Lehman to step down

[Ben Rocky '04]

There are some major portions of the formula that US News uses that have remained constant over the years, and this is where I feel the administration could have made changes to address the problem.  
Chief among the formula components is class size, specifically the percentage of classes under 20 and those under 50.  These two factors count towards almost 8% of the US News ranking data and this is where the hiring of just a few dozen new professors in key departments [for example Govt, AEM, ORIE, PAM, several Bio Depts, ILR, Nat Res, ECE]  could have really reduced the number of classes that US News perceives as large.  This also would have an added bonus of reducing the student to faculty ratio at Cornell, which is higher then many of our peer institutions.  
Another area that US News factors into the ranking calculation in a big way is the selectivity of a university, basically a school's rejection rate.  Cornell had a large jump in applications for the class of 2009, almost 17% which will result in a higher rejection rate for the school.  This jump in applications could be attributed to many things: the new Big Red Book (long overdue) and perhaps the new website.  To increase our selectivity without changing the size of the undergraduate student body, we need to increase applications more.  Although 17% is a huge jump, I feel that this number could be much higher.  Lehman should have fired Doris Davis as soon as he took office as she has done very little to help our on- and off- campus recruiting.  He was talking about converting the AD White House from Society for the Humanities offices into a campus visitor relations center and starting point for tour groups.  He should have done that.
Both of these would be small steps that would not have deformed the character of the school but would have made a difference in how the school is viewed nationwide.  Personally, Cornell is a top ten or even a top 5 school in the nation and we should be ranked as such.  Forgive my pride.
I do not think that a university President's job is to concentrate on rankings, and I am sure that his failure to do so was not the only reason or even part of the reason he was removed from office.  The schools around us: Chicago, Brown, Wash-U & JHU are better at playing the rankings game right now, and we should learn from them.  I am hopeful the next president of Cornell will recognize the problem & can bring in some good people to work on it.

Regarding your PS:  I think its the Cornell administration that says rankings don't matter.  The minute we fell from the top ten, that was their typical spin to hide the fact that they had not done their jobs.

[Jordan 04]

[Q]Ben Rocky 04 Wrote:

 Cornell had a large jump in applications for the class of 2009, almost 17% which will result in a higher rejection rate for the school.  This jump in applications could be attributed to many things: the new Big Red Book (long overdue) and perhaps the news website.  [/q]

Wasn't it a result of going to the common application?

[Ben Rocky '04]

I'm sure thats also part of it.

[DeltaOne81]

The #7 ranking was a mistake, plain and simple. US News got our student:faculty ratio blatantly wrong. I think they transposed it, like 13:1 instead of 31:1 - but whatever. Although a friend of mine who entered in 98-99 was fond of jokingly telling people that they based it on the outstanding current freshman class

As far as rankings go, it's virtually impossible to move much, because somewhere around 50% of the ranking is based on 'reputation'. The name Cornell will never ring the same with the average non-academic the same way that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton do. And not even the same to your average geek at MIT, CalTech, maybe Berkeley, etc. You'd be amazed, sitting in my dorm room at night goofing off before sleep, chatting with random people online... how many of them had never ever heard of Cornell, or maybe vaguely recognized the name, but had no idea it was an Ivy. I dunno if it's location or what, but providing a world class education and being involved in a mission to Mars which got major press, can only do so much when you're behind in the name department.

As far as Redbud, it's a shame, but it was pretty much inevitable once they decided to redo west. First off, it's not a woods, hardly, it's more of a field or a backyard. It's pretty, but we're not talking rainforest here. And Cornell has taken steps to use vegetation to disguise the new parking lot.

It's a simple fact that they needed a lot. I'd love it if it could be elsewhere, but it can't. As is Ithaca's way, some hundred-thousand-or-so environmental impact studies have been done and cleared. There are no prettiness impact studies, so deal. I'm as sentimental as anyone... heck, I'm sentimental that they're knocking the UHaul's down. Class of 28 may have been whole unremarkable, plain, standard, and old, but I have some great memories there and it sucks that when I visit Cornell I will no longer be able to stand out front or wander inside and remember all the hours and months I spent there, the good and the bad, but overall a great freshman year. But I'm not gonna invade someone's office about it. You have to draw the limit and accept that you can't win them all, and some specific examples aren't worth it when your time could be better spent fighting for things that you can make a difference on, and make a bigger difference to the community and the world. They lost, they should've moved on, and they broke the law. Deal with it. And I'm as liberal as anyone on a lot of issues.

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:
I'm as sentimental as anyone... heck, I'm sentimental that they're knocking the UHaul's down. Class of 28 may have been whole unremarkable, plain, standard, and old, but I have some great memories there and it sucks that when I visit Cornell I will no longer be able to stand out front or wander inside and remember all the hours and months I spent there, the good and the bad, but overall a great freshman year. But I'm not gonna invade someone's office about it.[/q]

I miss the Dustbowl. :`(

[KeithK]

[q]Wasn't it a result of going to the common application?[/q]Common application?  Are you saying they had specific applications for each individual college for a while?  I'm pretty sure there was only one when I applied (though I can't check since I'm at work right now).

