U.S. News & World Report

[CalallenStang]

Rodrod - fantastic post. And WOW on that Pepperdine research number - are all the professors there drinking cocktails at Duke's rather than doing research?

[gostangs]

Not sure I would throw stone on anyone else's research numbers quite yet.

[CalallenStang]

Not sure I would throw stone on anyone else's research numbers quite yet.

Read Rodrod's post again in the area regarding research funding from the government. SMU's number is low but the Pepperdine number is just over 1/10 of SMU's number.

[StallionsModelT]

IMO, the stagnation in the rankings is a result of RGT. The man is an absolutely fantastic fundraiser, but other than that I'm not sure what he's doing to progress SMU academically. Surely he is winding down his time on The Hilltop. We've needed fresh blood at the top for about 5 years now.

[coloradoStang]

Where are we ranked if you take out every school that doesn't have D-1 football?

[StallionsModelT]

We are #26 of schools that play D1A football and fourth among G5 behind Rice (#18) and Tulane (#41) and UCONN (#57).

AAC Schools

Tulane (41)
UCONN (57)
SMU (61)
Tulsa (86)
Temple (115)
Cincinnati (140)
USF (156)
UCF (168)
Houston (187)
ECU (194)

[SoCal_Pony]

Comes out with its 2015 rankings next Wednesday. Care to predict where we will wind up? I say we move up but not enough to crack the top 50. I predict #52.....

You started this mess...

Care to elaborate as well?

Clearly, it is the fault of June Jones............

According to Rodrod, you might be right.

Solid post Rodrod.

Hopefully someone at our university is well versed on all this and is playing the game.

Yep, it's partially a game, but we should play it to crack the Top 50. Also agree with the posters on our B-school.

[rodrod5]

Rodrod - fantastic post. And WOW on that Pepperdine research number - are all the professors there drinking cocktails at Duke's rather than doing research?

I am not extremely familiar with Pepperdine, but if you look at the breakdown of degrees it is pretty clear why their research is low although I was surprised HOW LOW.

They have no engineering at all, they have a graduate enrollment that is close to the number of undergrads, BUT a large number of those are in law and business neither of which are research oriented fields of study.

Also the main focus of their graduate school is education and psychology. I am not sure what students they cater to with those programs, BUT if you are getting a "working degree" or a "professional degree" in either of those fields you will generally not be conducting research. To be a "psychologist" you have to have at least a masters and thus they are surely catering to a lot of students needing that degree.

In education of course you get paid more with a masters and even more with a doctorate and a doctorate can often be an Ed.D which is a non-research degree. In the graduate school of education and psychology they offer all MA degrees with the exception of one MS degree in Education Administration and all of the doctorates are either Ed. D degrees or a PsyD. Clinical Psychology so again a professional degree and any research one would participate in for that degree is probably as a part of something that a larger hospital is conducting and thus any money or support for that research is not going through Pepperdine even if it supports some of their students. All of the psychology masters are MAs.

They have a MPP for Public Policy and then in their arts and sciences college they have Accounting (also offered in the business college along with standard MA and MBA business degrees), American Studies, Cinematic Media Production, Nutrition (which again looks to have a professional degree orientation since you need a masters to be a licensed nutritionist), Religion, Screen and TV Writing, and strategic Communications. Their business college actually has a number of MS offerings, but I would imagine those are geared towards working professionals that do not need support and that are using their own companies case studies for their research.

So really they offer 100% of NONE of the degrees that bring in large research grants and even at the undergrad level they do not have a broad offering of those types of programs. Their graduate programs pretty much to me appear to be catering to those in public service that can either CONvince their local or state agency to put them through an expensive school or students that have some "resources" that woke up and realized that nutrition, psychology and education degrees either need a masters to actually be a practicing professional in that field or they get a great deal more pay and same with those in public service as well where I would have to guess a number of their students have a promotion already offered to them if they can just get that MA degree and thus paying for it themselves or again CONvincing their local government to pay it will make up for the time, cost and effort.

[gostangs]

Rod - Any idea on why Tulane jumped so many spots in one year?

[rodrod5]

Rod - Any idea on why Tulane jumped so many spots in one year?

