RGT - the D Magazine interview

[Stallion]

hmmm some SMU posters were misinformed-just as I suspected

[tristatecoog]

What about gaming the system like Northeastern and BU have done? Both are tied at #42.

It seems as though SMU can certainly overtake schools like Wake Forest, Rochester, RPI, Miami and Case Western. Dallas and the South has more growth. SMU has a top-notch b-school and a thriving engineering school which keep test score stats up.

With less need for future maintenance capex, maybe the endowment can grow relative to other schools.

Cracking the top 50 and beating out #53 ranked UT-Austin will be huge. Sort of like the notoriety of getting in the men's hoops top 25.

http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com/undergraduate-colleges/national-universities.aspx?page=3&tier=1

[SoCal_Pony]

SMT, love your enthusiasm and share your vision.

Reality is SMU is NOT ranked higher today per USNews than 35 years ago.

For all the good traits of RGT, question is can he take us to even 45-50 ranking? Hope I'm wrong, but look at our B-school for your answer.

[Planter's Punch]

I also wish we could align with someone to create a boutique med school. Med schools drive research - and research drives academic reputation among the egg heads. We could align with Methodist hospital which seems like a natural.

A medical school would be a crown jewel and be a huge driver in attracting research money, generating research, and attracting top faculty in complimentary fields. But with UTSW already in Dallas I wonder what it would take to get enough political pressure on top of donors to get Dallas a second medical school. If the Board of Trustees have AAU aspirations, this would really be a must.

[Stallion]

SMT, love your enthusiasm and share your vision.

Reality is SMU is ranked higher today per USNews than 35 years ago.

For all the good traits of RGT, question is can he take us to even 45-50 ranking? Hope I'm wrong, but look at our B-school for your answer.

I'm not so sure of that SoCal Pony. I don't know where to find old rankings but I think right before the Death Penalty SMU had climbed to almost Top 50 and the plummeted down as it had an affect on our reputation and student caliber

[SoCal_Pony]

SMT, love your enthusiasm and share your vision.

Reality is SMU is ranked higher today per USNews than 35 years ago.

For all the good traits of RGT, question is can he take us to even 45-50 ranking? Hope I'm wrong, but look at our B-school for your answer.

I'm not so sure of that SoCal Pony. I don't know where to find old rankings but I think right before the Death Penalty SMU had climbed to almost Top 50 and the plummeted down as it had an affect on our reputation and student caliber

Thanks for the catch.

What I meant to say is SMU is NOT ranked higher today than 35 years ago.

As for the B-school, a crown jewel, I don't think it's shining as brightly as it could. That ultimately resides in large part on RGT.

[NewAgeMustange]

As much as I would love for SMU to have a medical school the powers to be (state of texas) will NEVER let that happen. Look at UNT's school they have everything they need for a MD school but they couldn't get the approval and had to settle for DO. UT and UTSW will never let there be a MD school in the DFW area that is not theirs. Additionally the there is greater need for residency programs vs medical schools, I would rather see a increase in research and life sciences and maybe a school of nursing partnered with methodist., additionally I think that some business fundamentals should be required for every student (I was a science major), but there are some life skills gained from those courses.

[Pony^]

SMT, love your enthusiasm and share your vision.

Reality is SMU is ranked higher today per USNews than 35 years ago.

For all the good traits of RGT, question is can he take us to even 45-50 ranking? Hope I'm wrong, but look at our B-school for your answer.

I'm not so sure of that SoCal Pony. I don't know where to find old rankings but I think right before the Death Penalty SMU had climbed to almost Top 50 and the plummeted down as it had an affect on our reputation and student caliber

If we are talking about US News rankings, there is no way to know where SMU was ranked in 1986, or just prior to the death penalty.

