US News Rankings

[friarwolf]

64th.........We are never going to move up in the rankings until we get a president who is going to shake things up and fire deans for poor performance. So frustrating. If anyone saw the WSJ rankings last week, they had us the second most expensive university to attend in the top 80 schools. Can you say disconnect??????

[AfricanMustang]

Rice University is once again the top Texas school in U.S. News & World Report’s newest rankings of best colleges across the nation, which came out Sept. 9.

Rice was tied at No. 17 on the 2020 list of best national universities, along with Cornell University in New York.

Rice fell one spot from its No. 16 place on the 2019 list, when it also tied with Cornell. The University of Texas at Austin was the second Texas school on the 2020 list, once again, and moved up one spot from last year. Southern Methodist University in North Texas fell five spots from last year. The University of Houston also fell 14 spots.

UT was No. 21 on the list of top public schools, Texas A&M University was No. 70, and UH came in at No. 99. They all fell from their spots last year, particularly A&M, which was at No. 24 in 2019.

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/new ... -2020.html

[tristatecoog]

I thought A&M was #68 last year and dropped to #70.

They added some regional schools around SMU. Santa Clara is #54 and LMU is #64.

40. Tulane (rising)
46. Villanova
48. UT-Austin
57 Miami
64. SMU/LMU/UConn
70. A&M/George Washington (been declining)
79. Baylor/Gonzaga
97. TCU (big drop)
104. Auburn/CU-Boulder/USF
121. Tulsa
132. OU
139. Cincinnati
153. Arkansas/Alabama/LSU
162. Ole Miss
166. UCF
185. UH
192. OK State
218. TX Tech
272. Memphis

[PonyTime]

a slow decline in the US News Best BBA programs list as well, which was also just released today.

[tristatecoog]

Best value needs to consider net cost as well as the starting salaries one and at least five years after graduation. I wonder how the rankings will change when Cox BBA goes to only direct admit.

[bubba pony]

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/smu-3613/paying

Tuition, Room & Board = $73,310.
compound that with 5% yearly increase, times 4 years equals $315,974 for a 4 year education at SMU.
it's madness

[Mustangs_Maroons]

This is truly pathetic. Turner is 73 and has been there for ~23 years. I can't think of another university where a president has served as long. We have a lot of nice buildings and nice fountains, but we're still not a solid top 40 academic university. Remember these rankings exclude liberal arts colleges. Once you include those, we may barely crack the top 90/100 of all colleges.

[Pony81]

84 according to the WSJ rankings which includes liberal arts colleges....
I agree the BOD needs to make a change.... I understand they’re loyal because of the money he’s raised and the hole we were in when he arrived.
I have to believe they’ve already put together a transition plan and he knows when he will retire. Surely, We have good enough governance that we have a transition plan for a 73 year old President.
I can see the next guy get announced with some substantial donations ready to support his ΓÇ£visionΓÇ¥ for the university.

[midwestpony]

Last I heard while in school (18 grad) they extended him 5 years to likely set up enough time to get the next fundraising campaign started. He would likely have the next guy or gal lined up ready to meet people and take over. Still agree there is more to do especially for the price tag and the amount we spend on support staff. Hopefully the next person is ready to take the next step.

[NavyCrimson]

I would be curious as to our board ever considering these rankings???

If they did you would think that they would have handled this stagnation or backward direction of the university by now. But then again...

[SoCal_Pony]

64th.........We are never going to move up in the rankings until we get a president who is going to shake things up and fire deans for poor performance. So frustrating. If anyone saw the WSJ rankings last week, they had us the second most expensive university to attend in the top 80 schools. Can you say disconnect??????

I use to blame RGT more than I do today, now I'm having a hard time understating our BOT and their decision-making capabilities. Current US presidents serve some 6.5 years, RGT will end up serving as SMU's president closer to 30 years. So to say the least, I have zero confidence in our BOT making the right hire to replace him.

As I stated on another post....

30 years ago:

SMU had a somewhat higher national ranking.

SMU had a somewhat higher endowment ranking.

Over the past 30 years our athletics have be abysmal. Absent a short LB run that was mostly destroyed due to our own ineptitude, SMU's record in FB/BB games that matter is 2-110-1. That is 0-56-1 against B12 South in FB and 2-54 against ranked opponents in BB. Crazy.

A school in Waco had a higher ranked Law school and 7 schools in Texas have higher ranked Engineering schools. We are not even ranked in the Top 100 in Engineering, Texas Tech is.

Dallas was ranked #10 in terms of GDP, today we are #4, easily the largest increase of any major US city.

Dallas area in now ranked #3 in terms of Fortune 500 areas, behind only NYC and Chicago.

