Houston: Tier 1 or Cougar High?
Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2011 3:05 amWe have all seen UH fans touting their school as “Tier 1â€, and implying that it is superior now to SMU. These claims are well worth examining. Current Tier 1 schools in Texas according the criteria laid out by the state are: Rice, UT, and A&M. Being T1 in Texas opens up more funding for schools from Texas (NRUF) and it is a sign of prestige/legitimacy. The money is what everyone is after. Google TTech, UTD, UTA, UTSA, UTEP, UH, UNT, and Tier 1 and you will see that they are all chasing the money. This is why I am using the state’s criteria as what Tier 1 means.
Let us look at Houston:
Recently the University of Houston was classified by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as a very high research university. There have been plenty of message boards touting this as proof of UH’s excellence. While this sounds great, it does not make it a T1 school in the eyes of Texas according to the criteria laid out by the State Senate. Let us further look at Carnegie’s classification of UH. 108 schools a VHRU (the top classification for research intensity). I have not been able to pin down the exact criteria for this classification, but I suspect dollars spent/obtained is the key criteria. You may also notice that schools that are VHRU are not necessarily also members of the American Association of Universities. Houston is not an AAU school. AAU has more stringent criteria for what constitutes research and only has 59 members. Let us get back to Carnegie. Houston’s undergraduate program is “selectiveâ€, has a high transfer rate-in, is primarily nonresidential, and is a Medium full-time four-year. Selective deals with SAT scores but Carnegie points out that the data is misleading due to UH’s HTI rate. From Carnegie, Houston’s bottom 25th percentile for SAT-Verbal/Sat-Math/ACT is 450/500/20, this is nowhere near SMU or the T1 schools of Texas bottom 25th percentile. HTI means that more than 19 percent of students transfer-in. NR means that less than 25% of undergrads live on campus. MFT4 means that more than 60 percent but less than 80 percent of students at are full-time. Again, being a very high research university does not make UH Tier-1 in the eyes of the State of Texas.
What are the actual requirements laid out by the state? I did not want to digg through the actual bill, so I got a basic outline of the requirements from UTSA’s Tier one page, all the schools say about the same thing, just slightly different wording. I visited UTSA’s last, so I used it.
First:
An institution would have to meet specific criteria, including being designated as an emerging research university, and would have to spend $45 million in restricted research funds for two consecutive years.
In 2010, UH had more than $90 million according to their website.
Second, Then a university must meet four of six criteria:
• $400 million in endowments: UH had just under $500 million. SMU, Rice, UT, and A&M are all over $1 Billion for comparison, but $400 is the criteria so UH passes.
• 200 doctoral degrees awarded each year: UH has averaged 200 doctorates for the past three years. Total Research doctorates awarded last year according to Carnegie for SMU: 53, Rice: 168, UT: 818, A&M: 597, UH: 231.
• membership in the Association of Research Libraries, Phi Beta Kappa or equivalent national recognition. UH is a member of ARL. It is not a member of Phi Beta Kappa. SMU, Rice, UT, and A&M all have PBK chapters. Rice, UT, and A&M are also members of ARL (126 Members Total). SMU libraries rank first in total volumes held among non-Association of Research Libraries universities in the United States according to the SMU website.
• achieve a faculty of high quality, who are Nobel Laureates and/or members of the National Academies: TBD, and I have not seen any list of what that means.
• achieve an entering freshman class of high academic achievement as determined by THECB: Again this is TBD, and their SAT/ACT scores are nowhere near T1 schools or SMU.
• demonstrate a commitment to high quality graduate education: Again this is TBD.
Conclusion:
Is Houston a Tier 1 School? No. It may be a VHRU but it does not yet meet the full criteria of what T1 means according to Texas. Furthermore it has not shed its image of being a commuter school with low admission standards and a high amount of transfers. It does a good job of serving the Houston community and should be proud of its record, but claims made by fans are extremely off base. They are fans so they should always be off base, but the issue was still worth examining. What we do have is several state schools taking huge strides to improve. Not sure who will win from the pool of state schools. I would imagine undergraduate entering quality would be the hardest thing to improve. Nice try Houston, but you have a long way to go.
Final Question:
To anyone in the know with SMU’s admin, does becoming T1 fit into SMU’s long term goals? Would we eligible for the state funds? I know we certainly meet the endowment requirements. Our SAT scores are comparable to the three current T1 schools. Our professors are of high caliber and our PhD programs are well respected. I would guess our limit would be the amount of research dollars we generate due to years of focusing on liberal arts and the only recent resurgence of engineering/science. Too bad we still do not have the medical school from our early years. We are currently classified as high (one below very high) by Carnegie. I can see how we could increase research dollars relatively quickly with an expansion of certain fields, but going from 50 doctorates per year to 200 is a massive undertaking to insure quality is maintained, this would probably mean recruiting students to new un-established departments/programs, not to mention funding all of those new doctorate students for 4+ years a piece. That would probably be the biggest obstacle as it would add ~600+ doctoral students, assuming you graduate 150 additional PhDs a year. This isn’t even taking into account factoring in dropout or students deciding to end at their masters. It would also mean we would need Professors to advise them. In my time at SMU, I saw multiple new buildings, new academic fields, more research, amazing students, and talented professors added to SMU. Please feel free to shed any light on SMU’s future goals.