Apparently, US News started their rankings in 1983 and only ranked the top 10 to 15 schools (depending on the year), and only published rankings every two years. In the early days the ranking was just a peer assessment survey. In about 1987, US News started ranking the top 25 schools and started publishing rankings every year. They also began to incorporate more factors into their rankings. Around 1996, US News began ranking the top 50 schools and listed the rest of the national universities in tiers. For instance, in the rankings published in the 8/30/1999 US News Magazine (for the year 2000), Rice was ranked at #14 and UT at #44. SMU, A&M, Baylor and TCU were all considered tier 2 schools which were listed alphabetically. Tier 3 started with school #121. In the rankings published in the 9/11/2000 US News Magazine (for the year 2001), Rice was at #13 and UT was at #49. Again, SMU, A&M, Baylor and TCU were listed alphabetically as tier 2 schools. Tier 3 stated with school #116 in that year. In the US News Magazine published on 9/1/2003 (for the year 2004), US News started ranking the second tier. In this year, Rice was at #16, UT at #54, A&M at #69, SMU at #75, Baylor at #78 and TCU at #102.

In the latest US News rankings, Rice is at #19, UT at #53, SMU at #58, A&M at 68, Baylor at #71 and TCU at #76. So from 2004 to the latest ranking, Rice is down 3, UT up 1, A&M up 1, SMU up 17, Baylor up 7, and TCU up 26.

With respect to TCU, it is easier to move up against lower ranked schools; however, they have made impressive progress. SMU is the only school that overtook another Texas school (at least at the upper end of the rankings). Overall, not too bad of a showing for SMU.

[leopold]

SMT, love your enthusiasm and share your vision.

Reality is SMU is ranked higher today per USNews than 35 years ago.

For all the good traits of RGT, question is can he take us to even 45-50 ranking? Hope I'm wrong, but look at our B-school for your answer.

I'm not so sure of that SoCal Pony. I don't know where to find old rankings but I think right before the Death Penalty SMU had climbed to almost Top 50 and the plummeted down as it had an affect on our reputation and student caliber

Bingo. We're still associated with the Gift That Keeps On Giving. It's still the #1 thing people associate our school with and until something takes that place we are going to hurt for it.

[tristatecoog]

Great stats. Overall, the Texas schools have made significant progress over the last eleven years. UH has improved quite a bit as well, albeit from a much deeper hole.

Maybe the trend of migration to the South and Southwest has helped Texas schools at the expense of Northern and Midwestern schools.

Rice and Notre Dame don't have medical schools so top 20 rankings are possible (but not probable) without them.

[Pony^]

Great stats. Overall, the Texas schools have made significant progress over the last eleven years. UH has improved quite a bit as well, albeit from a much deeper hole.

Maybe the trend of migration to the South and Southwest has helped Texas schools at the expense of Northern and Midwestern schools.

Rice and Notre Dame don't have medical schools so top 20 rankings are possible (but not probable) without them.

I would also add Princeton, MIT and Caltech to your list of top 20 schools without medical schools.

The following article details an interesting concept for a medical school at UH, although it never came to fruition. Maybe SMU could explore a similar concept.

http://www.chron.com/news/health/articl ... 529422.php

[PonyTime]

Now is NOT the time to be getting into the business of Medical Schools. With the government's ambitions to take more control over Health care, there are also ambitions to control who becomes a doctor (some provisions in Obamacare essential lay the framework for more government control over Med Schools). Don't believe me - feel free to look it up - page 6,342 of the 6,500 page document that nobody bothered to read.

A lot of parents are telling their kids (specifically doctors who are parents), are telling their kids to NOT go to Med School.

And no, I am not a Ted Cruz supporter.

[rodrod5]

I also wish we could align with someone to create a boutique med school. Med schools drive research - and research drives academic reputation among the egg heads. We could align with Methodist hospital which seems like a natural.

A medical school would be a crown jewel and be a huge driver in attracting research money, generating research, and attracting top faculty in complimentary fields. But with UTSW already in Dallas I wonder what it would take to get enough political pressure on top of donors to get Dallas a second medical school. If the Board of Trustees have AAU aspirations, this would really be a must.

you do realize that having a medical school changes the way the AAU evaluates a university

so starting a medical school and not getting it up and running and conducting a lot of research quickly could set back any AAU aspirations

and the reality is the current SMU has a LONG way to go in research funding to come close to what the AAU would consider and while research is far from the only AAU criteria it is a criteria that will not be ignored

and teaching is the major expense for a medical school to cover so it would be tough to get a medical school up and running quickly that also has funds left over to quickly ramp up research without a major financial commitment

As much as I would love for SMU to have a medical school the powers to be (state of texas) will NEVER let that happen. Look at UNT's school they have everything they need for a MD school but they couldn't get the approval and had to settle for DO. UT and UTSW will never let there be a MD school in the DFW area that is not theirs. Additionally the there is greater need for residency programs vs medical schools, I would rather see a increase in research and life sciences and maybe a school of nursing partnered with methodist., additionally I think that some business fundamentals should be required for every student (I was a science major), but there are some life skills gained from those courses.