[PonyTime]

64th.........We are never going to move up in the rankings until we get a president who is going to shake things up and fire deans for poor performance. So frustrating. If anyone saw the WSJ rankings last week, they had us the second most expensive university to attend in the top 80 schools. Can you say disconnect??????

I use to blame RGT more than I do today, now I'm having a hard time understating our BOT and their decision-making capabilities. Current US presidents serve some 6.5 years, RGT will end up serving as SMU's president closer to 30 years. So to say the least, I have zero confidence in our BOT making the right hire to replace him.

As I stated on another post....

30 years ago:

SMU had a somewhat higher national ranking.

SMU had a somewhat higher endowment ranking.

Over the past 30 years our athletics have be abysmal. Absent a short LB run that was mostly destroyed due to our own ineptitude, SMU's record in FB/BB games that matter is 2-110-1. That is 0-56-1 against B12 South in FB and 2-54 against ranked opponents in BB. Crazy.

A school in Waco had a higher ranked Law school and 7 schools in Texas have higher ranked Engineering schools. We are not even ranked in the Top 100 in Engineering, Texas Tech is.

Dallas was ranked #10 in terms of GDP, today we are #4, easily the largest increase of any major US city.

Dallas area in now ranked #3 in terms of Fortune 500 areas, behind only NYC and Chicago.

Agree with most of what you said - but we have won more than 2 BB games against ranked opponents just in the last few years - I count at least 8. Cincy (x2), Gonzaga, Arizona, UConn (x2 or 3), Wichita, Memphis

[Pony81]

SMU's progress relative to the rise Dallas has seen is terrible. I'm sure the BOT sees this but has concluded we are "doing the best we can". I don't think we have had very strong BOT leadership over the last 30 years - witness of academic stagnation and our athletic stagnation. I'd be thrilled if we were a top 40 school that was mediocre in athletics. But we are mediocre in both.

Exceptional university presidents are hard to find and maybe the BOT think what we got is as good as it gets. If he is signed through 2023 as suggested on an earlier post then a new president should be identified and on board in 2022.

[friarwolf]

Our current board and the true powers behind the throne love RGT and have been drinking his koolaide for years. The last 10 years at least, the results of our search committees for high level positions (deans/VP's) have been abysmal. I have zero confidence that the search for RGT's replacement will yield us the kind of results driven president we need and deserve. The good ship lollipop will continue to drift toward the rocks..........

[SoCal_Pony]

Over the past 30 years our athletics have be abysmal. Absent a short LB run that was mostly destroyed due to our own ineptitude, SMU's record in FB/BB games that matter is 2-110-1. That is 0-56-1 against B12 South in FB and 2-54 against ranked opponents in BB. Crazy.

Agree with most of what you said - but we have won more than 2 BB games against ranked opponents just in the last few years - I count at least 8. Cincy (x2), Gonzaga, Arizona, UConn (x2 or 3), Wichita, Memphis

PonyTime, I'm talking pre-LB, SMU BB was a pathetic 2-54 against ranked opponents. So I'm giving any credit afterwards to Larry Brown.

The LB era was one of the few accomplishments under RGT, and look what our school did to it.

1) If there is 1 thing we can all agree on here at PFs, it's the lack of student support hurting our program. Yet while LB was still here, they began to destroy the MOB by putting ridiculous demands on the students, ie need to attend an idiotic FB or Soccer game to secure MOB membership.

2) They didn't prep Keith with legal representation prior to his meeting with the NCAA (this courtesy of OMD), helping open the proverbial can of worms that brought us down.

3) They hired the wrong law firm to represent them (this per SMUpony94). I remember having some discussion with RGV on the BB board about why we didn't lawyer up immediately, his response was mind-boggling stupid (not that RGV is, I respect him, but he was speaking on behalf of our administration). No foresight whatsoever on our part. Given his past, the moment LB was hired we should have retained a top law firm (it's called the price of doing business)... which leads me to my next point.

4) North Carolina, is a school which unlike SMU, actually DOES have an outstanding academic reputation (and at a cost for out-of-state-students of some $100k cheaper). North Carolina can properly lawyer up and postpone an almost 20-year academic fraud for years, then end up with a slap on the wrist, while SMU does it's darndest to turn over EVERTHING as quickly as possible and receive a particularly harsh penalty. What were we possibly thinking??? Clueless Idiot Alert - remember RGT after the punishments were handed down saying...'what will happen to North Carolina?'

5) Offend season ticket holders with a ill-conceived and terribly timed 'Re-Seat'.

6) Retain tankovich because given all the failures from above, they simply understood they lacked future revenue streams to buy him out.

Conclusion -Total failure by RGT and our BOT.

I leave you with this. It makes me both happy and angry, but mostly sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nkn6aC7Kd4