Us too, mstomper…he didn’t get one of the big awards, but I wonder if they will be grandfathered in under the old terms. (keep a 3.0 to keep the scholarship in subsequent years), or if they will change those rules too.
Temple’s applications were way up this year. There were may kids in our PA high school that chose Temple over Penn State, which was virtually unheard of only a few years ago.
Shouldn’t a surge in high achieving matriculants send a university sky rocketing up the US News list? Especially at a college with merely so-so admissions standards. (Temple is currently #115)
^I agree. The strategy was a very good one: better students, stronger profile, higher rankings, attracting more students, better students, starting a virtuous circle.
Instead of backing out of it, they should fund it to expend Temple - it coul compete with Pitt and Penn State with the increased numbers in Honors students, and take example on UAlabama. But this is Pennsylvania, where Higher Education spending is ridiculous and leads to some of the highest in-state costs for public universities.
(And, I know, there’s PASSHE, but PASSHE simply doesn’t offer enough majors, is underfunded, and has had leadership issues for a while now.)
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Aren’t PASSHE schools’ in-state net prices and student loan debt levels are also high?
^yes, true.
You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But Alabama’s ranking actually slipped last year. There’s a lot of reshuffling of chairs that goes on with schools in these tiers.
D seriously considered Temple and Dr. Dai spoke at the honors presentation we attended after she was accepted. He’d come to Temple from U Penn (a fact he mentioned at the presentation). I had the impression that he was the person behind the honors program and the merit scholarships. Looks like both were a great success, but Temple wasn’t ready for their popularity.
The strategy was working with regard to USN rank: http://news.temple.edu/news/2015-09-08/temple-surges-rankings
and http://temple.edu/about/temples-momentum/temple-university-rankings
^^^ Yes, but that’s because Temple started out five years ago at 132 or something. Now they’re down to 115, which is very respectable, but it’s not like they went from 50 to 33. I think it would be very hard for them to crack the top 100 since most other schools in that grouping are working hard to increase (or at least maintain) their rankings.
And other factors make it hard to move up too. Public universities that are mission-required to provide an education to a wide range of students in state are always going to take a hit in the rankings for the standardized test scores of their students in the 25th percentile and below.
Temple has very much re-conceived its mission over the last few decades. It used to regard its mission as being the public university for Philadelphia and essentially a commuter school (it is accessible from all over the city via public transit). It now wants to be – and is succeeding to a significant extent at it – a co-equal of Penn State and Pitt: vying to attract the top in-state students from all over the state, and to attract out-of-state students as well, raising academic standards, attracting research grants, and providing top of the line facilities, including on-campus housing. In the process, African-American enrollment as a percentage of the student body has declined by a third, from over 20% to around 13%. (As Temple would no doubt be quick to point out, its total enrollment has gone up considerably, so it is not educating fewer African-American students than it did 20 years ago in terms of absolute numbers.)
Tough to navigate CC sometimes. But grateful it serves to us alert of this type of info!
Today I learned Temple is a public U. Absolutely thought it was a private college all these years.
This is a big heads up to all of us with seniors this year. Recheck those websites! Scholarship programs have changed at many universities.
I looked at Temple’s CDS numbers for year 2014/15 and compared them to Penn State UP and Pitt.
Temple paid out a total of about $76 million in institutional need based and merit aid, versus PSU UP $57 million and Pitt $47 million.
Of the $76 million $28 million was need based and $48 million merit.
PSU paid out $15 million in merit and Pitt $22 million.
Even two years ago it seems that Temple paid out a good $20 million more in aid (mostly merit) than the other two state related public universities.
That’s really interesting, @mommdc, and makes sense when you consider that Temple is trying to raise its stature to be on par with Pitt and Penn State. The problem as I see it is that they don’t have the revenue streams to help underwrite all those generous scholarships.
Temple has never been known for spectacular fundraising (although it’s improved dramatically in recent decades), and they don’t have the cash cow of football and merchandising that a school like Alabama* uses to help underwrite its comparable merit scholarships. In fact, Temple plans to spend $130 million to build a new football stadium, which seems quite risky to me. Temple football is never going to be one of those programs (and there are only a handful) that actually bring in more money than they spend.
But if you are able to increase the level of students you can attract and thus the reputation of the university itself, you may be able to at some point down the road reduce the level of scholarship support necessary to continue to attract the higher level of student. Better schools don’t need to offer the merit money to attract good kids. But can a lesser school attract better kids with merit money and get to a point in terms of reputation to no longer need to offer as much merit aid?
@saillakeerie, I think that’s the $164 million question. And at what point (and by how much) do you reduce the offerings? It’s a difficult algorithm for any school, I would think.
Yes.
Based on comments here, USC used to offer automatic full tuition scholarships for National Merit Finalists. Now, its National Merit Finalist scholarships are competitive half tuition.
Temple shouldn’t try to outdo Penn State in football, it’s a losing proposition in that region and competition group (B1G), especially since Temple has basketball which others don’t have (well, they do, but I doubt it’s a big revenue sport at Pitt and psu.)
The fact so many high stats students picked Temple should make them happy, even if it’s a temporary financial loss: just 5 years ago they wouldn’t have considered it - it means their reputation, and thus their national brand, is growing. In today’s higher education, there are mainly two big recognized ‘overhauls’, Elon and UAlabama. Read the 2003 Fisk guide for each and compare to now… Temple was emulating uAlabama I think butvif they cut everything the first year it works, they’re not going to get dividends and show a certain short sightedness vs’long range vision.
USC would count as an “overhaul”. Its past reputation as University of Spoiled Children or University of Second Choice was something it wanted to get away from, and it has largely been successful at doing so.
@ucbalumnus - I am confused by all of the abbreviations and was hoping you could clarify- what is USC? University of South Carolina - or University of Southern California or ??? I get confused when there are so many that are the same or similar. TIA