<p>The point I am making here, is that you Cornell fanbois are way more enthusiastic about trying to make Cornell more popular, than you are about actually making Cornell a better school as measured by faculty scholarship and quality of graduates. You have your priorities backwards. This is a bit "wag the dog". A school's prestige derives essentially from its quality. Not the other way around.</p>
<p>I do not know your thought process, but perhaps you think people should go to a certain school to get a diploma, so that the school name on that diploma will somehow improve their future salary/life. Thus marketing that school name becomes of utmost importance? This is all bass-ackwards and very self-centered. It also omits the only real thing a student leaves Cornell with: an education.</p>
<p>The quality of the school is not some abstract thing that you should only care about because it vaguely influences your future salary. The academic research of today drives the economy 20 years from now. Producing graduates with the ability to <em>do</em> certain things (not with the ability to show a piece of paper with a certain school's name on it) is also vital to the economy. Things are patented, invented, and created. Students learn things. It is not abstract. It has nothing to do with "perception," as you put it. On average, the quality of this activity happening at Cornell is <em>lower</em> than at HYPMS. Do you understand? If Stanford was destroyed in a nuclear explosion, the US economy would suffer more than if Cornell were nuked. No amount of website redesign or "rebranding" is going to change this.</p>
<p>As for the following, I really have no idea what any of it means:
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I do not want to compromise Cornell's unique identity; I want to capitalize upon it. There is great potential, and Cornell can gain from its inherent positions of strength first--and address weakness accordingly.</p>
<p>There was the notion 140 years ago, that Cornell was America's first true university, an innovation in education. That is just one place of differentiation to start. The potential is there to exponentially grow this "enterprise".
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<p>You make it sound like HYPMS are in a different business than Cornell. They are not. They compete for the same students and research grant money. If you are talking about admitting students HYPMS would not, I would sure like to know who these people are, and how you think this gives Cornell an advantage over HYPMS. Admitting women, jews, and blacks to increase the talent pool (part of the whole "first true American university" thing) is no longer mold-breaking revolutionary stuff, i'm afraid. Also American Studies, African-American Studies, and Women's Studies academic departments (Pioneered by Cornell, I think) are common now everywhere.</p>
<p>Also:
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What you have suggested, has been noted elsewhere and is valid and I tend to generally agree with. Class size should be smaller...perhaps 2500 to 2700; and then reassess. Faculty compensation and financial aid improvements can only help. Ithaca is not in the middle of nowhere. That is a tired observation.
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These suggestions are not some afterthought to the marketing campaign that can "only help" -- as you put it. They are material suggestions to improve the quality of the university. In my opinion, they are 10x more important and effective per dollar than the "branding of CAS and Engineering" (title of this thread). To complete the GM analogy from my previous post: I am talking about redesigning GM's 1980s cars so that they get more than 16 miles per gallon and do not break down every 10000 miles. You are talking about spending more on advertising and adding more cupholders. My entire point here is: sure image is important, but in the case of universities it is not as important as the quality of the product. Universities are not like women's clothing, where the opposite is true.</p>
<p>"
The statutory colleges represent an opportunity, not a drag on Cornell. It is how you perceive things. There is more upside to this story than not.
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In my opinion, compared to the other colleges in Cornell they are neither a drag nor a boon, as defined by the quality of scholarship. I never said so, either way. I merely presented a real rebranding idea, as opposed to the typical "if we tell people the College of Engineering is as good as MIT often enough maybe people will start to believe it" -type sentiment frequently expressed on this board. Cornell students and alumni (myself included, sometimes) are rarely able to judge Cornell's place in the academic hierarchy objectively, I have noticed. Perhaps their self-esteem is overly-dependent on Cornell's reputation.</p>