Is Yale still relevant?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
1

<p>When I was growing up, people talked about "Harvard and Yale" as the elite schools in America. Yet in the past 10-20 years, my impression is that Yale has fallen way off, whereas others have moved forward. Perhaps this is because Yale's strengths in humanities are increasingly de-emphasized in the current world. And Yale is much weaker in "modern" fields such as science, engineering, business, and economics.</p>

<p>Yale's student selectivity and "yield" continue to be quite strong ... and it has enjoyed recent popularity because several presidents are alumni. But is this really representative of its institutional strength? I wonder whether other metrics (e.g. few faculty members in National Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize winners compared to "peer" institutions) tell a more accurate story about its decline.</p>

<p>A few years ago, GQ published a story called "The Death of Yale" which suggested that Yale has lost its way and is ultimately doomed because of its location in New Haven (compared to areas such as Boston, SF Bay, New York, Research Triangle Park...). Yale's fund-raising is not on par with that of other elite schools. Many faculty from Harvard certainly feel that Stanford has long surpassed it as the "#2" school in the country. Is Yale heading toward the same fate as Oxford and Cambridge (i.e. great institutions that are no longer particularly "relevant" in the world)?</p>

<p>Not trolling here, and I don't attend Harvard ... simply wondering what Yalies think.</p>

2

<p>Hm, interesting, I'll have to think about this. I think it really depends on what you define as "institutional strength" - it's true that we might not have as many Nobel laureates etc. as Harvard/Stanford/MIT/whatever, and I wouldn't choose Yale if my goal was to do a Ph.D in any of the sciences (for that, I'll definitely be looking at Stanford, if I have any chance at all of getting in...), but as an undergraduate, I think that the whole "undergraduate experience," however you choose to define it, matters more than pure academics. I suppose there are two ways to measure the quality of a school: research, which can be rather quantifiable, but really matters more to graduate students; and the overall undergraduate experience, encompassing breadth of academic offerings, activity of campus student groups, personal attention by administrators and faculty, etc. It's this second category that I feel Yale really excells in, and for undergraduates, I think it's this area more than research that really matters. Yes, when I start looking at grad schools, I'll care quite a bit about research reputation, but for my purposes as an undergraduate, I feel like Yale is as strong as or stronger than any of its peer institutions.</p>

<p>... so really, I think the answer to your question depends on whether you're looking at the undergraduate or graduate level...</p>

3

<p>This is not at all true...</p>

<p>I think Yale has become more relevant in the past 10 years or so. While it is true that Stanford, MIT, and to a lesser extent Harvard are a bit stronger in research and faculty in science and engineering, Yale humanities and social sciences (including economics) are still at the top, and biological and chemical sciences and such aren't far behind. In addition, Yale College, which is the core of Yale, is stronger than ever, with higher selectivity.</p>

<p>And as far as fundraising goes, Yale still has the number 2 endowment in the world, so Yale is still plenty rich. </p>

<p>As far as grad, Yale still has the best law school, a strong graduate school of arts and sciences, and good business, med, and other schools.</p>

<p>The GQ article was written when crime in New Haven was a lot worse than it is now. It is pretty dated.</p>

<p>I think Yale will always have the reputation as the politics/economics/arts/humanities school, but its sciences are strong and improving, and the wealth and prestige will always be there. Yale is putting billions of dollars in science and engineering. And the location thing is a bit bogus, in my opinion, because Yale is close to NY and really oriented towards NY (hour and a half away) and benefits a lot from that city.</p>

<p>I think its clear that MIT, Harvard, and Stanford turn out better research in "hot" fields and produce more famous scholars, but for most students, that is irrelevant. Other factors will keep Yale at the top in almost all fields.</p>

4

<p>I was writing a long reply to this, listing all the aspects of Yale that make it better now than ever, but I realized it's not worth it. The simple answer is that Yale is timeless.</p>

5

<p>At my sons' school, Yale does not seem to have lost its lustre from all the apps that it received. And from the stats I have seen about this years admissions scene, I would hardly say that it is irrelevant. What makes a school irrelevant, in your book?</p>

6

<p>I think that other schools have become more relevant, if anything. Although there are still thousands of kids you want to join the ivy league, there is an increasing number turning down the ivies in search of more personal schools.</p>

<p>And while Yale might lack the powerhouse research of harvard and stanford, it makes up for it in the arts. A lot of people on this board have mentioned the humanities, however I think it's important to emphasize Yale's huge strength over any of the other ivies: studio art.</p>

7

<p>
[quote]
Yet in the past 10-20 years, my impression is that Yale has fallen way off, whereas others have moved forward. Perhaps this is because Yale's strengths in humanities are increasingly de-emphasized in the current world. And Yale is much weaker in "modern" fields such as science, engineering, business, and economics.

