate about Ivy League level engineering schools, you need to bring MIT into the picture.

 

[btstimpy]

Ohio State, what you call a "crappy commuter school" and keep intimating that their former president was some type of hypocrite on academics, is ranked #52 in the US News rankings that you deem being in the top 50 as the arbiter of whether a school is academically elite. Come on, now. I understand the football-driven impetus behind adding Louisville for the ACC and actually give credit to Swofford for the underrated move of significantly impairing the Big 12's future paths to expansion (which elevates the ACC by comparison long-term), but it's completely disingenuous to compare their academics to AAU schools like Ohio State and Maryland or flagship schools that have competitive undergrad admissions like UConn. Surely someone that went to an institution like UVA (assuming that you actually attended that school) would understand the difference.

I'm someone that has actually defended the ACC quite a bit over the past couple of years when the rest of the world thought it was going to get split apart. Even as a Big Ten guy, I emphasized many times on my blog that the ACC was stronger than what people gave it credit for (with a lot of my Big Ten readers vehemently disagreeing with me). However, ACC fans need to step back and not mistake the fact that they cheated death as a sign that they actually have strength on par with the Big Ten or SEC. I see way too many ACC fans falling into the same trap today that Big 12 fans fell into a year ago when they deluded themselves into thinking that they could poach the likes of Florida State. Survival does not equal strength. The ACC might be stronger than what fans outside of the ACC believe, but the conference is also significantly weaker (in terms of the factors driving conference realignment) than its fans within it want to believe.

The ACC is stronger right now than it has ever been in its history. It has never had as much money as the Big Ten. The schools are not as large. The states not as industrial. And the football tradition not as rich. There is nothing new with this. However, there are demographic trends taking place within the United States that favor the ACC continuing to improve and strengthen.

I got into a debate on another board with a Big Ten person who indicated that Big Ten schools intend to address this by filling up their enrollment with Chinese students. As an American, I don't really like that idea. But that's what they are planning to do apparently and already doing it in some areas. I have no idea what that will do in the athletic arena. I'm not familiar with what sports the Chinese like other than gymnastics.

I saw where you thought that the ACC picking up Pittsburgh and Louisville were counter moves regarding the Big XII. I agree in the case of Pittsburgh. I'm not sure I do in the case of Louisville. Other factors came into play in the case of Louisville. It perhaps worked out that way unintended. The Big XII had all the opportunity in the world to add Louisville. Tom Jurich camped out in DeLoss Dodd's office and couldn't get an invite. Louisville was on a list of several schools that the ACC had analyzed for expansion but did not offer becausee of no room. There are others like UConn, Cincinnati, South Florida, etc. With the sudden departure of Maryland, the ACC was able to act relatively quickly without having to do much analysis. Louisville was added within a week. I don't think there was much discussion about the Big XII at that point. The debate was largely between football and basketball and athletics.

 

[btstimpy]

Isn't USN&WR the one you submit your own answers for their questionnaire? No bogus info there...

They all do in some form. Schools keep their own statistics. Who else is going to keep them?

 

[UPitt]

It sounds like you want to put the line at 100. If you do that, then you include just about everyone in the ACC and everyone in the Big Ten other than a couple of outliers (Nebraska, NC State, and Louisville). Yes Louisville is a significant outlier then. But the academic elite in this country is the Ivy League and near Ivy League as you say. That crowd is does not look at schools past 50 as academic marvels. They just don't. The ACC is fortunate to have 2 in that top 20 group and 3 more just outside in the 20s. I go up to 50 to be generous.

Outside of that range harping on academics is pointless. It is an athletic conference. The ACC brought Louisville in to play football, basketball, and the rest of the sports that the ACC sponsors. And yes you can break this academic ranking stuff down to the individual school level and the individual major level within a University if you like. I'm sure Lousville can find some major that they are top 10 in. VCU here is Richmond boasts a top 10 music department. Pitt has a fine medical school. And I haven't seen Pitt fans throwing stones at Louisville either.

When you get into individual majors you're going to find something that every school ranked in the top 200 is good at including Louisville.