Actually looking at the US News Data pages from last year and this year there is not a good explanation

here is 2014

http://web.archive.org/web/201409202017 ... ata/page+3

you can go back and forth at the bottom page numbers just like the current page

and here is 2015

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandrevie ... ata/page+3

the interesting thing is Tulane had a marked improvement in 6 year graduation rate, but the other two shown metrics were the same

Tulane passed over Pepperdine, Texas, tOSU, George Washington, Yeshive, Washington, Miami, Florida, Penn State, Wisconsin and Illinois

as an example Texas actually slightly improved in all 3 shown categories, Texas shows a slightly smaller enrollment, we know that The State of Texas funded universities better this year Vs the last two years (so more resources per student) and yet Texas dropped. We do not have class size metrics (but you would think that would have improved for Texas even with a slightly smaller enrollment),we do not have reputation, but seriously is the rep of any of those schools dropping in a year among academia and we do know that Texas did just finish a capital campaign so perhaps giving is down which could mean lower resources and a lower alumni giving rate and we do not have research numbers which can fluctuate.

Pepperdine shows slightly larger enrollment, slightly higher acceptance, slightly lower retention and slightly higher 6 year graduation.

Ohio State slightly higher enrollment, no idea on state funding levels, slightly more selective, the same retention and 1% higher 6 year graduation rate. No idea on class size, did their academic rep really change (haha doubtful), research funding not known and who knows on class sizes.

It stays pretty consistent with that for most all the ones Tulane passed.

If we look at 2013 again the 6 year graduation rate seems to be the major improvement over time

http://web.archive.org/web/201310241430 ... ata/page+3

2012

http://web.archive.org/web/201208192041 ... ata/page+3

Texas Tech, TCU and SMU all had significantly more endowment growth recently

http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/Endowme ... .27.15.pdf

Yeshiva happened to be down a fair amount and I believe they are having financial issues overall and had done bernie maddoff issues in addition to overall financial issues so there is an explanation for them dropping.

If I had to guess I would not see that Tulane has been any more successful in raising their SAT as compared to SMU at best I would think they had matched that. We do not have the latest research data past the 2013 that I posted, but I would imagine US Snooze might have that. As an aside Yehsiva had a great year a in 2011 and has dropped a lot since then to 2013, but Tulane was down in 2013 from 2012, but who knows what they did for 2014 or 2015. And Texas Tech has been consistently up over the 2011-2013 and before and they dropped some. SMU has been slightly up over recent time as well I believe.

So I think Tulane might have done some class size adjustments, and perhaps low ranked a few "peers" and also they did raise tuition a pretty steep $3,000 over the last year as US Snooze shows, but SMU raised theirs about $4,800 so again more resources overall coming in most likely for SMU.

I really see no reason that Tulane would have jumped that high unless high school counselors for a fruit basket and a gift card, Tulane adjusted class sized, kicked some [deleted] in research and low balled some peers along the way while keeping their peer rep in tact and perhaps had all available alumni send in a dollar.

[gostangs]

not sure how it fleshes out in the numbers but I do know UT has had issues with their overall SAT. The 7% gets them top of the class but a very large number of very low SAT scores that it is difficult to counter with the 30% discretion they have in their admissions. Our undergrad business school for example has a much higher average SAT than theirs - and the converse is true in the MBA student quality.

Tulane baffles me. From all the data it appears we should be right with them or a notch or two below. The zone we are in right now feels very crowded. Groupings of 4 way ties, so that the difference between lower 40's and mid 60's feels like a really close bunching of schools.

[Stallion]

I don't know how it plays in but Tulane pre-Katrina was in the low 40s. Perhaps they still get benefit of doubt on perception

[rodrod5]

In support of Tulane a bit here are some other things to consider. They have been a member of the AAU since 1958 so they have been considered a high quality university for a long long time. I am the first one to say that change at a university, especially positive change, does not happen over night or even in a few years. It is much easier to wreck a university in a short period of time than improve it and Tulane just about did that post Katrina and The Green Waves. UH fans especially have a hard time understanding this with their insistence that The Carnegie Foundation CLASSIFICATION RU/VH that is specifically disavowed as a ranking or a meaningful measure of overall university quality suddenly means "tier 1". Sure there has been a lot of meaningful change at UH with entrance metrics, donations, on campus housing and the like, but that does not shift the overall performance of a university of 40,000 students in a few short years or even a decade it takes much longer.

The jump by Tulane was pretty large, but I think it was more a matter of some schools especially public universities in places that were hard hit during the economic crisis and that cut funding finally showing some of the results of that. Again showing those results well down the road as budgets shrink or stay stagnant and as enrollment trickles up to try and make up for some of that especially foreign enrollment that is the US higher ed cash cow right now.