[/quote]

I think that by alluding to Yale's relative lack of pre-professionalism, you point out exactly why Yale is still every bit as valid as it was 10-20 years ago. Yale's liberal arts focus is a distinguishing factor, not an impediment of any sorts. The school wants to put out well-rounded individuals, not well-packaged job applicants.</p>

<p>I think that by keeping its focus on the humanities and de-emphasizing the "modern" fields, as you put it, Yale highlights its strengths. And I would also agree with the comment on Yale's artistic bent - it is certainly one of its strong points.</p>

8

<p>"The Death of Yale" is something that many people familiar with Yale refer to when they talk about the period of the late 70s until the early 90s and the "...and for Yale" campaign. During the aforementioned period, Yale was crumbling. Firstly, New Haven became a dump. The school had lackluster fundraising and seemed unable to come out of the rut. Then Levin took over, and the school has been going up ever since. Since about 2000, Yale has been the hottest school at the top with one of the fastest growing applicant pools. Also, the endowment is now as strong in proportion to its peers as it used to be, thanks to the $1.5 billion raised in the late nineties.</p>

<p>And yes, Yale might not have the engineering or the hard sciences (yet-they are dumping hundreds of millions into changing this). But they have the strongest art and music among top universities and some of the best humanities. And lets not forget the #1 Law School (on top since 1980-something).</p>

9

<p>Thanks for the thoughtful replies. In follow-up:</p>

<p>1) Yale certainly continues to have among the top humanities and arts programs around. However, my original point was that it is precisely these fields that may become much less "important" as the world evolves. Given that background, is it possible that a university such as Yale can stay "on top" without significant strengths in the "modern" fields (science, engineering, business, ecnomics)? Will society continue to de-value a university that trains students who are "well-rounded" in the arts, but ill-equipped to succeed in the "real world"? Obviously this is somewhat of a value judgment.</p>

<p>2) It is true that Yale is "dumping hundreds of millions" into improving the science situation. But <em>many</em> other universities around the country are investing the same or more amounts (and many of these are way ahead of Yale already). Of course Yale can improve ... but do they have the infrastructure to ever catch up? Will they be forever handicapped by their location in New Haven (i.e. without any significant industry infrastrue nearby)? No way NYC (1.5 hrs away) is close enough to have a major impact here ... unless Levin succeeds in cultivating a mini "industrial park" in New Haven (absolutely no evidence that this has worked far).</p>

<p>3) I've talked with many highly educated people outside the US who give the impression that Yale isn't nearly as big of a "player" in the world as it once was (for some of the reasons mentioned in this thread, i.e. they've "missed the boat" in terms of institutional emphasis). Is this legitimate?</p>

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<p>I had to decide between Yale and Stanford, and basically the main thing that got me (besides financial aid hehe) was the undergraduate focus. As an undergraduate, one of my main goals is to just grow as a person. It's not necessarily to learn more about my major, as I'm not even 100% sure of what I want to major in, and I think that time will come during my grad school years. Don't get me wrong, I think as an undergraduate you have many opportunities to learn about the field you are going into, and you probably should take advantage of those opportunities. But I didn't look into which school was better in a certain field as much as I looked into just the education as a whole. I think that's one of Yale's strongest points. It has a great liberal arts education and a strong undergrad focus. Plus, if it matters to anyone (which I know it does), I know that on the west coast the name and prestige that it carries has not died down, and is much stronger than Stanford. How is it on the east coast?</p>

11

<p>I think you are taking a narrow and engineering-centric view on yale's relevance. Yale never had any focus on engineering. I am not quite sure who you are talking to but it sounds like they don't know what they are talking about because in various non humanities fields, Yale is indeed quite relevant. Yale has had a historically strong economics department, its business school cracks the top ten now in multiple ranking systems, its medical school is one of the best in the country, its biological sciences rival any in the world, and has extremeley strong chemistry, geology and even MATH departments. And now its dumping one billion dollars more into sciences. </p>

<p>Your point about an industrial park is irrelevant to the core sciences of yale and the segways into improvement it wants to make. The infrastructure you should be thinking about is the campus and the room to grow in new haven. Both are accomodating to multiple new buildings (the largest building at yale was just completed last year in medical sciences, a new geology science center was also completed along with slated buildings for physics, chemistry, and biology). </p>