I'm not saying to put the line at 100 as opposed to 50. I am saying that no line should exist at all. You say that the academic elite in this country do not look at schools outside of the top 50 for USNews rankings as academic marvels. Only speaking for Pitt and Purdue (as I considered Purdue for undergraduate and I'm sure others could say similar), I find it very insulting that you would make this statement. Pitt and Purdue STEM schools are not little niche majors that get overlooked. Purdue Engineering is widely considered to be compared with the best of the best, especially at the graduate level. Pitt Medical school and some departments of the engineering school are considered to be equals with most ivy type schools. I am not saying that Pitt or Purdue should be considered with the ivies that excel in all departments, but Pitt and Purdue STEM schools overlooked by the academic elite as you stated above. We may have to agree to disagree, because I will not consider a degree from a STEM field from either Pitt or Purdue to be inferior to a degree from UVA, sorry.

 

[btstimpy]

I'm not saying to put the line at 100 as opposed to 50. I am saying that no line should exist at all. You say that the academic elite in this country do not look at schools outside of the top 50 for USNews rankings as academic marvels. Only speaking for Pitt and Purdue (as I considered Purdue for undergraduate and I'm sure others could say similar), I find it very insulting that you would make this statement. Pitt and Purdue STEM schools are not little niche majors that get overlooked. Purdue Engineering is widely considered to be compared with the best of the best, especially at the graduate level. Pitt Medical school and some departments of the engineering school are considered to be equals with most ivy type schools. I am not saying that Pitt or Purdue should be considered with the ivies that excel in all departments, but Pitt and Purdue STEM schools overlooked by the academic elite as you stated above. We may have to agree to disagree, because I will consider a degree from a STEM field from either Pitt or Purdue to be inferior to a degree from UVA, sorry.

UVA is not known as an engineering school. But UVA has a small engineering school that is very good. It's usually top 25. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Tech is the state's engineering school. At UVA the Law School, the Business School, and the Medical School are the premier professional schools. I'm sure you can find certain majors at Purdue that rank at the top of the heap in their specialty. I'm not debating that. When I got my MS in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech, GT was ranked #1 in the United States in IE. Purdue was in the top 5.

My point is that I can probably find something that Louisville does that they are ranked highly in. I haven't looked, but I'm assuming I can. The ACC added them for Men's football and basketball. Not STEM research. Georgia Tech, NC State, and Virginia Tech do all of that you want.

 

[UPitt]

I have my undergraduate engineering degree from UVA and my graduate engineering degree from Georgia Tech, whose ranking trumped Purdue at the time as well as UVA. I found UVA much harder to get through than Georgia Tech. It's relative. Georgia Tech is the more prestigious engineering school. UVA is the more prestigious university, but engineering at UVA is hard. The classes are smaller. Everyone in them is a genious certainly smarter than me. And the grading is on a curve.

If you want to get into that debate about Ivy League level engineering schools, you need to bring MIT into the picture.

Then include CMU as well. I considered CMU for undergraduate. CMU was much higher ranked as a university, but I chose Pitt because it had a stronger background in Nuclear Engineering and I will never second guess that decision. I have taken a few classes at CMU due to the partnership that the two Universities have. Yes, the students at CMU are more intelligent, but I would not say the classes were any more difficult than Pitt. If anything, CMU classes are designed for everyone to pass. The better students at CMU put more effort into the studying on there own and the classes are just adademic. It's a similar comparison to what you made of GT vs UVA. The difficulty of the classes doesn't equate to rankings.

I am not trying to fight over which engineering and medical school is best (becuase it really depends on departments and other things), but I think it is unfair that you make a blanket statement that Universities such as Pitt and Purdue are worthless becuase they are ranked outside of the top 50 by one rankings group. I think you will find that these schools are much more highly touted in the STEM fields than you are giving them credit for. Again, I am not saying that UVA is not a good school. UVA may have a better engineering department than Pitt, but I do not think you can make the argument that UVA STEM schools are on par with Ivy schools while Pitt and Purdue are considered irrelevant.

 

[HawkHusky]

How did the UCONN board become a Purdue/Pitt/Virginia/Georgia Tech d!k measuring contest?

 

[btstimpy]

Then include CMU as well. I considered CMU for undergraduate. CMU was much higher ranked as a university, but I chose Pitt because it had a stronger background in Nuclear Engineering and I will never second guess that decision. I have taken a few classes at CMU due to the partnership that the two Universities have. Yes, the students at CMU are more intelligent, but I would not say the classes were any more difficult than Pitt. If anything, CMU classes are designed for everyone to pass. The better students at CMU put more effort into the studying on there own and the classes are just adademic. It's a similar comparison to what you made of GT vs UVA. The difficulty of the classes doesn't equate to rankings.

