Congress allows Ivy League antitrust exemption to expire

[billhoward]

If only there were fewer applicants with both intellectual and physical talent the organization, operation, and finances of colleges and universities would be greatly simplified. We could have universities for athletes and separate universities for scholars.

I was about to say: How many spaces from known-for-sports universities would we need for a scholars school(s) of the SEC conference? Could they just build an annex abutting Vanderbilt? But really, the SEC is heavily populated by the top state schools of the Souuthest and they're pretty much okay academically.

There must be 10X the number of academics qualified to teach at an Ivy/MIT/Stanford/Amherst/Wellsley as there are positions available. Many wind up at the best state universities

Some SEC schools and their USNews ranking (national universities, the one that has the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, etc.), ratings FWIW:

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 13 Vanderbilt  (SEC football outlier, 2000s football record 35-124, .243)  
 29 Florida
 38 Texas (when it joins circa 2025)
 49 Georgia (although it is painful to hear Herschel Walker speak)
 67 Texas A&M
 97 Auburn
137 Alabama
Plus give credit to SEC coach Bear Bryant to putting sports and academics in perspective: "It's kind of hard to rally around a math class."

[Al DeFlorio]

If only there were fewer applicants with both intellectual and physical talent the organization, operation, and finances of colleges and universities would be greatly simplified. We could have universities for athletes and separate universities for scholars.

I was about to say: How many spaces from known-for-sports universities would we need for a scholars school(s) of the SEC conference? Could they just build an annex abutting Vanderbilt? But really, the SEC is heavily populated by the top state schools of the Souuthest and they're pretty much okay academically.

There must be 10X the number of academics qualified to teach at an Ivy/MIT/Stanford/Amherst/Wellsley as there are positions available. Many wind up at the best state universities

Some SEC schools and their USNews ranking (national universities, the one that has the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, etc.), ratings FWIW:

Code Select Expand


 13 Vanderbilt  (SEC football outlier, 2000s football record 35-124, .243)  
 29 Florida
 38 Texas (when it joins circa 2025)
 49 Georgia (although it is painful to hear Herschel Walker speak)
 67 Texas A&M
 97 Auburn
137 Alabama
Plus give credit to SEC coach Bear Bryant to putting sports and academics in perspective: "It's kind of hard to rally around a math class."

Texas is much stronger academically than 38, but selectivity numbers kill the state schools in US News rankings.  Same for Berkekey, UCLA, Illinois, Michigan et al.

[billhoward]

Texas is much stronger academically than 38, but selectivity numbers kill the state schools in US News rankings.  Same for Berkekey, UCLA, Illinois, Michigan et al.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could X out from the rankings every factor you don't want to know, and make it more applicable?

I've done some surveys (as a non-stats-major person assigning and editing) on PC and vendor satisfaction and have worked where another department has done college surveys. If you allow the reader a set of sliders, they can dial in multiple outcomes. Not matter what: You'll always have MIT, Harvard and Princeton, Duke and Stanford, Amherst and Williams near the top. They have great faculty. They're exclusive (snob appeal counts for something) and have very high yields. They have more scholarship money to give to lower-income families and their high rankings give them a leg up on getting minority students. If one cares more for engagement (social good engagement? diversity engagement?), or puts a high or low premium on scholarship money, or career earnings, or % employed or on to grad school in the following year, it varies. Cornell should have a breakout rating for the state/public colleges for NYS residents because they're more affordable.

BTW when you have lots of breakouts including national universities, liberal arts colleges, regional universities, you can have 10 or more schools with #1 rankings. Each of which (#1 rank) can be licensed for fees (USNews does this for reasons beyond altruism). For big schools, there could be breakouts for popular majors, giving, say, CMU a shot at #1 for computer science.

The more ways you have to drill down and make the survey more useful, the more data you gather, the greater the chance of a screw-up, and it always all comes together last minute. How do you know until afterwards that Columbia (allegedly) fudged its class-size numbers. (Because somebody at Columbia said their Class Size stat didn't make sense on its face, based on what he knew.) Also, some stats guys can't write, and some writers don't know squat about stats. Example of smart people confronting statistics: When I handed off the City Hall beat from me to a Seven Sisters grad, she took on the proposed city budget that was going from $102M to $107M and needed calculator help. I asked, do you have a guestimate of how much the increase is (4%-6% would be a good guess), no idea she said, said she needed a calculator, thought I played a trick handing over an HP RPN ("this is a calculator?! There's no bleeping equals key" ), walked her through the steps, she got an answer of 1.049, and said, "You said it would be about 5%. But it's 1.04%, [truncates the something-point-nine part] unless your calculator can't do math."  

Who hasn't worked with someone who doesn't understand percent vs. percentage points? A 4-point electoral lead, 47%-43%-10% undecided lead is a lot safer than a 4% lead with two weeks to go. I just never know if the writer for a daily paper (well, available daily, online) has those two down pat.

[Give My Regards]

Lots of people don't math well.

Always hated HP calculators, BTW.

[osorojo]

Just running an issue through a calculator (or computer) and accepting the results ignores the accuracy of the data and too often legitimizes conclusions based upon faulty evidence and just plain  lies. The old boys who founded an institution where any person could find instruction in any study broke new ground and pretty much delegitimized overall ratings of educational institutions offering over a dozen major courses of study.