The State of Texas would have very little say so in a medical school it is not like they need to approve it because of tax dollars being spent ect

and I don;t think you know what you are talking about with north Texas state

TCOM was a DO school for years and years before it was merged into the north Texas state system and thus there was no conspiracy to keep it from being a MD school because it was always a DO school

and while they have talked about wanting to offer an MD degree as well the reason that was denied is because clowns run the north Texas state system and they have a very very bad habit of purposefully underestimating (lying) about the cost to start the various programs they wish to offer and when they do get them started they dramatically under perform and end up sucking up preciousness state education resources often on unneeded garbage

the north Texas state dallas campus was never needed, it is a huge waste of money and their enrollment is pathetic and nowhere close to "expectations" even many many years after those "expectations" were suppose to happen......it is basically nothing more than a rental campus for DCCCD to hold classes at with a few garbage 4 year McDegrees tossed in to pretend it is a university

their enrollment is pretty much part time students and they are about to waste money on dorms

their law school is simply a joke and was never needed and while I am not going to say it will fail I would not be surprised if it did fail and I would be even less surprised if they failed to get accreditation here in a few years which will send it into a tail spin

they are basically letting in students that are "not good test takers" and teaching them "in a new way" while those students will still have to pass the bar exam whether they or north Texas state thinks they should have to or not

north Texas state was trying to estimate that it would cost them $25 million to get an MD program up and running based on the (failed) idea that "they had a lot of the things needed already in place"

their DO faculty and admins were pretty much 100% against it (right or wrong it was still highly divisive) and the truth of the matter is everyone and anyone The State of Texas ask or studied that had started a medical school (including Texas Tech El Paso that already had 2 of the 4 years in place in El Paso) said it would take 3X or 4X what north Texas state was predicting to get an MD program going and with the struggles with the north Texas state dallas campus, their crappy law degree printing press and their issues with the Denton campus stagnating on enrollment and being an extremely poor producer of research (and later found to be cooking the books to the tune of $90+ million) it was decided that the north Texas state system had no business with an MD program

TCOM never wanted to be a part of their system in the first place and still tries to distance from them as much as possible and lastly UT Austin and UT-RGV were in the process of starting medical schools with much more need and financial support and A&M was expanding theirs as well and Tech is expanding El Paso so there was simply no need to take a chance on a poorly run system like north Texas state getting an important program like an MD program so they could screw it up

[tristatecoog]

Now is NOT the time to be getting into the business of Medical Schools. With the government's ambitions to take more control over Health care, there are also ambitions to control who becomes a doctor (some provisions in Obamacare essential lay the framework for more government control over Med Schools). Don't believe me - feel free to look it up - page 6,342 of the 6,500 page document that nobody bothered to read.

A lot of parents are telling their kids (specifically doctors who are parents), are telling their kids to NOT go to Med School.

And no, I am not a Ted Cruz supporter.

It seems like a lot of kids aren't listening to their parents. Med School applications were flat during the recession but have grown at a 4% CAGR since 2010. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law on March 23, 2010.

[EastStang]

Having dated some nurses many in my single days, I'd be all for a nursing school. What about dental schools, is there a shortage of those in Texas? We finally got an education school. My view is that we need to make our graduate schools top tier one by one. Law would be easy. Its already knocking on the door. Business is there already. Engineering could step up a notch. Fine Arts is up there. Dedman needs to up a few of its programs. Ed School just started. So, let's build those, then see what we're missing. Perkins Theology is well respected among Methodists, not sure where it ranks since in the God business its all about your theological bent. Are you liberal, fundamentalist, moderate, conservative, etc.