I am not trying to fight over which engineering and medical school is best (becuase it really depends on departments and other things), but I think it is unfair that you make a blanket statement that Universities such as Pitt and Purdue are worthless becuase they are ranked outside of the top 50 by one rankings group. I think you will find that these schools are much more highly touted in the STEM fields than you are giving them credit for. Again, I am not saying that UVA is not a good school. UVA may have a better engineering department than Pitt, but I do not think you can make the argument that UVA STEM schools are on par with Ivy schools while Pitt and Purdue are considered irrelevant.

With CMU I assume you are referring to Carnegie Mellon? That's a top 25 school. It passes my top 50 test. I know you don't want a line drawn, artificial or otherwise. And yes various schools have specialties. No question. The University of Miami Business School is much better at Latin American business than UVA's business school. That's why the ACC has the ACCIAC for Cross University degree credits. As for STEM, I don't like that acronym. I think of stem cell research when I see it. I have to do a double take. I liked the old days when we called it math and science and engineering.

 

[btstimpy]

How did the UCONN board become a Purdue/Pitt/Virginia/Georgia Tech d!k measuring contest?

We got off on a tangent and a little carried away. We'll stop. I was debating UConn fans earlier about Louisville. I'm not sure when the other schools jumped in. Somehow we got off on a STEM tangent.

 

[WestHartHusk]

UVA is not known as an engineering school. But UVA has a small engineering school that is very good. It's usually top 25. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Tech is the state's engineering school. At UVA the Law School, the Business School, and the Medical School are the premier professional schools. I'm sure you can find certain majors at Purdue that rank at the top of the heap in their specialty. I'm not debating that. When I got my MS in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech, GT was ranked #1 in the United States in IE. Purdue was in the top 5.

My point is that I can probably find something that Louisville does that they are ranked highly in. I haven't looked, but I'm assuming I can. The ACC added them for Men's football and basketball. Not STEM research. Georgia Tech, NC State, and Virginia Tech do all of that you want.

Can you? Here is an article from Forbes on Lousville that has them ranked #445 overall, ranked #103 - IN THE SOUTH ALONE. Just as a point of reference: UVA #29, Purdue #106 Cuse #123, UConn #140, Pitt #193.

It seems Like L'Ville is a rather large outlier that Stimpy is trying to ignore... Here is a sample of schools that the ACC could have taken that are more academically regarded than Ville: University of Alabama - Birmingham; North Dakota State, Georgia State; Christopher Newport; a whole host of second rung UC's; University of Hawaii - Manoa; Kansas State; Montana Technical; Azusa Pacific; Oauchata Baptist; Oklahoma Baptist; Florida Tech; University of Idaho; Western Washington; Queens College, University of South Dakota; University of New England; College of Idaho; University of Maryland - Baltimore County; College of St. Benedict, etc, etc.
;

 

[B1GALUM]

We got off on a tangent and a little carried away. We'll stop. I was debating UConn fans earlier about Louisville. I'm not sure when the other schools jumped in. Somehow we got off on a STEM tangent.

Those of us from other schools, although here to talk realignment in general and UConn as part of this subject in particular, jumped in when you made statements about our universities with which we disagreed. We are all passionate about our respective universities. It is my impression that you are passionate about the ACC as a conference and hold it in high regard. This leads me to a question ... Would you be defending Louisville and denigrating other universities in the process as part of your defense if Louisville were not joining the ACC?

 

[upstater]

It's probably the first index any University uses on a website to promote their academic standing. I didn't create the index. If you don't like it, you can take it up with USN&WR. Others like the Wall Street Journal, Princeton, Forbes, etc. have tried to create other indexes. Everyone still goes back to the USN&WR one.

This is wrong. There are many better indexes, like NRC and even Gourman, but the best is Carnegie. The problem is they don't do it every year. Why? It's cost intensive. They put tens of millions behind it. Most of the UNSWR is reputation as scribbled on a sheet of paper by university presidents who try to make themselves look good at the expense of others.

 

[upstater]

They all do in some form. Schools keep their own statistics. Who else is going to keep them?