<p>I am somewhat confused by "institutional emphasis." Whatever that means, I am sure that anyone you talk to will say that Yale emphasizes its undergraduates, which is why it remains one of the flagships of US colleges, and why it consisently is near-impossible to gain acceptance to. Because Yale combines both strong academic departments and yet reaffirms its goal at fostering the undergraduate in both humanities and sciences, it has become such a coveted feat to matriculate there. </p>

<p>From a publication standpoint (though this is somewhat skewed towards larger institutions) Yale ranks in the top ten in Biology/Biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology/genetics, neuroscience, in the world, tying stanford with 4 spots in the top ten (out of 11 ranked science fields). Princeton only ranks in two categories (but you have to remember that this study really favors larger institutions as they will have more publications with more impact on the whole due to their size, so princeton's small size puts it at an unfair disadvantage in this study).</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sciencewatch.com/may-june2004/sw_may-june2004_page1.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sciencewatch.com/may-june2004/sw_may-june2004_page1.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>"Sciencewatch" is a silly basis to compare the relative merits of science programs across a range of institutions.</p>

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<p>why?<br>
departments, faculty, tenure are all judged truly on publications alone. What better way to compare the "relevance" of departments than by attempting to compare their respective publications. It is unidimensional and has many confounders (like size), but I doubt the USNEWS ranking is any less flawed with its reliance on surveys (for instance only 31% of biology department heads responded to the survey). The current ranking btw is based on data collected in 2000.</p>

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<p>Is this better? Here's the compendium of the NRC</p>

<p><a href="http://www.stat.tamu.edu/%7Ejnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41indiv.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41indiv.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Yale's ranks in the following:
Biochem + Mol Biol: 6
Cell Dev: 10
Ecology, Environ + Behavior: 17
Molecular Genetics: 7
Neurosciences: 2
Pharmacology: 1
Physiology: 1
Electrical engineering: 30
astronomy/astrophysics: 15
Chem: 12
compsci: 14
math: 7
physics 13
stats/biostats 17</p>

<p>social sciences:
history: 1
polisci 3
econ: 6
anthro: 8
socio: 18
psych: 3</p>

<p>humanities:
art history: 5
classics: 5
comp lit: 1
english: 1
french: 1
german: 5
linguistics: 30
music: 5</p>

<p>Taken together, it is obvious that Yale's strengths lie in the social sciences and humanities. But to say Yale doesn't have science departments which are relevant is absurd. </p>

<p>And if you mean relevance in today's politics, well then let me inform you that a Yale conspiracy is currently controlling the white house (Bush), the CIA (Goss), Director of National Intelligence (Negroponte) and the UN (Bolton, perhaps). Washington bleeds yale blue. In 2003 the class of 68 at yale had its reunion on the white house lawn. boola boola</p>

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<p>Oh yeah. We're completely outmoded and obsolete. That's why we have Harold Bloom, Benoit Mandelbrot, and Charles Hill on staff. And that's just to mention the "Names" that I know.</p>

<p>Not that having recognizable names means squat. But mentioning the names of great guys like Amerigo Fabbri, Robert Wokler, Michael Weber, and Greg Ganssle won't get much attention.</p>

<p>Yale, as with all other top-tier schools, has many strengths, and probably many more weaknesses. Popularity or name recognition shouldn't mar the educational qualities of the institution, and the education that one can receive there depends, as with all things, on the individual.</p>

<p>Let me just leave you with these words from Jadakiss of D-Block:</p>

<p>"I know some young brothers doin' bids in jail/
And they smarter than them rich white kids at Yale"</p>

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<p>your rankings are from over 10 years ago, and from a questionable source. Can we continue this discussion without useless "facts?"</p>

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<p>I find it amusing that you ask, "Can we continue this discussion..." while you actually haven't contributed anything to the discussion yet.</p>

<p>Though your critique is correct.</p>

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<p>I'm glad you find it so funny. I meant "we" in the royal sense, obviously.</p>

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<p>"Continue" implies a sense of continuity. As your contributions prior to said comment were insubstantial and nonexistent, I take issue with the diction of said statement.</p>

<p>And also sorry for hijacking a thread. Let's continue the discussion, shall we?</p>

20

<p>The NRC rankings are not "questionable", though they are old. NRC is recognized as one of the better, though unfortunately discontinued ranking systems . Sciencewatch is likewise not questionable, they have detailed methodology on their website, read it:
<a href="http://www.isinet.com/products/evaltools/esi/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.isinet.com/products/evaltools/esi/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Why don't you provide us with a detailed recent ranking system for us if you what to "continue"? or do you have nothing to add but useless comments?</p>