Let us look at Houston:
Recently the University of Houston was classified by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as a very high research university. There have been plenty of message boards touting this as proof of UH’s excellence. While this sounds great, it does not make it a T1 school in the eyes of Texas according to the criteria laid out by the State Senate. Let us further look at Carnegie’s classification of UH. 108 schools a VHRU (the top classification for research intensity). I have not been able to pin down the exact criteria for this classification, but I suspect dollars spent/obtained is the key criteria. You may also notice that schools that are VHRU are not necessarily also members of the American Association of Universities. Houston is not an AAU school. AAU has more stringent criteria for what constitutes research and only has 59 members. Let us get back to Carnegie. Houston’s undergraduate program is “selectiveâ€, has a high transfer rate-in, is primarily nonresidential, and is a Medium full-time four-year. Selective deals with SAT scores but Carnegie points out that the data is misleading due to UH’s HTI rate. From Carnegie, Houston’s bottom 25th percentile for SAT-Verbal/Sat-Math/ACT is 450/500/20, this is nowhere near SMU or the T1 schools of Texas bottom 25th percentile. HTI means that more than 19 percent of students transfer-in. NR means that less than 25% of undergrads live on campus. MFT4 means that more than 60 percent but less than 80 percent of students at are full-time. Again, being a very high research university does not make UH Tier-1 in the eyes of the State of Texas.
What are the actual requirements laid out by the state? I did not want to digg through the actual bill, so I got a basic outline of the requirements from UTSA’s Tier one page, all the schools say about the same thing, just slightly different wording. I visited UTSA’s last, so I used it.
First:
An institution would have to meet specific criteria, including being designated as an emerging research university, and would have to spend $45 million in restricted research funds for two consecutive years.
In 2010, UH had more than $90 million according to their website.
Second, Then a university must meet four of six criteria:
• $400 million in endowments: UH had just under $500 million. SMU, Rice, UT, and A&M are all over $1 Billion for comparison, but $400 is the criteria so UH passes.
• 200 doctoral degrees awarded each year: UH has averaged 200 doctorates for the past three years. Total Research doctorates awarded last year according to Carnegie for SMU: 53, Rice: 168, UT: 818, A&M: 597, UH: 231.
• membership in the Association of Research Libraries, Phi Beta Kappa or equivalent national recognition. UH is a member of ARL. It is not a member of Phi Beta Kappa. SMU, Rice, UT, and A&M all have PBK chapters. Rice, UT, and A&M are also members of ARL (126 Members Total). SMU libraries rank first in total volumes held among non-Association of Research Libraries universities in the United States according to the SMU website.
• achieve a faculty of high quality, who are Nobel Laureates and/or members of the National Academies: TBD, and I have not seen any list of what that means.
• achieve an entering freshman class of high academic achievement as determined by THECB: Again this is TBD, and their SAT/ACT scores are nowhere near T1 schools or SMU.
• demonstrate a commitment to high quality graduate education: Again this is TBD.
Conclusion:
Is Houston a Tier 1 School? No. It may be a VHRU but it does not yet meet the full criteria of what T1 means according to Texas. Furthermore it has not shed its image of being a commuter school with low admission standards and a high amount of transfers. It does a good job of serving the Houston community and should be proud of its record, but claims made by fans are extremely off base. They are fans so they should always be off base, but the issue was still worth examining. What we do have is several state schools taking huge strides to improve. Not sure who will win from the pool of state schools. I would imagine undergraduate entering quality would be the hardest thing to improve. Nice try Houston, but you have a long way to go.
Final Question:
To anyone in the know with SMU’s admin, does becoming T1 fit into SMU’s long term goals? Would we eligible for the state funds? I know we certainly meet the endowment requirements. Our SAT scores are comparable to the three current T1 schools. Our professors are of high caliber and our PhD programs are well respected. I would guess our limit would be the amount of research dollars we generate due to years of focusing on liberal arts and the only recent resurgence of engineering/science. Too bad we still do not have the medical school from our early years. We are currently classified as high (one below very high) by Carnegie. I can see how we could increase research dollars relatively quickly with an expansion of certain fields, but going from 50 doctorates per year to 200 is a massive undertaking to insure quality is maintained, this would probably mean recruiting students to new un-established departments/programs, not to mention funding all of those new doctorate students for 4+ years a piece. That would probably be the biggest obstacle as it would add ~600+ doctoral students, assuming you graduate 150 additional PhDs a year. This isn’t even taking into account factoring in dropout or students deciding to end at their masters. It would also mean we would need Professors to advise them. In my time at SMU, I saw multiple new buildings, new academic fields, more research, amazing students, and talented professors added to SMU. Please feel free to shed any light on SMU’s future goals.