Tulane still did $160 million in research and development in 2013 and sure they have a medical school, but that is only relevant to AAU evaluation the US Snooze does not factor the make up of a university into their metrics. 2008 to 2010 was a rougher time for Tulane with a marked decrease in federal research dollars and in earned doctorate production and 2013 represented an increase in both of those metrics.t hey also had a large increase in post docs in science, engineering and health in 2013. So I would imagine they are finally starting to recover from katrina and getting their research back on track along with their medical program. We know it is the 10 year anniversary of katrina this year so Tulane is probably recovering from that. The hit they probably took from that was hard and fast as I said above about hurting a university quickly and the recovery is long and slow.

While the economy of Louisiana has not been great Tulane is old money and oil and has has been great until this year and Louisiana was actually in better shape while most of the rest of the USA was down especially Florida, PA, Ohio and California and Tulane had a long term recovery plan in place with deep pocketed supporters behind it so they were "recovering" even while others were cutting and it was a plan coming after already being hit very hard.

As a comparison SMU has raised a ton of cash, but most of it has gone into what I would call the "foundation" of buildings, campus infrastructure, the Bush Library (there is a cost in there somewhere for sure) and increased degree offerings. In my opinion TCU actually always had a bit more diverse undergrad offering as did Baylor and TCU and Baylor have both invested a great deal in campus infrastructure just before SMU did. TCU closed out their campaign a couple of years into when SMU started theirs and then they had what I would call an undercover campaign for athletics infrastructure when they saw the opportunity. What TCU did not invest in enough IMO was a full engineering school or college VS what SMU has now. TCU looks to be "on the move" again with the medical school, but that all depends on if they eventually break it away from north Texas state (as I think they will) and if they fully develop it and their health sciences offerings to carry the weight of increased research.

Baylor was pretty diverse as far as degree offerings, they had their leadership nonsense along the way and they never had a really public campaign although they did put out a call to raise cash for academic assistance during the economic crash that raised some money. Baylor has done like SMU with engineering and moved from an engineering degree with a couple of specializations under that single degree (still ABET accredited) to individual departments and degree programs while TCU has not made that transition. But I think TCU was about 8 or 10 years behind Baylor and TCU in offering engineering degrees.

In 1997 Baylor was a School of Engineering and CS and their departments were Engineering and CS. Engineering was a BSE with "options" which is what TCU offers now. TCU started their engineering in 1991 and even in 1997 looking at the web archive it was not developed outside of a department in the AddRan. In 1997 SMU already had the School of Engineering and Applied Science in place and a couple of departments.

I will not predict that SMU will put major distance between themselves and TCU and Baylor or that they will make a rise like Tulane, but they are in a good position to do so and a lot of it depends on what they focus on in the future. Baylor has stated a desire to conduct more research and I have not seen TCU state that desire publicly, but I think the medical school affiliation is a statement.

I think SMU is in the best position to push that forward and Baylor is not far behind while TCU still needs to transition their engineering program although they are now a college of science and engineering instead of all those departments in AddRan. This will probably not be popular with SMU fans, but as it stands now even with sMU doing $22.5 million, Baylor $13.6 and TCU $8.5 in research and development none of those amounts says "research profile" and thus any difference you see especially in US Snooze rankings is based on the SMU freshman metrics mostly and endowments are all pretty much alike and I would imagine that overall peer rep with HS counselors and higher ed types are very similar and IMO "research" is what would drive a change in that metric for any of the three and look at Tulane and their research Vs the three and you see the difference.

All three could make meaningful change with a focus on research, hiring national academy members and other known faculty, increasing graduate especially PhD production and post doc slots. I would say SMU with the larger overall engineering program and with the better freshman metrics is in a great position, but will the focus be placed on those areas. The money raised has been impressive, but will SMU let up on tha for even a short time at the end of the campaign or will they still push. Baylor IMO is due for a fund raiser and a major campaign because last I recall they were starting one or planning one when they ditched Sloan as president and they were planing one again with Starr, but instead went with the shorter term and less published call for academic aid funds. TCU closed theirs out in 2013 and it was pretty successful and I am not sure it included the stajium money, but it may have. If they win at football this year and next and they are serious about a medical school and not just a degree that says TCU who knows they could start another "silent phase" in 2016 and make it public in a couple of years after that. I would not be surprised with that at all.

So if Baylor and TCU both have a major campaign soon and properly channel the money they can still hold position relative to SMU or even make a slight gain. If SMU IMO does not properly channel theirs and instead chooses to offer a larger number of new degrees, puts too much emphasis on programs without a research orientation and if they let up on donations with the close of the Century Campaign I do not think they will lose position, but I do not see major gains. TO be clear I think it is all in place for major gains, but if you look at the landscape the universities SMU wants to push past already have the major research profile in place and their metrics for freshman are strong as well and they are not sitting still on research either.