[KeithK]

The class size/faculty ratio situation in a consequence of being a much larger school than a lot of our peer schools.  Yes, maybe the administration could improve the numbers in some of the specific class size metric by some targeted hiring.  But Cornell is going to lose on these grounds to a Princeton or Brown simply due to the size of the student body.

Maybe we could just send letters to half of next year's incoming class that say "Sorry, your offer has been rescinded"?  That would soon halve our faculty ratio, improve class sizes and (iwith clever accounting) improve the rejection ratio!  A perfect solution! :-D

[Jordan 04]

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

 [Q2]Wasn't it a result of going to the common application?[/Q]
Common application?  Are you saying they had specific applications for each individual college for a while?  I'm pretty sure there was only one when I applied (though I can't check since I'm at work right now).
[/q]

http://www.commonapp.org/

[Chris 02]

The Sun has posted a discussion it had with Lehman concerning his departure.  For those still wondering about the "why", I suggest reading some of the feedback.  It might be purely rumor and speculation, as another reader suggests.

http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/06/14/42ae7ede149e4

[Beeeej]

I have to say those are all excellent ideas, Ben.  But I don't think they're necessarily very realistic given financial and logistical reality - especially if you're judging someone on his first two years as a university's president.

A few dozen new faculty?  With whose ten million dollars per year?  In what previously unused offices and classrooms, or in what new buildings with what hundred million dollars?  And do you know for sure that Lehman didn't push in his first two years for more faculty hiring, with the results simply not yet obvious or in fruition?

You say "he should have done that" about the White House as if it could've happened with a wave of his hand, and not after addressing the concerns of all the departments involved and over the course of 18 months of figuring out how to move everyone properly and get the plan to work.

Plus, I respect that you're never completely satisfied and don't want to rest on laurels, but 17% is a hell of a jump in the world of undergrad college admissions.

I appreciate your criticism of Lehman, and I think every President Cornell has should be held to a high standard.  I just don't know if you're being fair here.

Beeeej

[profudge]

Ben,

As I have a son  who will be a college freshman next year (Oberlin) and he looked at a bunch of good smaller schools  there is a wave of baby boomer second generation kids many of the good schools  Colgate, RPI, Swarthmore, Oberlin, Olin, and  SUNY Binghamton Honors college and some others have seen a high 20 to even a 30 % increase in applications in last year.       This is according to what Admissions folks have been telling kids and parents.  

It is a zoo out there not only the entry but to fight for some Merit and/or needs based money (needs is defined such that I would have to mortgage to the hilt and pay interest a lot before offspring would get really significant help  maybe 75% of costs which I had hoped for).    I was dreaming :-(

[ninian '72]

Although a few years old now, Caitlin Flanagan's Atlantic article on college admissions is still a breath of fresh air on this topic:

http://www.chs.fuhsd.org/staff/~ta/gov/intro/collegearticle.htm

The rankings are a least common denominator of easily measured indices that in reality provide little useful information in helping to make good college decisions.  The advantages of a school like Cornell that offers a wide range of courses and opportunities for in-depth studies are simply not going to be reflected in the ratings, compared to our more limited Ivy peers.  The US News ratings also rely too heavily on the evaluation of peers and not enough on objective measures, such as number of Nobel prize winners or AAAS fellows on the faculty, which are probably better indicators of faculty quality.  

It's unfortunate that schools do game the ratings system.  Examples: One esteemed university in Virginia makes a point in soliciting donations from alumni that if they give even a little bit, it helps in the ratings.  Or, a private university in North Carolina is famed for its aggressive recruiting to boost selectivity rates.  One of their oft-repeated claims is that they reject two of every three valedictorians who apply - simply breathtaking when one considers the fact that there is no national database of valedictorians and that admissions decisions are made before final class rankings are available.  Ehrenberg's findings are depressing in that ratings do matter, but I would hate to see Cornell head down this cynical path.  

[Ken \'70]

[Q]ugarte Wrote:

Here is the article from the Sun:[/q]

Things have certainly changed since I was there.  Taking over a university building got not punishment but the president's arm around your shoulder at Barton hall.  These protestors obviously weren't carrying enough shotguns, weren't the right color and didn't resort to sufficient thuggery to earn the fawning solicitude of the administration.

[Rosey]

[Q]Ken '70 Wrote:
Things have certainly changed since I was there.  Taking over a university building got not punishment but the president's arm around your shoulder at Barton hall.  These protestors obviously weren't carrying enough shotguns, weren't the right color and didn't resort to sufficient thuggery to earn the fawning solicitude of the administration.

[/q]

I think it's more likely simply that these protestors aren't sympathetic to any significant constituency that the Cornell administration cares about.  The vast, vast majority of comments I've read about this case demonstrate little tolerance for criminal and/or childish behavior, especially when it's being employed to support such a trivial cause.

FWIW, the immediate cause of the Willard Straight takeover was equally trivial, but was masked by the larger and more inflammatory issue of civil rights, which made the University much less confident in the successful PR of a heavy-handed response.  There is no larger issue here: these protestors are reactionary extremists with too much time on their hands and too little perspective; thus, few people care one way or the other about how much time they spend in jail.

Kyle

[KeithK]

While I agree that there were much deeper issues involved in the Willard Straight takeover than in the Rosebud protest, I also think that there's a different environment today.  There would much less tolerance for a violent (or threatening) demonstration today than there was in 1970.