This is wrong. Carnegie and NRC send teams to every campus. Their research and investigations are intensive and take on so much qualitative data that it would make your eyes spin.

Gourman tries to rearrange it in rankings, but I find them flawed. Still, he's better than USNews which makes absolutely no attempt to do anything but tally up a questionnaire.

A few years ago, the NRC had to write to USNWR to tell them they totally misinterpreted the NRC rankings for claissification. Because of this, USNews had to go back to the drawing board and with much embarrassment get rid of their tiered system. They were trying to copy it to add prestige but without understanding it.

 

[HuskyHawk]

No argument. Ohio State is a crapyy commuter school in Columbus, Ohio, and Maryland is a crappy commuter school in DC. Let's set the base.

This is idiotic. If you can't see that Louisville is in a different academic universe than those schools, there is no help for you. Your top 50 is self serving. The reality is closer to a top 5-7, second 15-20 or so after that, then about 50 that lump together, then another 40-50 that are ok. Louisvville is on the other side of the last 40-50.

Think about crossover student body. A good chunk of the freshmen in the ACC or B1G could have gone or would have comparable metrics to those at the other schools in the conference, with one exception. Louisville. Northwestern probably has the least commonality in the B1G. In the ACC the school least like the others isnt the best, it's the worst.

Don't kid youself that somehow Louisville is a nice 2 year old Camry parked in the country club parking lot. NC State and FSU are Camrys. Louisville is a rusted, 33 year old Chevette, belching smoke through the holes in its muffler, with one mirror hanging down, no hupcaps and old stained sheets covering the seats. The cassette player is broken.

I'm not saying UConn is in better shape in the American...we've got Memphis, which is worse still. But don't lie to yourself, it was an epic cave on academic standards.

 

[btstimpy]

Those of us from other schools, although here to talk realignment in general and UConn as part of this subject in particular, jumped in when you made statements about our universities with which we disagreed. We are all passionate about our respective universities. It is my impression that you are passionate about the ACC as a conference and hold it in high regard. This leads me to a question ... Would you be defending Louisville and denigrating other universities in the process as part of your defense if Louisville were not joining the ACC?

I'm not defending Louisville's academic ranking. They are the worst in the ACC or will be. But academic standing is relative. I'm not seeing the academic elite doing the bashing of Louisville's academic ranking or the ACC for accepting Louisville. I think the gap between academic rankings 51 and 200 is a lot smaller than the gap between 1 and 50. That was my point. Then we got off on STEM majors, medical schools, and other tangents losing the original point. I wouldn't even be talking about Louisville if they weren't going to the ACC. The whole discussion was based on criticism of the ACC for adding Louisville. I think they will be a good add from an athletics standpoint. ESPN thinks they will be a good add from a television revenue standpoint.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

As an alum and faculty member, I take issue with your view of Ohio State as a crappy commuter school. You need to spend more time researching universities before you make such pronouncements.
Here is a place to start:
http://www.osu.edu/highpoints/
http://www.osu.edu/visitors/aboutohiostate.php

I agree that Ohio State is academically a well-regarded school, outside of the perception of academics that the football team has. Of course, a ‘crappy commuter school’ is a tame comment compared to what the folks in Ann Arbor say about Ohio St.

 

[btstimpy]

Can you? Here is an article from Forbes on Lousville that has them ranked #445 overall, ranked #103 - IN THE SOUTH ALONE. Just as a point of reference: UVA #29, Purdue #106 Cuse #123, UConn #140, Pitt #193.

It seems Like L'Ville is a rather large outlier that Stimpy is trying to ignore... Here is a sample of schools that the ACC could have taken that are more academically regarded than Ville: University of Alabama - Birmingham; North Dakota State, Georgia State; Christopher Newport; a whole host of second rung UC's; University of Hawaii - Manoa; Kansas State; Montana Technical; Azusa Pacific; Oauchata Baptist; Oklahoma Baptist; Florida Tech; University of Idaho; Western Washington; Queens College, University of South Dakota; University of New England; College of Idaho; University of Maryland - Baltimore County; College of St. Benedict, etc, etc.
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I have to stick with the way USN&WR separates the National Universities out from the small regional schools that don't have Doctoral Majors. There is an athletics component here too. Forbes includes every little liberal arts college from everywhere in their comparisons. Most of them I've never heard of. That's no help.