We will look at SMU relative to privates above and just below in US Snooze. Syracuse just below SMU well they dropped out of the AAU, they have placed a focus on "the needs of the area" (which to a conservative like me means "social degrees with little real value and no research focus), their research and development is down from a high of $107 in 2010 to $70 in 2013.

Worcester Poly $25 million in research and development and has been growing over the last few years. They are about half the size of SMU so their faculty are "productive" and they have slightly better retention and graduation rates on US Snooze. George Washington $202 million in R&D enough said. Yeshiva $271 million in R&D, but they have major financial issues and they have been wondering how to deal with them and their decline in US Snooze reflects that. Pepperdine I don't know how they are doing it other than west coast bias and they must have impressive freshman metrics and they must have 100% of their classes under 20 students and none over 50. So there is two universities SMU should be able to move past in the future if they properly manage class sizes and enrollment and faculty to student ratio. Miami $345 million in R&D so again enough said.

Northeastern east coast bias and $116 million in R&D, 3 national academy members like SMU, 1340 SAT in 2011 with SMU 1275 (numbers from 2013 CMUP report), national merit 105 to SMU 21. So again it shows what SMU needs to work on. Pass others in national academy members which should not be extremely difficult, recruit students with piece of paper credentials like a national merit designation and research and development dollars especially federally awarded.

Lehigh 11 national merit students, 8 national academy members, 1310 SAT and $33 million in R&D. SMU should be able to advance on Lehigh.

Rensselaer $92.5 R&D, 1375 SAT, 8 national academy, 21 national merit.

From there you are looking at schools with pretty much $130+ in R&D and other metrics that are similar or better to SMU on the private school front.

I think SMU would do well to over the next 6-8 years target at least 3 national academy of science members or national academy of engineering members and just as importantly probably 2 academy of arts and sciences members and probably 20 national merit students to get those totals to about 30 merit students and 8 national academy members and get research to at least $60 million with a large chunk of that federally funded and bump the post doc numbers and PhD production. Others will not be standing still, but that would probably actually bump SMU over some public schools in the same range and if a couple of privates falter or stand still SMU could slip past them as well.

The US snooze is not the end all be all, but at this point the things SMU needs to do if they want to advance in ANY rankings that anyone considers relevant or meaningful for even a few metrics are pretty much going to help them in the US Snooze as much or more than in anything else and if SMU wants to improve overall perception from anyone to HS counselors to academic types again the answer is the same increased research profile and larger numbers of "recognized" faculty and students with "recognized" credentials not just high metrics. And truth be told it is probably just as helpful Vs harmful if Baylor and TCU move in the same direction at the same pace of not faster because it is going to be hard to ever really have people especially outside of Texas differentiate between the three. This is the same as the "east coast" and "west coast" bias that shows up. When you have BC, Northeastern, Rensselaer, Tufts and on and on all in a geographic area not much bigger than Texas and all with similar metrics even if a couple may be outside the norm it is hard to say "well this one is just so much lower than the other". Same with California when you have all the UC schools, Stanford, Cal Tech and on and on all recruiting the same students and with similar metrics in many areas you have to really look deep at the numbers to see a difference and most academic types being ask to "rate" those schools based on peer perception are not even going to look at the numbers as I have above they are going to toss them all in together and it is US Snooze and their flawed metrics weights that will sift them slightly, but still above schools in other areas where universities are not all lumped together in a large group of "so similar".

[smusic 00]

I read none of that.#toomanywords

[Charleston Pony]

This is old but when I lived in South Carolina in the '80's, I can't tell you the number of cars I saw on the road with an orange sticker that said IPTAY. This was Clemson's fundraising club. Back then it stood for I Pay Ten A Year. Wish we could get all alums to do the same thing..........

IPTAY started a long time ago and it still exists. Clemson has fostered a fantastic culture of giving back amongst its alumni.

I think IPTAY (Clemson's equivalent of our Mustang Club) has more members than Clemson's undergraduate population but fewer than it's total student enrollment. Clemson is about twice the size of SMU. Last figures I heard was that our Mustang Club had about 4k members or about 2/3 our undergraduate population. Clemson does a good job of getting current students into IPTAY and I see we are now encouraging active students to join the Mustang Club. Let's hope this is the start of developing more support of our athletics programs from our alumni, but alumni contributions towards athletics remains a pretty small percentage of overall giving. I don't know how we compare in that regard. I know that I am one of three from my family who attended SMU and I'm the only one who gives anything to the school.